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Wonderland Quartet #4
Wonderland
Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. Spanning from the Great Depression to the turbulent Vietnam War era, Wonderland is the epic account of Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with his life spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned after watching his father murder his entire family, Jesse embarks on a personal odyssey that takes him from a Dickensian foster home to college and graduate school to the pinnacle of the medical profession. As an adult, Jesse must summon the strength to reach across the “generation gap” and rescue his endangered teenaged daughter, who has fallen into the drug-infused 1960s counterculture.
Hailed by Library Journal as “the greatest of Oates’s novels,” Wonderland is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plunges beneath the glossy surface of American life.
Wonderland is the final novel in Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, and them, are also available from the Modern Library.
J
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Hailed by Library Journal as “the greatest of Oates’s novels,” Wonderland is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plunges beneath the glossy surface of American life.
Wonderland is the final novel in Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People, and them, are also available from the Modern Library.
J
From the Trade Paperback edition.
530 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1971
301 people are currently reading
2878 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Carol Oates
854 books9,623 followersJoyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews
August 28, 2021
★★★e ½
Vorrei cominciare con lo spiegare il perché di tre stelle e mezza (credo, tra l’altro che sia la prima volta che io assegni meno di quattro stelle alla Oates).
Premesso che tre stelle sono già una piena sufficienza, per me, riassumono, più che altro, lo stato d'animo che ha accompagnato questa mia lettura.
Se avessi potuto valutare solo la prima parte del romanzo sarei stata sicuramente più generosa ma – ripeto- rimane comunque una valutazione positiva.
” Jesse era un sopravvissuto.
Jesse non aveva una personalità.
Non voleva una personalità. “
Pubblicato nel 1971, Il paese delle meraviglie è l’ultimo romanzo dell’Epopea americana, ossia la saga che comprende quattro opere molto diverse tra loro ma tutte intese a fotografare l’identità americana nel tempo.
Ne Il paese delle meraviglie, protagonista è il quattordicenne Jesse Harte che poi diventerà lo studente Jesse Pedersen per approdare ad essere Jesse Vogel stimato neurologo.
Si comincia con il racconti di un ragazzino impaurito dalla sua stessa famiglia.
Siamo negli anni ’30; la Depressione incombe su tutti e la famiglia Harte è come impantanata in una situazione di povertà.
” Jesse si sveglia, impaurito.
Qualcuno è passato vicino al suo letto…? E in soggiorno, dei passi verso la cucina, verso la porta…?
Il padre di Jesse, insonne. Per tutto l’autunno e l’inverno non era riuscito a dormire gran parte della notte.”
Questo l’avvio.
Jesse racconta come notte dopo notte si sentano i passi di un uomo che diventa sempre più solitario e disperato finché un giorno celebra il rituale così ”... tragicamente americano – il massacro di una famiglia da parte di chi dovrebbe esserne il capo, il quale poi si uccide” (dalla postfazione dell’autrice).
Jesse è un sopravvissuto che, da quel giorno, cancella e riscrive le pagine della sua vita ogni qualvolta il destino gliele strappa di mano.
In realtà, questo lungo romanzo è la storia di una fuga.
Il tema principale dell’identità e della memoria sono spazi da cui Jesse scappa per non incontrare se stesso.
” Noi esistiamo? Che cos’è la «personalità»? È permanente o effimera?”
Travestimenti e maschere non impediranno, tuttavia, alla sua versione adulta di sgretolarsi:
"Nelle prime ore del mattino del 23 novembre 1963 il dottor Vogel era a letto, sveglio, nella sua camera al Plaza Hotel, accanto alla moglie addormentata, e irrigidito dal terrore pensava al crollo delle cose, al loro accartocciarsi, al collassare della scatola cranica."
Dalla cameretta di un ragazzino negli anni '30, ai turbolenti anni ’70 in Yonge Street a Toronto
Romanzo «bizzarro ed ossessivo», come J.C.O. stessa ha dichiarato.
Ossessivo non tanto in un ripetersi narrativo ma in senso letterale nel suo raccontare le ossessioni di cui si può essere preda quando gli equilibri che si credono saldi si rivelano come fragili impalcature.*
Bizzarro nel raccontarci storie mediche (che, francamente, in alcuni passaggi mi hanno disgustata) entrando nei dettagli neurologici.
Il paese delle meraviglie, come titolo, si riferisce tanto all’America quanto al cervello umano, entrambi pieni di meraviglie che possono essere sogni o incubi.
Un ottimo romanzo che mi ha fatto penare ma la stessa autrice ci confessa di aver sofferto in questa scrittura
"Il paese delle meraviglie mi lascia un po’ senza fiato: la narrazione stessa sembra senza fiato, travolta in quel vortice dell’esistenza che è la nostra condizione umana."
------------------------
* "Ognuno di noi ha un’ossessione nascosta, suppongo, una sorta di mostro che ha reso le nostre strutture facciali ciò che sono in superficie, la maschera facciale che ci è propria, esclusiva nell’universo, e cerchiamo di tenere nascosto questo mostro, tranne forse a noi stessi. E alcuni di noi non vedono mai il mostro dentro di noi… Questa è la personalità che la gente difende. Ma è solo effimera. Con un semplice spillo minuscolo tra le mie dita» disse, levando la mano e unendo indice e pollice, «posso distruggere qualunque personalità in circa trenta secondi, sessanta secondi al massimo».
Vorrei cominciare con lo spiegare il perché di tre stelle e mezza (credo, tra l’altro che sia la prima volta che io assegni meno di quattro stelle alla Oates).
Premesso che tre stelle sono già una piena sufficienza, per me, riassumono, più che altro, lo stato d'animo che ha accompagnato questa mia lettura.
Se avessi potuto valutare solo la prima parte del romanzo sarei stata sicuramente più generosa ma – ripeto- rimane comunque una valutazione positiva.
” Jesse era un sopravvissuto.
Jesse non aveva una personalità.
Non voleva una personalità. “
Pubblicato nel 1971, Il paese delle meraviglie è l’ultimo romanzo dell’Epopea americana, ossia la saga che comprende quattro opere molto diverse tra loro ma tutte intese a fotografare l’identità americana nel tempo.
Ne Il paese delle meraviglie, protagonista è il quattordicenne Jesse Harte che poi diventerà lo studente Jesse Pedersen per approdare ad essere Jesse Vogel stimato neurologo.
Si comincia con il racconti di un ragazzino impaurito dalla sua stessa famiglia.
Siamo negli anni ’30; la Depressione incombe su tutti e la famiglia Harte è come impantanata in una situazione di povertà.
” Jesse si sveglia, impaurito.
Qualcuno è passato vicino al suo letto…? E in soggiorno, dei passi verso la cucina, verso la porta…?
Il padre di Jesse, insonne. Per tutto l’autunno e l’inverno non era riuscito a dormire gran parte della notte.”
Questo l’avvio.
Jesse racconta come notte dopo notte si sentano i passi di un uomo che diventa sempre più solitario e disperato finché un giorno celebra il rituale così ”... tragicamente americano – il massacro di una famiglia da parte di chi dovrebbe esserne il capo, il quale poi si uccide” (dalla postfazione dell’autrice).
Jesse è un sopravvissuto che, da quel giorno, cancella e riscrive le pagine della sua vita ogni qualvolta il destino gliele strappa di mano.
In realtà, questo lungo romanzo è la storia di una fuga.
Il tema principale dell’identità e della memoria sono spazi da cui Jesse scappa per non incontrare se stesso.
” Noi esistiamo? Che cos’è la «personalità»? È permanente o effimera?”
Travestimenti e maschere non impediranno, tuttavia, alla sua versione adulta di sgretolarsi:
"Nelle prime ore del mattino del 23 novembre 1963 il dottor Vogel era a letto, sveglio, nella sua camera al Plaza Hotel, accanto alla moglie addormentata, e irrigidito dal terrore pensava al crollo delle cose, al loro accartocciarsi, al collassare della scatola cranica."
Dalla cameretta di un ragazzino negli anni '30, ai turbolenti anni ’70 in Yonge Street a Toronto
Romanzo «bizzarro ed ossessivo», come J.C.O. stessa ha dichiarato.
Ossessivo non tanto in un ripetersi narrativo ma in senso letterale nel suo raccontare le ossessioni di cui si può essere preda quando gli equilibri che si credono saldi si rivelano come fragili impalcature.*
Bizzarro nel raccontarci storie mediche (che, francamente, in alcuni passaggi mi hanno disgustata) entrando nei dettagli neurologici.
Il paese delle meraviglie, come titolo, si riferisce tanto all’America quanto al cervello umano, entrambi pieni di meraviglie che possono essere sogni o incubi.
Un ottimo romanzo che mi ha fatto penare ma la stessa autrice ci confessa di aver sofferto in questa scrittura
"Il paese delle meraviglie mi lascia un po’ senza fiato: la narrazione stessa sembra senza fiato, travolta in quel vortice dell’esistenza che è la nostra condizione umana."
------------------------
* "Ognuno di noi ha un’ossessione nascosta, suppongo, una sorta di mostro che ha reso le nostre strutture facciali ciò che sono in superficie, la maschera facciale che ci è propria, esclusiva nell’universo, e cerchiamo di tenere nascosto questo mostro, tranne forse a noi stessi. E alcuni di noi non vedono mai il mostro dentro di noi… Questa è la personalità che la gente difende. Ma è solo effimera. Con un semplice spillo minuscolo tra le mie dita» disse, levando la mano e unendo indice e pollice, «posso distruggere qualunque personalità in circa trenta secondi, sessanta secondi al massimo».
December 4, 2025
DNF at p.269 (44%)
It's not often that I dnf a JCO novel as I'm usually a huge fan. This one is full of her distinctive writing that weaves fluidly between inner and outer consciousness of her characters and the kinds of grotesque situations and people that she can make her own - but I've never felt a sense of direction for this book, or any kind of narrative full-through. It may be intentional that the main character, Jesse, is essentially a blank slate - a result of the trauma he experienced as a teenager and which has barely been acknowledged either by him or the culture in which he lives (1939 America) - but it's hard work passively following someone who is himself so essentially acquiescent, pliable and unresisting.
This book has been reminding me of Dickens from the start: the almost animate weather that opens the book may be an allusion to Bleak House (and this book offers a series of very bleak houses), then we switch into David Copperfield mode, though this is not a first person narrative, but we do follow a trajectory of Jesse's life unrolling. There are self-named 'freaks' scattered throughout though admittedly more sophisticated than Dickens' gallery of caricatures.
Nevertheless, despite appreciating some of the techniques on display here, reading the novel feels to me to be directionless: there are standalone chapters which are tremendous: the opening, the chapter from Hilda's point of view - but then the book changes direction and characters in which we have invested fall away and we're in a new setting.
In the end, I read the final chapter and didn't feel the pay-off was sufficient for me to continue with this strange long book. It's dripping with atmosphere, and has a sense of brooding almost-menace, but the drifting narrative is leaving me impatient.
It's not often that I dnf a JCO novel as I'm usually a huge fan. This one is full of her distinctive writing that weaves fluidly between inner and outer consciousness of her characters and the kinds of grotesque situations and people that she can make her own - but I've never felt a sense of direction for this book, or any kind of narrative full-through. It may be intentional that the main character, Jesse, is essentially a blank slate - a result of the trauma he experienced as a teenager and which has barely been acknowledged either by him or the culture in which he lives (1939 America) - but it's hard work passively following someone who is himself so essentially acquiescent, pliable and unresisting.
This book has been reminding me of Dickens from the start: the almost animate weather that opens the book may be an allusion to Bleak House (and this book offers a series of very bleak houses), then we switch into David Copperfield mode, though this is not a first person narrative, but we do follow a trajectory of Jesse's life unrolling. There are self-named 'freaks' scattered throughout though admittedly more sophisticated than Dickens' gallery of caricatures.
Nevertheless, despite appreciating some of the techniques on display here, reading the novel feels to me to be directionless: there are standalone chapters which are tremendous: the opening, the chapter from Hilda's point of view - but then the book changes direction and characters in which we have invested fall away and we're in a new setting.
In the end, I read the final chapter and didn't feel the pay-off was sufficient for me to continue with this strange long book. It's dripping with atmosphere, and has a sense of brooding almost-menace, but the drifting narrative is leaving me impatient.
September 19, 2014
While I cannot fault Joyce Carol Oates' masterful prose, I did not enjoy reading this novel. Jesse, the protagonist, is pushed from one absurdly tragic situation to the other without a break or a single moment of humor or levity. It caused me to become frustrated with the novel and the characters within it. This is not to say that others may not adore this book, in fact clearly many do. For me, however, the unrelenting mood of surreal sadness simply wore on me after awhile, and I was glad when the novel was done.
January 4, 2013
What a profound talent at an early age. Many of Oates first novels were written at the peak of her talent. The Wonderland Quartet is an example, beginning with The Garden of Earthly Delights and concluding with Wonderland. In the latter, the section describing Jesse’s experience as a medical resident is superb. Oates invades the mentality of a character acutely and her research is astounding in it detail. Strange obsessions with weight permeate her books, especially a revulsion with obesity (one wonders if Oates herself suffered from an eating disorder). The principal character of Wonderland, Jesse, never really recovers from the childhood trauma of seeing his father massacre his family. Jesse proceeds through life mechanically, becoming a renowned neurosurgeon. When he meets the mysterious Veda and falls in love, he is unable to bring himself to leave his wife and daughters, and he attacks himself with a razor rather than succumb to his emotions. He takes refuge in the routines of his life, which are ultimately disrupted by his beloved daughter Shelley who vanishes into the turmoil of the counterculture of the 60’s. Oates’ writing is intense, passionate, and rapid. The thoughts of her characters clamour and fragment and the reader is swept along hypnotically.
July 15, 2010
It is extremely hard to tell you why I loved this book. It's not for everyone and I'm sure some people will love it and others hate it or feel bogged down by parts of it. It's the story of Jesse Vogel, who begins life in a rural upstate NY town, where he is running for his life from his father, who has murdered his whole family. Jesse escapes and we watch his journey enfold. The metamorphosis from a caterpillar to butterfly is only one layer. This is a story of survival and reinvention. It is the story of a man who is perceived as more than an ordinary man. Yet, there is no fantasy in this story. Oate's stream of consciousness style in this particular book (she is always different) helps us peel away layers of Jesse and the other main characters. It is part of the Quartet: Garden of Earthly Delights, Them, Expensive People being the others and each is worth reading together or on their own. Oates is prolific and every book has something to offer. However, Wonderland is a masterpiece.
September 26, 2007
A novel in three parts, telling the youth, young adulthood, and fatherhood of Jesse Vogel, who begins life as an orphan after he narrowly escapes his homicidal father (who, when Jesse's like 10, shoots Jesse's mother and siblings, then himself). Much of the first third of the novel details Jesse's life in his foster home, as the adopted son of Dr. Karl Pedersen, a world-famous diagnostician, who adopts Jesse as part of an obsessive need to cultivate an heir, and this section easily contains the novel's most compelling passages, mostly because the drama driving the narrative is Jesse's pull away from his birth father's shameful, murderous past (which is to say, then, his pull toward the seeming wholesomeness and success of Dr. Pedersen), and yet also his pull away from Dr. Pedersen's oppressive parenting. Here is a man who carts his daughter—a math savant—around the country to show her off to specialists, and all the while this daughter eats everything within reach to deal with the stress and loathes every fiber of his father's being. Here is a man whose son shuts himself up in his room pecking out notes for his musical compositions, who, too, is unhealthfully overweight and never speaks during family meals. Every scene is a big ball of tension.
Then Jesse alienates himself from the family and becomes a hard-working medical student. This encompasses the novels' extremely long second section. Then he marries and has two daughters, and the third section of the novel proceeds much like Roth's American Pastoral, in the way that Jesse's youngest daughter runs away from home and gets involved with that Kooky Sixties Counterculture, to the point where Jesse's final act becomes the quest to find her in some urban slum and return her to the home.
Oates's ending is meant to suggest that despite everything Jesse does in the second third of this novel to become anybody but either the homicidally crazed father that sired him or the obsessively crazed father that raised him, he's doomed to repeat the very same acts of parental control he once suffered from. But, like, what Jesse does at the end is cleverly track his daughter down in some apartment where she's suffering from jaundice and malnutrition, and bring her home, where he can probably feed her and get her to, you know, live longer than one more summer.
Am I that much of a square that I can read no instance of "demonic-paternal control" (Oates's words for it, from her Afterword; something she calls "the tragedy of America in the 1960s") in this novel's final act? Shelley (the daughter) shows no ability to take care of herself. Was it the super special gift of the Sixties to let free spirits follow their blisses regardless of whether it killed them?
Sigh, boomers. Roth does far more stellar things with point of view and the sentence, so just read his book and not this one.
Then Jesse alienates himself from the family and becomes a hard-working medical student. This encompasses the novels' extremely long second section. Then he marries and has two daughters, and the third section of the novel proceeds much like Roth's American Pastoral, in the way that Jesse's youngest daughter runs away from home and gets involved with that Kooky Sixties Counterculture, to the point where Jesse's final act becomes the quest to find her in some urban slum and return her to the home.
Oates's ending is meant to suggest that despite everything Jesse does in the second third of this novel to become anybody but either the homicidally crazed father that sired him or the obsessively crazed father that raised him, he's doomed to repeat the very same acts of parental control he once suffered from. But, like, what Jesse does at the end is cleverly track his daughter down in some apartment where she's suffering from jaundice and malnutrition, and bring her home, where he can probably feed her and get her to, you know, live longer than one more summer.
Am I that much of a square that I can read no instance of "demonic-paternal control" (Oates's words for it, from her Afterword; something she calls "the tragedy of America in the 1960s") in this novel's final act? Shelley (the daughter) shows no ability to take care of herself. Was it the super special gift of the Sixties to let free spirits follow their blisses regardless of whether it killed them?
Sigh, boomers. Roth does far more stellar things with point of view and the sentence, so just read his book and not this one.
December 15, 2014
I'm really digging Joyce Carol Oates. This is the second novel I've read by her. The first was MY SISTER, MY LOVE, which was also great.
December 13, 2021
Fresh off a National Book Award win, three novels into what would become a critically acclaimed quartet, you think she'd make the last book just a little bit more optimistic?
Nope, instead she decides to go full on horror movie.
Its not like she's consciously trying to write a horror novel (though it should come as no surprise that she's worked in the genre, mostly in short stories, although her 1995 novel "Zombie, about a serial killer, won the Bram Stoker Award) and I will say this one definitely has less onscreen violence than "them", which at times seemed like an exercise in exploring how much you could damage someone and leave as a mostly functioning human being. On the surface its working through the same themes as the previous novels . . . starting in the Great Depression and ending sometime during the Vietnam War protests of the late sixties, we often get an uncomfortable front row seat of people either striving for no reason or all, or, worse, getting exactly what they want. Its got a main character who comes from poor beginnings and eventually gets himself into a position of relative material comfort (in this case, becoming a doctor). But that's about the point where the similarities end because without a doubt this is the most intense novel in the sequence.
Its hard to pinpoint exactly what kicks this one up a notch but Oates felt it as well, considering the writing of it a somewhat unpleasant experience that she doesn't seem inclined to revisit or repeat (although she did rewrite the ending for the paperback publication, then apparently did her best not to think about the novel for years) and I have to admit that reading the novel is a bit of a suffocating experience . . . not the kind where it feels like you're being smothered but where you feel like you're trapped in a small square room with the other characters and the room is getting smaller and the looks they're starting to give you don't look like too promising (imagine a party where everyone arrives with explicit attention of not making friends, and THEN it starts to go downhill from there, like "The Exterminating Angel" crossed with "Climax"). As tight as her novels feel, there's generally some moments when they open up and give you some space to breathe. Not here. Definitely not here.
As best as I can describe it, the entire story is soaked in an unrelenting atmosphere of dread, this constant feeling that something bad is going to happen, even as bad things are already happening. It kicks in right from the beginning, as we meet teenage Jesse Harte. He's dealing with the fact that his poor family is about to be poorer, his father's last business having failed and his parents somewhat at odds because another baby is on the way. It feels uncomfortably oppressive, a struggling family standing at the edge of even more struggles. Then the problem is abruptly solved by Jesse's entire family getting murdered (that part is relayed on the back cover copy, although it also reveals the culprit which I think is a bit too much information) and off Jesse goes for an in-depth study on what untreated PTSD does to a person.
Basically you're spending the next couple hundred pages (and several decades) with a deeply traumatized person that is nowhere near acknowledging that he is deeply traumatized and so doesn't realize that his intense obsessions are just a product of his decision to cope by not coping at all. Unfortunately for him its also the 1930s and the general attitude to life altering trauma was somewhat akin to "Just walk it off" and before too long Jesse is sent to live with his bitter grandfather (doesn't go well), a foster home (also doesn't go well) and then finally he's adopted by a doctor who is brilliant at telling you all the time he's brilliant. He's also super-controlling.
This section of the novel is probably the best example of Oates playing a bizarre scenario straight only to make it even more frightening in the process. The Pederson family (and I keep imagining Dr Pederson as looking like Dr Gangunza from Alan Moore's "Marvelman" run) are suppressed to the point where every scene seems to have ominous humming music in the background scored by the guitarist from Radiohead, where even dinner starts to feel like a prelude to a nervous breakdown. His children are asocial savants, his wife is overweight and unable to make a decision without asking the good doctor and Jesse understands he's being molded into being some kind of vessel for the good doctor's knowledge but for someone suffering from a massive psychic wound, it seems as good an idea as any. If you're going to suffer some degree of low-key psychological abuse (and watch everyone around you being subjected to the same treatment) then I guess you could argue that getting a medical degree out of it is something of an okay trade-off. Although all the patients that you have to eventually treat may have a different opinion.
This is about the point where Oates quits pretending that she's flirting with a horror novel and then just straight up takes it home for a nightcap . . . a scene where Pederson's daughter Hilda has to demonstrate her math skills against another kid who is even more damaged than she is winds up being probably the most terrifying parade of weird numbers being added up you'll ever see and then the tension cranks up another notch as the Pederson family starts to splinter and poor Jesse can't figure out if he's entered a new act in the play or if everyone is just running through their lines again. Suffice to say, medical school is a definite relief.
Except that's no better either. After chasing off one fiancee by embracing full on paranoia, he manages to entice another, the daughter of a famous neurologist no less. He even gets a friend, another doctor named Trick who is friendly in the same way a knife on a table is friendly until you realize that someone sewed magnets into your shirt. But in Oates' hands medical school, a bit of a pressure cooker even on a good day, becomes a nerve rattling challenge as it becomes clear that Jesse is a man held together by centripetal force and if he slows down for even a fraction of a second he's going to come apart entirely and probably destroy everything around him. In the midst of this we get two of the most horrific sequences in the novel . . . a visit to a farm where they're doing medical experiments on animals as if the textbook was written by Dr Moreau and a dinner that goes off the rails so thoroughly that the only explanation is that the train is following clearly laid out invisible rails that only it can see. Needless to say, everything ends terribly. Meanwhile, Jesse becomes a doctor, interning with a insanely dedicated surgeon who doesn't seem to care that Jesse is working himself to death. Jesse doesn't seem to care either, seeming to operate under the assumption that death is a minor annoyance and a curable condition.
But at least he has kids. And as we enter the sixties that threatens to go sideways as well. One of his daughters decides to run away and just to keep the tension alive and well writes letters back home that appear to be written by someone legitimately insane, forcing Jesse to strike out to try and find her, bearing down into a world that's utterly broken and only seeming to have become that way because its inhabited by completely broken people. Even a visit with an old friend is frightening, like talking to a cloud of smoke that really appreciates you being there and yet can't quite remember how to answer questions. Everything is eroded, everyone wants to die, and everyone is waiting for someone else to do it.
Its an extreme novel, a feeling that doesn't settle in until you're a good portion of the way through it and you understand that you're being led through the years by someone who wants to cut through them the same way a sword cuts through people . . . splitting everyone in half and then stepping right through. More than any of the previous novels in the quartet that everything in society is just fundamentally broken and its just a matter of time before the hammer hits you and you realize how much of you is glass. What's scary isn't that Jesse is killed or rendered useless by any of this, its that he isn't, that he becomes successful and it still doesn't matter. All his obsessions, all the damage he does to other people, nothing stands in the way of him making it from one year to the next . . . and maybe what's more frightening is how many other successful people he encounters that are also completely warped. His mentors are slashed Cubist paintings laboring under the delusion they are human, his wife is living her own terror (a medical examination does not go the way you expect, and its awful) and his children don't seem to be setting off in any better direction. But what should separate them from the world only appears to make them more suited to live in it. While previously survival seemed to at least hold the promise of a better life, even if that promise was undone by deep seated character flaws, here even survival itself is mocked. Jesse makes it through a life altering event and by the end you can't quite honestly say if the world is a better place for him not getting killed with the rest of his family. But even if that thought is terrifying enough, you could extrapolate it further and realize that you could say the same about every character in the book, that they improve nothing and perpetuate nothing good. Nobody contributes and everything is terrible, and once you start subtracting you realize there's no reason to stop. And it’s a measure of how well the book does its job, that the only way you can lift this clenched and twisted aura is by imagining everyone in the book gone as if they never were, and the wind drifting peacefully through empty fields. That it’s a relief of any kind, that you've been led to a place where that is somehow innately plausible is perhaps the book's final spasm of horror. Nothing needs to go on if it never starts in the first place and she proves it in equal parts blood and charts. No wonder she's leery of getting too close to this one again. One of her more essential novels but I don't think you want to make an annual event out of revisiting it.
Nope, instead she decides to go full on horror movie.
Its not like she's consciously trying to write a horror novel (though it should come as no surprise that she's worked in the genre, mostly in short stories, although her 1995 novel "Zombie, about a serial killer, won the Bram Stoker Award) and I will say this one definitely has less onscreen violence than "them", which at times seemed like an exercise in exploring how much you could damage someone and leave as a mostly functioning human being. On the surface its working through the same themes as the previous novels . . . starting in the Great Depression and ending sometime during the Vietnam War protests of the late sixties, we often get an uncomfortable front row seat of people either striving for no reason or all, or, worse, getting exactly what they want. Its got a main character who comes from poor beginnings and eventually gets himself into a position of relative material comfort (in this case, becoming a doctor). But that's about the point where the similarities end because without a doubt this is the most intense novel in the sequence.
Its hard to pinpoint exactly what kicks this one up a notch but Oates felt it as well, considering the writing of it a somewhat unpleasant experience that she doesn't seem inclined to revisit or repeat (although she did rewrite the ending for the paperback publication, then apparently did her best not to think about the novel for years) and I have to admit that reading the novel is a bit of a suffocating experience . . . not the kind where it feels like you're being smothered but where you feel like you're trapped in a small square room with the other characters and the room is getting smaller and the looks they're starting to give you don't look like too promising (imagine a party where everyone arrives with explicit attention of not making friends, and THEN it starts to go downhill from there, like "The Exterminating Angel" crossed with "Climax"). As tight as her novels feel, there's generally some moments when they open up and give you some space to breathe. Not here. Definitely not here.
As best as I can describe it, the entire story is soaked in an unrelenting atmosphere of dread, this constant feeling that something bad is going to happen, even as bad things are already happening. It kicks in right from the beginning, as we meet teenage Jesse Harte. He's dealing with the fact that his poor family is about to be poorer, his father's last business having failed and his parents somewhat at odds because another baby is on the way. It feels uncomfortably oppressive, a struggling family standing at the edge of even more struggles. Then the problem is abruptly solved by Jesse's entire family getting murdered (that part is relayed on the back cover copy, although it also reveals the culprit which I think is a bit too much information) and off Jesse goes for an in-depth study on what untreated PTSD does to a person.
Basically you're spending the next couple hundred pages (and several decades) with a deeply traumatized person that is nowhere near acknowledging that he is deeply traumatized and so doesn't realize that his intense obsessions are just a product of his decision to cope by not coping at all. Unfortunately for him its also the 1930s and the general attitude to life altering trauma was somewhat akin to "Just walk it off" and before too long Jesse is sent to live with his bitter grandfather (doesn't go well), a foster home (also doesn't go well) and then finally he's adopted by a doctor who is brilliant at telling you all the time he's brilliant. He's also super-controlling.
This section of the novel is probably the best example of Oates playing a bizarre scenario straight only to make it even more frightening in the process. The Pederson family (and I keep imagining Dr Pederson as looking like Dr Gangunza from Alan Moore's "Marvelman" run) are suppressed to the point where every scene seems to have ominous humming music in the background scored by the guitarist from Radiohead, where even dinner starts to feel like a prelude to a nervous breakdown. His children are asocial savants, his wife is overweight and unable to make a decision without asking the good doctor and Jesse understands he's being molded into being some kind of vessel for the good doctor's knowledge but for someone suffering from a massive psychic wound, it seems as good an idea as any. If you're going to suffer some degree of low-key psychological abuse (and watch everyone around you being subjected to the same treatment) then I guess you could argue that getting a medical degree out of it is something of an okay trade-off. Although all the patients that you have to eventually treat may have a different opinion.
This is about the point where Oates quits pretending that she's flirting with a horror novel and then just straight up takes it home for a nightcap . . . a scene where Pederson's daughter Hilda has to demonstrate her math skills against another kid who is even more damaged than she is winds up being probably the most terrifying parade of weird numbers being added up you'll ever see and then the tension cranks up another notch as the Pederson family starts to splinter and poor Jesse can't figure out if he's entered a new act in the play or if everyone is just running through their lines again. Suffice to say, medical school is a definite relief.
Except that's no better either. After chasing off one fiancee by embracing full on paranoia, he manages to entice another, the daughter of a famous neurologist no less. He even gets a friend, another doctor named Trick who is friendly in the same way a knife on a table is friendly until you realize that someone sewed magnets into your shirt. But in Oates' hands medical school, a bit of a pressure cooker even on a good day, becomes a nerve rattling challenge as it becomes clear that Jesse is a man held together by centripetal force and if he slows down for even a fraction of a second he's going to come apart entirely and probably destroy everything around him. In the midst of this we get two of the most horrific sequences in the novel . . . a visit to a farm where they're doing medical experiments on animals as if the textbook was written by Dr Moreau and a dinner that goes off the rails so thoroughly that the only explanation is that the train is following clearly laid out invisible rails that only it can see. Needless to say, everything ends terribly. Meanwhile, Jesse becomes a doctor, interning with a insanely dedicated surgeon who doesn't seem to care that Jesse is working himself to death. Jesse doesn't seem to care either, seeming to operate under the assumption that death is a minor annoyance and a curable condition.
But at least he has kids. And as we enter the sixties that threatens to go sideways as well. One of his daughters decides to run away and just to keep the tension alive and well writes letters back home that appear to be written by someone legitimately insane, forcing Jesse to strike out to try and find her, bearing down into a world that's utterly broken and only seeming to have become that way because its inhabited by completely broken people. Even a visit with an old friend is frightening, like talking to a cloud of smoke that really appreciates you being there and yet can't quite remember how to answer questions. Everything is eroded, everyone wants to die, and everyone is waiting for someone else to do it.
Its an extreme novel, a feeling that doesn't settle in until you're a good portion of the way through it and you understand that you're being led through the years by someone who wants to cut through them the same way a sword cuts through people . . . splitting everyone in half and then stepping right through. More than any of the previous novels in the quartet that everything in society is just fundamentally broken and its just a matter of time before the hammer hits you and you realize how much of you is glass. What's scary isn't that Jesse is killed or rendered useless by any of this, its that he isn't, that he becomes successful and it still doesn't matter. All his obsessions, all the damage he does to other people, nothing stands in the way of him making it from one year to the next . . . and maybe what's more frightening is how many other successful people he encounters that are also completely warped. His mentors are slashed Cubist paintings laboring under the delusion they are human, his wife is living her own terror (a medical examination does not go the way you expect, and its awful) and his children don't seem to be setting off in any better direction. But what should separate them from the world only appears to make them more suited to live in it. While previously survival seemed to at least hold the promise of a better life, even if that promise was undone by deep seated character flaws, here even survival itself is mocked. Jesse makes it through a life altering event and by the end you can't quite honestly say if the world is a better place for him not getting killed with the rest of his family. But even if that thought is terrifying enough, you could extrapolate it further and realize that you could say the same about every character in the book, that they improve nothing and perpetuate nothing good. Nobody contributes and everything is terrible, and once you start subtracting you realize there's no reason to stop. And it’s a measure of how well the book does its job, that the only way you can lift this clenched and twisted aura is by imagining everyone in the book gone as if they never were, and the wind drifting peacefully through empty fields. That it’s a relief of any kind, that you've been led to a place where that is somehow innately plausible is perhaps the book's final spasm of horror. Nothing needs to go on if it never starts in the first place and she proves it in equal parts blood and charts. No wonder she's leery of getting too close to this one again. One of her more essential novels but I don't think you want to make an annual event out of revisiting it.
March 21, 2022
4,5 stelle
“ «La vita inizia col dolore» diceva. «La vita è dolore. Il dolore è vita. Capisce?»”
“Il paese delle meraviglie” è il quarto e ultimo capitolo della serie denominata Epopea americana che Oates dedica ai cambiamenti della società americana del ventesimo secolo. Sono romanzi indipendenti, con storie e personaggi slegati tra loro, hanno solo una sequenzialità temporale e possono, quindi, essere letti in ordine casuale. Dei quattro (Il guardino delle delizie, I ricchi e loro) ho scelto di iniziare dall’ultimo, perché affascinata dalla trama, in quella attrazione che si crea tra libro e lettore.
Come la maggior parte dei romanzi di Sua Maestà che ho letto, anche questo è poderoso, pieno di tematiche ed argomenti, si svolge, infatti, nel trentennio tra gli anni ‘40 e gli anni ‘70, attraversando la seconda guerra, il successivo dopo guerra, l’assassinio di Kennedy e quel periodo di turbolenza sociale del ‘68 fino alla fine della guerra del Vietnam.
Spesso, lo sappiamo, Oates eccede. Eccede in situazioni, in eventi, in temi, a volte anche in pipponi; ma i suoi eccessi sono sempre grande letteratura - pipponi compresi, come mi ha detto chi ne sa più di me. Anche qui affronta tanti temi, ma lo fa senza mai essere superficiale, riesce ad avere un punto di vista acuto e lucido qualunque sia l’argomento che intavola. E lo fa con il suo stile diretto, feroce, doloroso, intenso, senza peli sulla penna.
Quando mi capita di parlare dei suoi romanzi non riesco ad essere concisa, mi escono tantissime riflessioni e mi dilungo. Se avete pazienza, continuate a leggere, altrimenti fermatevi a questo: un romanzo forte, uno dei suoi migliori che ho letto fino ad oggi. Sua Maestà non mi ha delusa.
—————-
Il romanzo è strutturato in tre libri e sembra davvero una trilogia: tre fasi della vita di Jesse, il protagonista, che inizia quando ha 14 anni e termina con lui poco più che quarantenne. Ho apprezzato molto il primo e l’ultimo libro; quello centrale, come spesso capita per le trilogie, mi è parso avere un tono leggermente inferiore agli altri, con la funzione di “ponte” tra l’inizio e la fine della narrazione.
“Jesse (Harte) era un sopravvissuto, Jesse non aveva personalità. Non voleva una personalità”. Jesse è scampato miracolosamente al massacro della sua famiglia. Il destino, forse, aveva altri progetti per lui; lo ha portato a diventare Jesse Pedersen, lo stesso destino che lo aveva sottratto alla morte ora lo lancia verso la vita.
Ma la “nuova” vita di Jesse appare come una fuga continua. Le fughe sono sottrazioni a cui Jesse rimedia in autonomia, con la sua spinta interiore, con il suo guardare dentro sé stesso per fuggire - ancora una volta - al mondo che lo circonda, alla gente che lo osserva. Lui, che sembra rintanarsi nel proprio corpo e nel proprio cervello dall’intelligenza acuta e curiosa.
Il “nuovo” padre di Jesse, il dottor Pedersen, è una figura fisicamente e psicologicamente ingombrante, uomo esageratamente corpulento e con una personalità “schiacciante”. L’entrata in scena dei Pedersen combacia, a mio avviso, benissimo con la definizione che la stessa Oates ha dato del romanzo: “ossessivo”. Lo è nel senso che da qui iniziano le ossessioni: per il cibo, per il controllo, per la perfezione, per il compiacimento, per la realizzazione dei propri obiettivi. Ecco, ho trovato questa la parte del racconto più cupa ed inquietante, forse pesante - non certo nel senso narrativo - ma proprio come se una pesante cappa oscura aleggiasse sui personaggi, pronta a schiantarsi su di loro ed annientarli. In qualche modo ci è riuscita, certo, perché Oates non risparmia mai nulla ai suoi “figli” di penna, soprattutto a quelli che vivono nascondendo la polvere sotto al tappeto.
Tuttavia ricordiamo che Jesse è un uomo in fuga e riesce a scappare anche da queste difficoltà, raggiungendo - ossessivamente- il suo obiettivo: diventare un medico. Un neurologo. Il migliore di Chicago. Il dottor Jesse - ora Vogel - è un uomo schivo, complesso, sembra avulso dalla realtà che non è strettamente legata al suo lavoro, un uomo con cui, nell’evoluzione del racconto, ho perso i contatti; più JCO mi raccontava di lui, della sua vita, dei complessi rapporti umani che aveva con coloro che lo circondavano, più vedevo svanirne i contorni. Jesse fuggiva da se stesso, ma sfuggiva anche a me come lettrice, perché il dottor Vogel è un uomo senza personalità, non ne vuole una, forse non gli interessa, forse gli è ingombrante.
Quando si racconta di esistenze legate all’essere, chi meglio di un neurologo, che conosce e opera il cervello umano, le sue cellule e i suoi tessuti, può interrogarsi su che cosa sia, effettivamente, la personalità? Sulla sua valenza psichica, sulla sua (in)dipendenza dalla materia grigia? Personalità forti contro personalità anonime.
Potrei continuare raccontandovi della figlia di Jesse, Shelley, che nella turbolenza statunitense degli anni ‘70 scappa di casa aggregandosi a dei freakettoni erranti e antisociali. Ma questa sembra più un’appendice alla vita del dottor Vogel e avrebbe meritato un “romanzo tutto suo” che l’autrice, però, non ha mai avuto il coraggio di scrivere.
Sappiate solo che si finisce nel caos di quell’America che non è più un paese di meraviglie, ma di disvalori, di cambiamenti drammatici, di colpe passate che si riversano sul presente. Il sogno americano, per qualcuno, diventerà un incubo. E chi meglio della Oates poteva raccontarlo?
“ «La vita inizia col dolore» diceva. «La vita è dolore. Il dolore è vita. Capisce?»”
“Il paese delle meraviglie” è il quarto e ultimo capitolo della serie denominata Epopea americana che Oates dedica ai cambiamenti della società americana del ventesimo secolo. Sono romanzi indipendenti, con storie e personaggi slegati tra loro, hanno solo una sequenzialità temporale e possono, quindi, essere letti in ordine casuale. Dei quattro (Il guardino delle delizie, I ricchi e loro) ho scelto di iniziare dall’ultimo, perché affascinata dalla trama, in quella attrazione che si crea tra libro e lettore.
Come la maggior parte dei romanzi di Sua Maestà che ho letto, anche questo è poderoso, pieno di tematiche ed argomenti, si svolge, infatti, nel trentennio tra gli anni ‘40 e gli anni ‘70, attraversando la seconda guerra, il successivo dopo guerra, l’assassinio di Kennedy e quel periodo di turbolenza sociale del ‘68 fino alla fine della guerra del Vietnam.
Spesso, lo sappiamo, Oates eccede. Eccede in situazioni, in eventi, in temi, a volte anche in pipponi; ma i suoi eccessi sono sempre grande letteratura - pipponi compresi, come mi ha detto chi ne sa più di me. Anche qui affronta tanti temi, ma lo fa senza mai essere superficiale, riesce ad avere un punto di vista acuto e lucido qualunque sia l’argomento che intavola. E lo fa con il suo stile diretto, feroce, doloroso, intenso, senza peli sulla penna.
Quando mi capita di parlare dei suoi romanzi non riesco ad essere concisa, mi escono tantissime riflessioni e mi dilungo. Se avete pazienza, continuate a leggere, altrimenti fermatevi a questo: un romanzo forte, uno dei suoi migliori che ho letto fino ad oggi. Sua Maestà non mi ha delusa.
—————-
Il romanzo è strutturato in tre libri e sembra davvero una trilogia: tre fasi della vita di Jesse, il protagonista, che inizia quando ha 14 anni e termina con lui poco più che quarantenne. Ho apprezzato molto il primo e l’ultimo libro; quello centrale, come spesso capita per le trilogie, mi è parso avere un tono leggermente inferiore agli altri, con la funzione di “ponte” tra l’inizio e la fine della narrazione.
“Jesse (Harte) era un sopravvissuto, Jesse non aveva personalità. Non voleva una personalità”. Jesse è scampato miracolosamente al massacro della sua famiglia. Il destino, forse, aveva altri progetti per lui; lo ha portato a diventare Jesse Pedersen, lo stesso destino che lo aveva sottratto alla morte ora lo lancia verso la vita.
Ma la “nuova” vita di Jesse appare come una fuga continua. Le fughe sono sottrazioni a cui Jesse rimedia in autonomia, con la sua spinta interiore, con il suo guardare dentro sé stesso per fuggire - ancora una volta - al mondo che lo circonda, alla gente che lo osserva. Lui, che sembra rintanarsi nel proprio corpo e nel proprio cervello dall’intelligenza acuta e curiosa.
Il “nuovo” padre di Jesse, il dottor Pedersen, è una figura fisicamente e psicologicamente ingombrante, uomo esageratamente corpulento e con una personalità “schiacciante”. L’entrata in scena dei Pedersen combacia, a mio avviso, benissimo con la definizione che la stessa Oates ha dato del romanzo: “ossessivo”. Lo è nel senso che da qui iniziano le ossessioni: per il cibo, per il controllo, per la perfezione, per il compiacimento, per la realizzazione dei propri obiettivi. Ecco, ho trovato questa la parte del racconto più cupa ed inquietante, forse pesante - non certo nel senso narrativo - ma proprio come se una pesante cappa oscura aleggiasse sui personaggi, pronta a schiantarsi su di loro ed annientarli. In qualche modo ci è riuscita, certo, perché Oates non risparmia mai nulla ai suoi “figli” di penna, soprattutto a quelli che vivono nascondendo la polvere sotto al tappeto.
Tuttavia ricordiamo che Jesse è un uomo in fuga e riesce a scappare anche da queste difficoltà, raggiungendo - ossessivamente- il suo obiettivo: diventare un medico. Un neurologo. Il migliore di Chicago. Il dottor Jesse - ora Vogel - è un uomo schivo, complesso, sembra avulso dalla realtà che non è strettamente legata al suo lavoro, un uomo con cui, nell’evoluzione del racconto, ho perso i contatti; più JCO mi raccontava di lui, della sua vita, dei complessi rapporti umani che aveva con coloro che lo circondavano, più vedevo svanirne i contorni. Jesse fuggiva da se stesso, ma sfuggiva anche a me come lettrice, perché il dottor Vogel è un uomo senza personalità, non ne vuole una, forse non gli interessa, forse gli è ingombrante.
Quando si racconta di esistenze legate all’essere, chi meglio di un neurologo, che conosce e opera il cervello umano, le sue cellule e i suoi tessuti, può interrogarsi su che cosa sia, effettivamente, la personalità? Sulla sua valenza psichica, sulla sua (in)dipendenza dalla materia grigia? Personalità forti contro personalità anonime.
Potrei continuare raccontandovi della figlia di Jesse, Shelley, che nella turbolenza statunitense degli anni ‘70 scappa di casa aggregandosi a dei freakettoni erranti e antisociali. Ma questa sembra più un’appendice alla vita del dottor Vogel e avrebbe meritato un “romanzo tutto suo” che l’autrice, però, non ha mai avuto il coraggio di scrivere.
Sappiate solo che si finisce nel caos di quell’America che non è più un paese di meraviglie, ma di disvalori, di cambiamenti drammatici, di colpe passate che si riversano sul presente. Il sogno americano, per qualcuno, diventerà un incubo. E chi meglio della Oates poteva raccontarlo?
January 2, 2014
One day at USU I walked by a table of used books on the quad. I have a really hard time passing by a collection of used books, I had to look it over, and I found this book among them. I didn't know anything about it, but I recognized the author's name, and it was a nice-looking hard-bound book for just 50 cents or something like that, so I got it.
It has been on my bookshelf for a couple of years since then, and I finally read it. When I started reading it I learned that it was the fourth in a "quartet." At least one other reviewer had said that it was a standalone book, so I went for it.
Overall the book was an interesting reading experience. The overall story was good. It's more or less a coming of age story that follows Jesse from age 11 to age 44 in three segments. Early on Jesse tragically loses his family and for the rest of the book he is affected by that separation. Without a strong father figure in his life, by the end he needs to be a good father to his rebellious daughter. There are some very strong, compelling, even gripping scenes.
Stylistically it was strong, but it also felt kind of overwrought. Everything was very labored and heavy and serious. The story itself was compelling, and I wanted to see what became of Jesse, but the narration was very internal and meandering--it took work to get through it during large chunks of the story.
And of course the ending was completely unsatisfying. But at least I knew not expect any kind of tidy ending.
I marked a few passages that stood out to me:
"What was so fascinating about this, Jesse thought, was its ordinary nature--the canal, the locks, the noisy water; the town itself ordinary and quiet, as if it had existed for centuries, with a profound certainty of its right to exist, no awareness of the fact that it had no reason for existing, no guarantee of its right to exist." (p. 92)
"What was time? The element in which he lived, automatically. What was his life? he knew that a living cell performs certain miraculous acts, that it contains a kind of electricity, and that a dead cell performs no acts, goes through no sequence of characteristic, identifying acts, and is nothing. The definition of life, then, was only one of behavior: the living cell behaved, the dead cell did nothing. The living cell was godly, the dead cell a zero. Between the two there was a universe of time." (p. 208)
"There were operatic possibilities in life that came out of the darkness of a movie house--flashing out of the confused splotches of color and light that made up the screen's images, like the underside of a dream forcing its way to the surface of the mind." (p. 247)
"'Like painting the barn the way it actually is, halfway done in red--and it only turns out looking crazy. Because the real barn, the barn right there, looks kind of crazy halfway painted, so why should a painting of that barn look any better? I don't believe you should be faithful to reality when reality doesn't warrant it, do you? Reality isn't everything!'" (p. 395)
"To be a complete thought you have to come to the end of yourself, you have to see your own birth and your own death, summed up. Maybe into a book. Beginnings and endings." (p. 431)
I don't think I would really recommend the book to anyone I know. Also, even though I like the look of the book, I don't think I will be keeping it now that I've finally read it.
It has been on my bookshelf for a couple of years since then, and I finally read it. When I started reading it I learned that it was the fourth in a "quartet." At least one other reviewer had said that it was a standalone book, so I went for it.
Overall the book was an interesting reading experience. The overall story was good. It's more or less a coming of age story that follows Jesse from age 11 to age 44 in three segments. Early on Jesse tragically loses his family and for the rest of the book he is affected by that separation. Without a strong father figure in his life, by the end he needs to be a good father to his rebellious daughter. There are some very strong, compelling, even gripping scenes.
Stylistically it was strong, but it also felt kind of overwrought. Everything was very labored and heavy and serious. The story itself was compelling, and I wanted to see what became of Jesse, but the narration was very internal and meandering--it took work to get through it during large chunks of the story.
And of course the ending was completely unsatisfying. But at least I knew not expect any kind of tidy ending.
I marked a few passages that stood out to me:
"What was so fascinating about this, Jesse thought, was its ordinary nature--the canal, the locks, the noisy water; the town itself ordinary and quiet, as if it had existed for centuries, with a profound certainty of its right to exist, no awareness of the fact that it had no reason for existing, no guarantee of its right to exist." (p. 92)
"What was time? The element in which he lived, automatically. What was his life? he knew that a living cell performs certain miraculous acts, that it contains a kind of electricity, and that a dead cell performs no acts, goes through no sequence of characteristic, identifying acts, and is nothing. The definition of life, then, was only one of behavior: the living cell behaved, the dead cell did nothing. The living cell was godly, the dead cell a zero. Between the two there was a universe of time." (p. 208)
"There were operatic possibilities in life that came out of the darkness of a movie house--flashing out of the confused splotches of color and light that made up the screen's images, like the underside of a dream forcing its way to the surface of the mind." (p. 247)
"'Like painting the barn the way it actually is, halfway done in red--and it only turns out looking crazy. Because the real barn, the barn right there, looks kind of crazy halfway painted, so why should a painting of that barn look any better? I don't believe you should be faithful to reality when reality doesn't warrant it, do you? Reality isn't everything!'" (p. 395)
"To be a complete thought you have to come to the end of yourself, you have to see your own birth and your own death, summed up. Maybe into a book. Beginnings and endings." (p. 431)
I don't think I would really recommend the book to anyone I know. Also, even though I like the look of the book, I don't think I will be keeping it now that I've finally read it.
July 22, 2017
"Wonderland" is a strange, intense experience. I can really only liken it to an extended, feverish stress dream, where everything is loaded and nothing is permanent, background shift and change, identity is complicated and kind of liquid, memory and reality are all a little bit questionable. It wasn't pleasant, really ever at all, and yet it was very compelling to me. I read through much of it in quick, exhausting gulps, because the constant underlying tension propelled me - and that is fascinating in way, because it isn't like a lot of really exciting things happen or that there is something to wait for in the story. There isn't. But the tension is very thick, the threat somehow always imminent even though the threat is nothing in particular. It's existential. The threat is something about the unraveling of personality, a personality woven out of trauma pretty much never dealt with at all, so that trauma felt to me like it was always there, laying in wait.
It should be noted that the second phase of the book is about a family with some pretty major abuse, disorder and identity Stuff, and part of their Stuff is food and weight...and the author either writes convincingly as someone who really really hates fat people or she just really really hates fat people. So that's something to be aware of.
Also: I thought the author's afterword cast The Point of the book in a way that didn't track for me. It's her book, so you know, I suppose she's right about what she wrote. But honestly, I didn't see Jesse the way she seems to be saying she saw him. And I kind of wonder what to make of that.
Honestly, I went into this not really wanting to read it. I can't say it was enjoyable, but it is something I will probably think about for a long time, and I appreciate that.
It should be noted that the second phase of the book is about a family with some pretty major abuse, disorder and identity Stuff, and part of their Stuff is food and weight...and the author either writes convincingly as someone who really really hates fat people or she just really really hates fat people. So that's something to be aware of.
Also: I thought the author's afterword cast The Point of the book in a way that didn't track for me. It's her book, so you know, I suppose she's right about what she wrote. But honestly, I didn't see Jesse the way she seems to be saying she saw him. And I kind of wonder what to make of that.
Honestly, I went into this not really wanting to read it. I can't say it was enjoyable, but it is something I will probably think about for a long time, and I appreciate that.
August 28, 2020
A novel about why and how a brilliant surgeon’s inner turmoil emerges. This is a book that left me open-mouthed in astonished admiration for the writing and story and also that, in its jagged ending, I found challenging.
I'd had it in my library forever and pulled it down after being blown away by Oates's late novel, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. At first, I mistakenly thought Wonderland was three novellas instead of one novel. And having bounced off the first part, I read the novel's middle. I was fascinated by the young medical student's obsessive work and really puzzled by what drove him.
Then I read the first part depicting his harrowing childhood. The portrait of the family that eventually adopts him is one of the most compelling, disquieting things I've ever read. The last part was sad, as the doctor's and America's repressed past comes home to roost in the disorder of the 1960s and the dark side of the counter culture. I skimmed the letters from his runaway daughter, eager to see how or if the protagonist could redeem his wounds.
Wonderland is a riveting story of the long shadow cast by trauma.
I'd had it in my library forever and pulled it down after being blown away by Oates's late novel, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. At first, I mistakenly thought Wonderland was three novellas instead of one novel. And having bounced off the first part, I read the novel's middle. I was fascinated by the young medical student's obsessive work and really puzzled by what drove him.
Then I read the first part depicting his harrowing childhood. The portrait of the family that eventually adopts him is one of the most compelling, disquieting things I've ever read. The last part was sad, as the doctor's and America's repressed past comes home to roost in the disorder of the 1960s and the dark side of the counter culture. I skimmed the letters from his runaway daughter, eager to see how or if the protagonist could redeem his wounds.
Wonderland is a riveting story of the long shadow cast by trauma.
Read
March 18, 2010I read half of this book and finally got bogged down by the dense prose and the hair's breadth-to-hair's breadth account of every single patient, impression, and thought of the main characters. So I didn't finish it. I actually enjoyed the beginning, though. There is no one who is more a master of prose writing than Joyce Carol Oates, but maybe she has an unfulfilled subconscious wish to be a psychologist. Or maybe she is just so much brighter than the rest of us that she is in some stratosphere...I don't know; I like some of her books but some of them I can't read at all.
April 10, 2019
A quite average book by Joyce Carol Oates standards, I haven’t managed to obtain a “grip” on her older works — aside from them. Still, Wonderland is exquisitely written, of course, but I had a tough time connecting with the main character and his coming of age.
A rather dreary book, really ... and I like dreary. But this was a bit much! Mayhap I’ll revisit it in the future.
A rather dreary book, really ... and I like dreary. But this was a bit much! Mayhap I’ll revisit it in the future.
August 26, 2010
Oates' depiction of distorted mind states is, on first encounter, striking. The problem is every character seems to be in a distorted mind state at all times, which gets to be a bit tiring.
December 23, 2025
Well, that wasn't an easy read, or terribly enjoyable, but I still liked it.
I find reviewing JCO difficult because her novels have a dream logic, rather than a waking one. Improbable or impossible things happen, characters have visions and hallucinations. Human characteristics are extreme or exaggerated and the imagery is so bold. The contrast and colour is turned up to 11.
And yet the sum of it all feels entirely realistic to me. The violence, the fractures in family life, the loneliness and alienation, the gulfs between husband and wife and between parents and children. Her pictures of America from the Depressed 30's to the tumultuous 60's feel as precise and historical to me as Steinbeck, Cheever and Updike.
I do wish I could ask my mother what she saw in JCO, because I know she read her.
Of the four Wonderland books, I felt this ranked third, behind them and The Garden of Earthly Delights and in front of Expensive People. My sense during the reading that this was an outpouring of prose that wasn't fully tamed in the editing was confirmed by her Afterward in my Modern Library edition. But this novel had the most vivid characters: the Harte family, Dr Pedersen and Hilda, Trick, Dr Perrault and Michelle/Shelly had great voices. Strangely the other female characters were much weaker, and JCO let Helene fade into the background without adequate explanation.
I look forward to more JCO in 2026.
I find reviewing JCO difficult because her novels have a dream logic, rather than a waking one. Improbable or impossible things happen, characters have visions and hallucinations. Human characteristics are extreme or exaggerated and the imagery is so bold. The contrast and colour is turned up to 11.
And yet the sum of it all feels entirely realistic to me. The violence, the fractures in family life, the loneliness and alienation, the gulfs between husband and wife and between parents and children. Her pictures of America from the Depressed 30's to the tumultuous 60's feel as precise and historical to me as Steinbeck, Cheever and Updike.
I do wish I could ask my mother what she saw in JCO, because I know she read her.
Of the four Wonderland books, I felt this ranked third, behind them and The Garden of Earthly Delights and in front of Expensive People. My sense during the reading that this was an outpouring of prose that wasn't fully tamed in the editing was confirmed by her Afterward in my Modern Library edition. But this novel had the most vivid characters: the Harte family, Dr Pedersen and Hilda, Trick, Dr Perrault and Michelle/Shelly had great voices. Strangely the other female characters were much weaker, and JCO let Helene fade into the background without adequate explanation.
I look forward to more JCO in 2026.
July 26, 2025
I admired her staunch anti-hippie stance but this basically doesn’t work.
July 1, 2008
Joyce Carol Oates is a reliably enthralling storyteller. Pick up any book of hers and you'll want to read it cover to cover as fast as possible. This one was no different, except the plot was slightly disappointing; several amazing plot points were sort of dropped unceremoniously. The main character's wife and kids never find out that his father murdered his mom and all his siblings. The morbidly obese family of geniuses drop away suddenly mid-book and you only hear of them obliquely after that. Other, less interesting subplots are also dropped. Huge chunks of the main character's life are skipped over and only moments from them referred to. Still, a unique and crazy book, worth reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 10, 2021
This is the final novel in the Wonderland Quartet. Over the past couple of years I have read all of these novels and have relished each of these works from early in JCO’s career. I think this book is one of her best novels, if not the best. I was immediately immersed in the intensely emotional and internal world she created and the characters who lived there. Periodically I surfaced for air and time to reflect. This book resonated with me in so many ways.
November 27, 2023
after reading all 4 the way she deals with women vs Women and men vs Men is the most striking, really gave me White Noise vibes, anyone agree?
May 1, 2020
First published in 1971, Wonderland is the fourth of a quartet and Oates' fifth published novel. As she wrote in a 1992 afterword to the novel, "For Wonderland, as a title, refers to both America, as a region of wonders, and the human brain, as a region of wonders. And 'wonders' can be both dreams and nightmares." Consequently the reader can expect--as with most of her novels--violence to make its appearance.
The novel traces roughly 30 years of the life of Jesse, starting at age 14 in rural upstate New York, through his survival of a horrifying incidence of violence, then living in three different places before being adopted by a family in Lockport, NY, then going to college and medical school in Michigan, then to working at a hospital in Chicago, to the founding of his own clinic. While that trajectory may seem straightforward, it is too reductionist, for there are weird incidents along the way. Jesse is pulled into a strange set of incidents with his adopted mother; meets a strange fellow student who weaves into and out of his life, unexpectedly and oddly; meets a girl on the street in Chicago, who becomes an obsession for him, even though he is married and loves his wife; and his own daughter runs away, leaving him to track her down repeatedly.
The book does get a little long and tedious in parts, but at the end I found myself wishing there were more. And isn't that one measure of a good book? I'm sure that sometime soon I'll be looking for another Joyce Carol Oates novel to read.
The novel traces roughly 30 years of the life of Jesse, starting at age 14 in rural upstate New York, through his survival of a horrifying incidence of violence, then living in three different places before being adopted by a family in Lockport, NY, then going to college and medical school in Michigan, then to working at a hospital in Chicago, to the founding of his own clinic. While that trajectory may seem straightforward, it is too reductionist, for there are weird incidents along the way. Jesse is pulled into a strange set of incidents with his adopted mother; meets a strange fellow student who weaves into and out of his life, unexpectedly and oddly; meets a girl on the street in Chicago, who becomes an obsession for him, even though he is married and loves his wife; and his own daughter runs away, leaving him to track her down repeatedly.
The book does get a little long and tedious in parts, but at the end I found myself wishing there were more. And isn't that one measure of a good book? I'm sure that sometime soon I'll be looking for another Joyce Carol Oates novel to read.
March 27, 2017
Not sure really what to make of this novel. It is quite disjointed at times, there seem to be 200 pages where nothing really happens, but the whole thing feels actually quite brilliant and weird.
At times reminded me of one of my favourite novels (Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham), and that is not a bad thing at all.
At times reminded me of one of my favourite novels (Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham), and that is not a bad thing at all.
June 23, 2016
I tried. I read every word on every page and drug myself through page after page of disgusting descriptions and unlikely situations and in the end....
In the end I was left wishing that someone really would die tonight
In the end I was left wishing that someone really would die tonight
April 30, 2018
The experience of reading this novel has left me with a great appreciation of Oates. I’ve read several of her novels and appreciate her mastery of the written word. The manner in which she is able to write in a style that is so fitting for each novel speaks to her enormous talent. Bravo.
March 14, 2021
Dei quattro del ciclo, questo è quello che ho patito di più: un libro denso come melassa, amaro come il fiele, vischioso come le sabbie mobili.
Forse un po' troppo retorico e anche esagerato, per certi versi, tuttavia la Oates rimane una scrittrice incredibile e assolutamente consigliata.
Forse un po' troppo retorico e anche esagerato, per certi versi, tuttavia la Oates rimane una scrittrice incredibile e assolutamente consigliata.
February 21, 2018
Joyce Carol Oates doesn't get enough credit. This was an intense, "brain on fire" accomplishment.
Read
October 24, 2025I distinctly remember borrowing this stinky old 70s paperback from the English language library in Oaxaca.
“How lifelike and depressing. What a slice of norteamericana,” I reflected on the life of this family. Culo firmly ensconced in a beautiful wrought iron chair, at a table in the city’s picturesque Zócalo. Quenching my thirst from skipping school with like a smoky artesanal mescal, or like a chile-crusted, lime infused michelada, very conspicuously, in my Blaise Pascal uniform. Probably some other pendejas me decían “FRESSAAAAA!” out the window as I shuffled by their classroom, y tenían toda la razón. Probablemente reeking of cK-One perfume. Desde 1997 until very recently did I not know that Wonderland is actually the fourth of a quadrilogy.
No wonder I remember thinking it was so random. Like why am I reading about these average, sick, sad people. Coming across this novel as a teenager introduced me to the largest possible bibliography of JCO. For real, homie writes A LOTTA BOOKS. Booktokkers, if you’re listening, it would be a cool content creation style project to take on reading every single one of even just her novels, and giving a humorous reductive synopsis or synthesis.
Joyce’s not gonna be around forever, folks. Let’s celebrate our prolific novelist and great tweeter of all time, right now, while she’s still here with us. Seriously, she’s like 90 years old, and I still can’t imagine even reading every single one of her books in 90 years, let alone writing them all. The numbers just don’t make sense to me. I certainly must devote some amount of my remaining lifetime to reading and re-reading the Wonderland series, perhaps thee most iconic works of an icon, Joyce Carol Oates.
“How lifelike and depressing. What a slice of norteamericana,” I reflected on the life of this family. Culo firmly ensconced in a beautiful wrought iron chair, at a table in the city’s picturesque Zócalo. Quenching my thirst from skipping school with like a smoky artesanal mescal, or like a chile-crusted, lime infused michelada, very conspicuously, in my Blaise Pascal uniform. Probably some other pendejas me decían “FRESSAAAAA!” out the window as I shuffled by their classroom, y tenían toda la razón. Probablemente reeking of cK-One perfume. Desde 1997 until very recently did I not know that Wonderland is actually the fourth of a quadrilogy.
No wonder I remember thinking it was so random. Like why am I reading about these average, sick, sad people. Coming across this novel as a teenager introduced me to the largest possible bibliography of JCO. For real, homie writes A LOTTA BOOKS. Booktokkers, if you’re listening, it would be a cool content creation style project to take on reading every single one of even just her novels, and giving a humorous reductive synopsis or synthesis.
Joyce’s not gonna be around forever, folks. Let’s celebrate our prolific novelist and great tweeter of all time, right now, while she’s still here with us. Seriously, she’s like 90 years old, and I still can’t imagine even reading every single one of her books in 90 years, let alone writing them all. The numbers just don’t make sense to me. I certainly must devote some amount of my remaining lifetime to reading and re-reading the Wonderland series, perhaps thee most iconic works of an icon, Joyce Carol Oates.
August 9, 2025
This is a very dense book. Her style is unusual, but it’s so worth it.
When he was a young boy, Jesse Vogel lost everything through a violent and unexpected act—no spoilers as this is on the book jacket. He is then left to navigate the world without a real touchstone but manages to graduate medical school all the same.
There is plenty of unresolved trauma here, but the author never uses the word trauma. Instead, you watch Jess make poor or unusual decisions throughout his life.
The end is stunning.
When he was a young boy, Jesse Vogel lost everything through a violent and unexpected act—no spoilers as this is on the book jacket. He is then left to navigate the world without a real touchstone but manages to graduate medical school all the same.
There is plenty of unresolved trauma here, but the author never uses the word trauma. Instead, you watch Jess make poor or unusual decisions throughout his life.
The end is stunning.
November 3, 2013
This book is for all of us who pursue phantasmagoria of personality—
What is personality — can it be destroyed as the brain surgeon, Dr. Perrault, declared “with a tiny pin in my fingers.” — ? The formation of personality according to the reciprocal determinism theory, an individual’s behavioral genetics and social environment and consequences have a direct impact on the formation of personality — and then there’s the idea that personality possesses the power of free will, personality is characterized by morality — there is more, but I’ll stop there, all of this makes my brain hurt, but I think about this stuff all the time, it fascinates me. The philosophical divides and resulting debates regarding our being human are all frustrating and wonderful — Free Will v. Determinism; Heredity v. Environment; Uniqueness v. Universality/ Active v. Reactive; Optimistic v. Pessimistic — They’re all right in their own way, yet at times a bit too certain of themselves. Goodness knows, I’m not an expert, but I can’t believe there is a rigid set of parameters that make up a personality in the “this is how it is because we say so” — you know, that sort of shit always makes me dig in and say “No fuckin’ way.” Some people just gotta have the Coke or Pepsi argument just for the sake of arguing about something — Good grief, if a little chocolate free will gets in your determinism peanut butter, let it be, it all ends up in the same place. (Trust me on this.)
Wonderland is an exploration of the personality — it is a book that I call a “human document.” The human being is such a complex character, a fascinating mystery — the first time I read Wonderland it was like riding a rocket to the moon. I remember being told that it was a “good one” and checked it out from the library — I tried to ignore the librarian’s gentle attempt to direct me toward something more age appropriate like the latest Walter Farley since it was well known that I loved horses — but it was not long after I read Dickens and Shakespeare in school, so I knew what I was looking for — I wanted “a good one”, something real. Seriously, I had trouble enough with reality since I spent a good amount of time inside my head, and the way things were at the time, well, sometimes it did not feel real. I wanted something to feed that gnawing sense of “I want more”; I wanted to go into the deep end of the pool where I had to be bigger to touch bottom — I’m not just talking about the physical “bigger”. I might’ve been around 14 or 15 when I put the weighty tome into the basket of my bike and rode off to somewhere quiet to read it. I had a favorite tree in the woods where no one would bother me. It was a fat book (which I did not find daunting at all.) It had a bright yellow dust jacket with the crinkly protective plastic cover — it had that special library book smell that went along with summer days. The book was shocking, it was terrifying, but it was fascinating — that “adult” forbidden fruit sort of thing that I gotten myself into when I was impressionable and testing the waters of life beyond childhood. The characters were real — too real — they were nightmarish monsters and selfishly up to no good — I couldn’t trust any of them to not cause harm or to make a disaster of every moment. I held my breath a lot, grinding my teeth sometimes. Some of what was going on went over my head as I found their adult actions to be baffling — yet I accepted all of it as the author’s intention and trusted her wisdom to tell the story as she saw fit — I leaned forward and read on. After I made my way through this novel, I knew there was no turning back. Dang — after reading it, I wanted to be a writer of such arcane things as personality and have spent years picking away at words of my own. I’ve been wanting to re-read Wonderland for a very long time, but didn’t want to until I accomplished writing something that I could call mine — I also didn’t want this monumental book to become something for me to navigate by — but nevertheless, it was there, a distant lighthouse, an encouraging reminder and a stern caution. Now that I have read it with the experienced eyes of someone who has delved into the mines to unearth my own “human documents” because of their exploration of ‘being’, I was actually surprised by it — and not just surprised by how much I had forgotten. The magic is still there, but different for me now — it still gives me the chills in a good way; it’s just as frightening and nightmarish as ever, it is timeless, and ever so interesting — exploring the phantasmagoria of personality.
Did I tell you I love this book? I do.
What is personality — can it be destroyed as the brain surgeon, Dr. Perrault, declared “with a tiny pin in my fingers.” — ? The formation of personality according to the reciprocal determinism theory, an individual’s behavioral genetics and social environment and consequences have a direct impact on the formation of personality — and then there’s the idea that personality possesses the power of free will, personality is characterized by morality — there is more, but I’ll stop there, all of this makes my brain hurt, but I think about this stuff all the time, it fascinates me. The philosophical divides and resulting debates regarding our being human are all frustrating and wonderful — Free Will v. Determinism; Heredity v. Environment; Uniqueness v. Universality/ Active v. Reactive; Optimistic v. Pessimistic — They’re all right in their own way, yet at times a bit too certain of themselves. Goodness knows, I’m not an expert, but I can’t believe there is a rigid set of parameters that make up a personality in the “this is how it is because we say so” — you know, that sort of shit always makes me dig in and say “No fuckin’ way.” Some people just gotta have the Coke or Pepsi argument just for the sake of arguing about something — Good grief, if a little chocolate free will gets in your determinism peanut butter, let it be, it all ends up in the same place. (Trust me on this.)
Wonderland is an exploration of the personality — it is a book that I call a “human document.” The human being is such a complex character, a fascinating mystery — the first time I read Wonderland it was like riding a rocket to the moon. I remember being told that it was a “good one” and checked it out from the library — I tried to ignore the librarian’s gentle attempt to direct me toward something more age appropriate like the latest Walter Farley since it was well known that I loved horses — but it was not long after I read Dickens and Shakespeare in school, so I knew what I was looking for — I wanted “a good one”, something real. Seriously, I had trouble enough with reality since I spent a good amount of time inside my head, and the way things were at the time, well, sometimes it did not feel real. I wanted something to feed that gnawing sense of “I want more”; I wanted to go into the deep end of the pool where I had to be bigger to touch bottom — I’m not just talking about the physical “bigger”. I might’ve been around 14 or 15 when I put the weighty tome into the basket of my bike and rode off to somewhere quiet to read it. I had a favorite tree in the woods where no one would bother me. It was a fat book (which I did not find daunting at all.) It had a bright yellow dust jacket with the crinkly protective plastic cover — it had that special library book smell that went along with summer days. The book was shocking, it was terrifying, but it was fascinating — that “adult” forbidden fruit sort of thing that I gotten myself into when I was impressionable and testing the waters of life beyond childhood. The characters were real — too real — they were nightmarish monsters and selfishly up to no good — I couldn’t trust any of them to not cause harm or to make a disaster of every moment. I held my breath a lot, grinding my teeth sometimes. Some of what was going on went over my head as I found their adult actions to be baffling — yet I accepted all of it as the author’s intention and trusted her wisdom to tell the story as she saw fit — I leaned forward and read on. After I made my way through this novel, I knew there was no turning back. Dang — after reading it, I wanted to be a writer of such arcane things as personality and have spent years picking away at words of my own. I’ve been wanting to re-read Wonderland for a very long time, but didn’t want to until I accomplished writing something that I could call mine — I also didn’t want this monumental book to become something for me to navigate by — but nevertheless, it was there, a distant lighthouse, an encouraging reminder and a stern caution. Now that I have read it with the experienced eyes of someone who has delved into the mines to unearth my own “human documents” because of their exploration of ‘being’, I was actually surprised by it — and not just surprised by how much I had forgotten. The magic is still there, but different for me now — it still gives me the chills in a good way; it’s just as frightening and nightmarish as ever, it is timeless, and ever so interesting — exploring the phantasmagoria of personality.
Did I tell you I love this book? I do.
May 17, 2024
Final book in a quadrilogy illustrating various aspects of American life. Jesse is mad an orphan after his father kills the rest of his family and himself (after also shooting Jesse). Jesse then deals with various other stressors as he becomes a family man and a neurosurgeon. Makes my life look tame. Very good but a very slow read for me. Stand-alone - does not require reading the three preceding books in the series.
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