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I paesaggi perduti: Romanzo di formazione di una scrittrice
Cosa accade quando una delle più importanti scrittrici contemporanee, autrice di romanzi dalle trame avvincenti e personaggi memorabili, decide di abbandonare la finzione per raccontare di sé?
Non un memoir sulla sua vita di scrittrice e nemmeno una classica autobiografia.
Joyce Carol Oates non racconta tutto, ma solo quello che è decisivo, gli anni cruciali per la persona (e la scrittrice) che sarebbe diventata. Addentrandoci nelle pieghe dell'infanzia e dell'adolescenza scopriamo tanti misteri e capiamo dove nasce l'immenso serbatoio di storie che è la mente di Joyce Carol Oates. Il padre e la madre che sono personaggi da romanzo, il pollo "un po' speciale" come migliore amico, il primo incontro con la morte quando la migliore amica si suicida, una sorella che è un enigma pericoloso e triste, gli amori e i libri, Alice nel paese delle meraviglie. Ma il vero protagonista è il paesaggio, quell'America rurale fatta di fattorie e avventure all'aria aperta, duro lavoro e perdita, felicità estive, un paesaggio che diventa molto più di uno sfondo per i romanzi futuri. È l'origine stessa del desiderio di scrivere.
Ci sono molte foto in questo romanzo, sfilate dall'album di famiglia e mostrate per la prima volta ai lettori. Istantanee di tanto tempo fa e ritratti recenti, tutti ugualmente animati da un fascino mitico che ci fa riconoscere in quei volti lontani e imperscrutabili i fantasmi della nostra infanzia, gli stessi che potremmo ritrovare nei bauli dimenticati nelle soffitte delle nostre case di famiglia. Queste foto, assieme ai ricordi dell'autrice, a volte commoventi a volte irriverenti e teneri, ci dicono che quei fantasmi sono gli stessi per tutti noi e ci stanno vicini per tutta la vita, fino a quando non finiamo per diventare noi stessi questi fantasmi che abitavano il paesaggio e il tempo perduto della nostra infanzia.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 8, 2015
115 people are currently reading
1961 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Carol Oates
854 books9,636 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 147 reviews
November 9, 2015
I finished The Lost Landscape: A Writer's Coming of Age a memoir by Joyce Carol Oates which is excellently narrated by Cassandra Campbell. The author expresses herself obliquely, meaning you need time to think. Campbell gives you time to think and reads the novel in a soft, reflective, contemplative voice. I gave it three stars - which really does mean I liked it and can recommend it to others.
I like what I got, but I wanted more. Of course the author doesn’t have notes from her childhood years. In fact she has but a few photos. Have you considered how photos shape our memory? How often do we refer to a past memory and realize that what we are remembering is a photo?! She says, and I agree, our memory is a patchwork. Some memories fade. Others become distorted. And….she is telling us what she has chosen to tell us, what she is able to tell us, being the reticent person that she is.
Her family's innate reticence has shaped her. It is easier for the author to talk of her mother and father and their parents than of herself. Their lives have shaped her life and who she is, so it is not wrong to focus on them. Her parents, their parents and her relationship with them is the core of this book. I feel she speaks of them because she cannot speak of herself. It is too difficult. She acknowledges her own reticence.
What we are given are those episodes that have changed her parents and thus herself. We return again and again to an event, being told each time a bit more. There is murder and incest and abandonment. The most revealing section is where she lets down her guard and speaks of her disabled younger sister. There is little about her brother.
She states clearly that through novels she is able to work more creatively with her imagination. It is through her novels that she works through her emotions.
There is very little about either of her husbands. Her first one died suddenly. She has written a separate book about that: A Widow's Story. Her grief felt insurmountable. That is all we are told here. Nothing about her new husband whom she married a year later. Nothing about not having kids. Nothing, not a word.
Who ever heard of telling a story through the head of a pet chicken? That is where the book starts here.
My problem with this book is in fact the author’s inability to reveal herself. More often she poses questions and interesting concepts than actually revealing what she thinks herself. Still, I do like it.
I like what I got, but I wanted more. Of course the author doesn’t have notes from her childhood years. In fact she has but a few photos. Have you considered how photos shape our memory? How often do we refer to a past memory and realize that what we are remembering is a photo?! She says, and I agree, our memory is a patchwork. Some memories fade. Others become distorted. And….she is telling us what she has chosen to tell us, what she is able to tell us, being the reticent person that she is.
Her family's innate reticence has shaped her. It is easier for the author to talk of her mother and father and their parents than of herself. Their lives have shaped her life and who she is, so it is not wrong to focus on them. Her parents, their parents and her relationship with them is the core of this book. I feel she speaks of them because she cannot speak of herself. It is too difficult. She acknowledges her own reticence.
What we are given are those episodes that have changed her parents and thus herself. We return again and again to an event, being told each time a bit more. There is murder and incest and abandonment. The most revealing section is where she lets down her guard and speaks of her disabled younger sister. There is little about her brother.
She states clearly that through novels she is able to work more creatively with her imagination. It is through her novels that she works through her emotions.
There is very little about either of her husbands. Her first one died suddenly. She has written a separate book about that: A Widow's Story. Her grief felt insurmountable. That is all we are told here. Nothing about her new husband whom she married a year later. Nothing about not having kids. Nothing, not a word.
Who ever heard of telling a story through the head of a pet chicken? That is where the book starts here.
My problem with this book is in fact the author’s inability to reveal herself. More often she poses questions and interesting concepts than actually revealing what she thinks herself. Still, I do like it.
October 17, 2015
From her beginning memories living on the farm with her grandparents, parents and "Happy Chicken" through her school years, her love for libraries and books, meeting her husband, their time in Detroit and other places, Oates takes us on a journey through her memories. As she explains memories are not linear, they come as tidbits, snapshots, and I so agree. Her writing is so clear, straightforward, and so very interesting.
She does mention many of her books, why they were written, what she was trying to convey and things that sparked the creation of others. She has had a rich and varied life, not without heartache but goals attained after much hard work. Many of her musings sparked memories within myself, things I had forgotten, such as Butterick patterns, aimless Sunday drives, having a younger sister when she was eighteen, as did I. Amusingly like Oates I too was asked to name my sister.
The best memoirs are those that are personal enough to let the reader feel that they know a little more about a person, that they were let into their lives in. Mall ay and this book certainly does that. It also made me felt that I need to read more of her novels, that I could now read them with a better understanding. Well, we shall see.
ARC from publisher.
She does mention many of her books, why they were written, what she was trying to convey and things that sparked the creation of others. She has had a rich and varied life, not without heartache but goals attained after much hard work. Many of her musings sparked memories within myself, things I had forgotten, such as Butterick patterns, aimless Sunday drives, having a younger sister when she was eighteen, as did I. Amusingly like Oates I too was asked to name my sister.
The best memoirs are those that are personal enough to let the reader feel that they know a little more about a person, that they were let into their lives in. Mall ay and this book certainly does that. It also made me felt that I need to read more of her novels, that I could now read them with a better understanding. Well, we shall see.
ARC from publisher.
November 24, 2015
“For never underestimate…. the power of place.” p. 271
This memoir is a series of essays written over a 30+ year period, many of which have been published before. They flow together nicely with only two twice introduced items. Like all collections, some essays are better than others. They range from “Food Mysteries” which I would give a single star to “An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend” which I consider a 5 star telling of teenage best friend anxieties.
I almost didn’t read it. The book begins with “Happy Chicken” which had me wondering where this could possibly go. Because this was Oates, and because it was Niagara County (I’m from there too), I stayed with it. It turned out to be an artful portrait of childhood memories where the chicken and the child can be one and sometimes separate, all under the eye of indifferent adults.
The writing is atmospheric and you can see “place” oozing out of the Niagara County, Madison, WI and the Detroit sections. You learn about Oates’s childhood, her sister, meeting her husband and the outline of the previous generations that produced her.
You see the culture of the time that preferred boys and men. Oates reflects on her internalization of this and how she and others accommodated rather than challenged it.
If you are not an Oates reader, or if you are not interested in Western NY, this book is not for you. If you are an Oates fan or if you are from Western NY you will be interested in some of these essays.
This memoir is a series of essays written over a 30+ year period, many of which have been published before. They flow together nicely with only two twice introduced items. Like all collections, some essays are better than others. They range from “Food Mysteries” which I would give a single star to “An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend” which I consider a 5 star telling of teenage best friend anxieties.
I almost didn’t read it. The book begins with “Happy Chicken” which had me wondering where this could possibly go. Because this was Oates, and because it was Niagara County (I’m from there too), I stayed with it. It turned out to be an artful portrait of childhood memories where the chicken and the child can be one and sometimes separate, all under the eye of indifferent adults.
The writing is atmospheric and you can see “place” oozing out of the Niagara County, Madison, WI and the Detroit sections. You learn about Oates’s childhood, her sister, meeting her husband and the outline of the previous generations that produced her.
You see the culture of the time that preferred boys and men. Oates reflects on her internalization of this and how she and others accommodated rather than challenged it.
If you are not an Oates reader, or if you are not interested in Western NY, this book is not for you. If you are an Oates fan or if you are from Western NY you will be interested in some of these essays.
September 7, 2015
"What is vivid in memory is the singular, striking, one-of-a-kind event or episode, encapsulated as if in amber.... not routine but what violates routine.
Which is why the effort of writing a memoir is so fraught with peril, and even its small successes ringed by melancholy. The fact is - We have forgotten most of our lives. All of our landscapes are soon lost in time."
The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates is a very highly recommended collection of 28 pieces about her childhood, to adulthood and shares some of the incidents that have shaped her as a writer. Many of these stories have appeared in other publications and have been revised for this collection of the landscapes that have shaped her career as a writer. They are little vignettes of time caught in amber rather than a complete story of her life.
Oates grew up in an impoverished area of rural western New York State on her family's farm. Young Joyce had a special red hen, Happy Chicken, who was her beloved pet. She went to the same one room school house her mother did as a child and went on to attend high school in Buffalo. She was then a scholarship girl at Syracuse University and went on to get her masters at the University of Wisconsin. She shares her bouts with insomnia, first experiences with death, a friend's suicide, another's sexual abuse, as well as some of the stories that inspired her to write several of her novels. She has a moving piece about her autistic sister.
There were several things she described in these stories that brought vivid memories of my life to the forefront. I remember my grandparent's breakable, fragile Christmas ornaments that also included strings of bubble lights that fascinated all of us grandchildren. On her step-grandparents farm there is a pear orchard that she describes: "On the trees, the pears were greeny-hard as rocks for weeks as if reluctant to ripen; then, overnight, the pears were “ripe” - very soon “over-ripe” - fallen to the ground, buzzing with flies and bees." I remember a house we lived in when I was young, before attending school, that had a backyard filled with pear trees. Her descriptions vividly brought to mind the danger those pears represented, when they were over ripe, on the ground, and all sorts of wasps and bees and insects were swarming the area.
Obviously these pieces are extraordinarily well written, with details lovingly, gently, carefully describing specific events and memories. She shares some hurtful events too, although carefully modulated by time. Her parents are lovingly and warmly described creating a tribute to their memory. This is an excellent collection of pieces for a memoir.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
Which is why the effort of writing a memoir is so fraught with peril, and even its small successes ringed by melancholy. The fact is - We have forgotten most of our lives. All of our landscapes are soon lost in time."
The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates is a very highly recommended collection of 28 pieces about her childhood, to adulthood and shares some of the incidents that have shaped her as a writer. Many of these stories have appeared in other publications and have been revised for this collection of the landscapes that have shaped her career as a writer. They are little vignettes of time caught in amber rather than a complete story of her life.
Oates grew up in an impoverished area of rural western New York State on her family's farm. Young Joyce had a special red hen, Happy Chicken, who was her beloved pet. She went to the same one room school house her mother did as a child and went on to attend high school in Buffalo. She was then a scholarship girl at Syracuse University and went on to get her masters at the University of Wisconsin. She shares her bouts with insomnia, first experiences with death, a friend's suicide, another's sexual abuse, as well as some of the stories that inspired her to write several of her novels. She has a moving piece about her autistic sister.
There were several things she described in these stories that brought vivid memories of my life to the forefront. I remember my grandparent's breakable, fragile Christmas ornaments that also included strings of bubble lights that fascinated all of us grandchildren. On her step-grandparents farm there is a pear orchard that she describes: "On the trees, the pears were greeny-hard as rocks for weeks as if reluctant to ripen; then, overnight, the pears were “ripe” - very soon “over-ripe” - fallen to the ground, buzzing with flies and bees." I remember a house we lived in when I was young, before attending school, that had a backyard filled with pear trees. Her descriptions vividly brought to mind the danger those pears represented, when they were over ripe, on the ground, and all sorts of wasps and bees and insects were swarming the area.
Obviously these pieces are extraordinarily well written, with details lovingly, gently, carefully describing specific events and memories. She shares some hurtful events too, although carefully modulated by time. Her parents are lovingly and warmly described creating a tribute to their memory. This is an excellent collection of pieces for a memoir.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
October 4, 2015
I absolutely cannot read Oates' fiction, but I love her biographical books, and this one is no exception. She is several years older than I, but I can relate to many things about her life. Loved the rural upper NY state stuff; the one room schoolhouse and so on. I am gradually coming to understand why she writes as she does....but that doesn't make me want to read it. I am so envious of her relationship with her parents. She does not tell; she shows, and you feel that you are there. I could even enjoy the Happy Chicken chapter, which is usually so not my cup of tea. She wrote this AFTER "The Widow's Story", which I enjoyed very much. I hope she keeps the memoir stuff going.
August 6, 2017
Molto piacevole questo memoir di J.C.Oates, una scrittrice che mi ha sempre incuriosito per la sua estrema prolificità letteraria e per la capacità di affrontare i generi e gli argomenti più disparati. Oltre a soddisfare la curiosità biografica questo libro contiene dei momenti letterari a mio avviso molto intensi, soprattutto quello in cui l'autrice parla della propria insonnia. Joyce parla con estremo affetto e con grande delicatezza dei propri genitori, persone di umili origini ma di grande umanità. Lo consiglio a tutti quelli che amano questa autrice.
June 19, 2022
A very engaging Autobiography from Joyce Carol Oates. It focuses on her early years, with much time devoted to her childhood, a pet chicken, flying in a glider with her father and the sad death of a friend. Despite not knowing much about the author before I found it very compelling, and look forward to picking up more of her books in future.
Read
October 6, 2015It's no surprise that I love JCO. I also loved this book. I saw her read from it at a recent event at the Morgan.
1. The Vogue photo shoot after JCO received the National Book Award (which produced the well-known picture of her) was interrupted by the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion by the Weathermen.
2. The University of Wisconsin at Madison declined her as a PhD candidate but later granted her a honorary doctorate. If she had become a PhD she would've most likely not been a writer. (This is my favorite part in the book--when she talks about the voluntary mental illness that is grad school).
3. "How much is religion the honoring of one's parents?--the wish not to upset, not to offend, not to disappoint? The good girl is one whose smile is assuring though it is not to be trusted" (132).
4. "Grief is a kind of illness. Severe grief, severe illness. The wish to do harm to oneself as penance for having survived the loved one, or as a way of joining the loved one, is very strong, and because it is totally unreasonable, it is difficult to refute with reason" (348).
1. The Vogue photo shoot after JCO received the National Book Award (which produced the well-known picture of her) was interrupted by the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion by the Weathermen.
2. The University of Wisconsin at Madison declined her as a PhD candidate but later granted her a honorary doctorate. If she had become a PhD she would've most likely not been a writer. (This is my favorite part in the book--when she talks about the voluntary mental illness that is grad school).
3. "How much is religion the honoring of one's parents?--the wish not to upset, not to offend, not to disappoint? The good girl is one whose smile is assuring though it is not to be trusted" (132).
4. "Grief is a kind of illness. Severe grief, severe illness. The wish to do harm to oneself as penance for having survived the loved one, or as a way of joining the loved one, is very strong, and because it is totally unreasonable, it is difficult to refute with reason" (348).
didn-t-finish
September 14, 2018Maybe I’ll try it again another time but the Happy Chicken story is really annoying me, partly due to the fact that Happy Chicken is telling the story but switches back and forth from 1st to 3rd person constantly.
September 15, 2015
While this collection of memories definitely deals with the author’s emergence as an accomplished writer, parts of it focused on things which intrigued me more – her childhood, Edward Hopper like images of bygone days, immigrant grandparents, and her impressions of several young friends who’d endured terrible traumas. Surfacing throughout the various vignettes is a clear love and respect for her hardworking parents. The author deals thoughtfully with the passage of time, and the resulting erosion and distortion of memories. ‘We are young for so long, it seems. Entire lifetimes. And when we’re young we can’t comprehend how personalities shift inexorably over time, as slowly, or nearly, as the wearing away of granite by water or wind.’ She writes of her parents ‘So often wanting to tell you how in patches of sudden sunshine hundreds of miles and thousands of days from home I am pulled back into that world as into the most nourishing of dreams, I am filled with a sense of wonder, awe and fear, sadness for all that has already passed from us and for what must be surrendered, in time.’
I loved the various windows into her past! What vivid pictures and emotions she conveys! The Sunday drive, the one room schoolhouse……… ‘We learned to “diagram” sentences with the solemn precision of scientists articulating equations. We learned to read by reading out loud, and we learned to spell by spelling out loud. We memorized and we recited’. One could almost hear them all, chanting along!
I admit to reading selectively, skipping and skimming where it suited me. The chapter about an autistic sibling I couldn’t bear to read. Because my background in literature is lacking I wasn’t able to properly appreciate the pages which detailed her studies. Overall, though, The Lost Landscape was a treasure! Such rich writing, with so many passages, flagged, to reread!
I loved the various windows into her past! What vivid pictures and emotions she conveys! The Sunday drive, the one room schoolhouse……… ‘We learned to “diagram” sentences with the solemn precision of scientists articulating equations. We learned to read by reading out loud, and we learned to spell by spelling out loud. We memorized and we recited’. One could almost hear them all, chanting along!
I admit to reading selectively, skipping and skimming where it suited me. The chapter about an autistic sibling I couldn’t bear to read. Because my background in literature is lacking I wasn’t able to properly appreciate the pages which detailed her studies. Overall, though, The Lost Landscape was a treasure! Such rich writing, with so many passages, flagged, to reread!
November 10, 2015
I'm a fan of Oates, and I've read several of JCO's previous memoirs and really think this one is the weakest.
As I moved through it, I felt that the book didn't have the essential Oates-ness of her earlier memoir pieces. I'm thinking especially of Widow's Story, her book about the death of her husband and the aftermath of that death. That book revealed something profound to me about Oates that I felt she wanted to share with me.
The Lost Landscapes book didn't have that. I kept waiting and waiting for the revelation that would finally connect me to the author and it never came.
We're almost contemporaries so that I enjoyed revisiting the period she was writing about, but that revisitation wasn't enough to make me either revisit the book or recommend it to a friend.
As I moved through it, I felt that the book didn't have the essential Oates-ness of her earlier memoir pieces. I'm thinking especially of Widow's Story, her book about the death of her husband and the aftermath of that death. That book revealed something profound to me about Oates that I felt she wanted to share with me.
The Lost Landscapes book didn't have that. I kept waiting and waiting for the revelation that would finally connect me to the author and it never came.
We're almost contemporaries so that I enjoyed revisiting the period she was writing about, but that revisitation wasn't enough to make me either revisit the book or recommend it to a friend.
October 20, 2017
Joyce Carol Oates l’ho conosciuta così, un po’ per caso, e come tutte le conseguenze del fato si è trasformato in un amore folle fatto di libri e pagine e paragrafi e frasi che continuo a rileggere e cercare qua e là. (...)
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August 14, 2017
Oates lo definisce un memoir, ovvero una scrittura soggetta alle intemperanze del ricordo, "ciò che rimane su un muro dopo che è stato imbiancato a calce." Il memoir è per sua natura una sineddoche: parte che simbolicamente rappresenta il tutto; la cui complessità tuttavia viene anche inevitabilmente distorta.
Nulla a che vedere con l'autobiografia, insomma, ciò che oggi viene chiamato autofiction e che consiste nella reinvenzione della propria vita, o di parti di essa; il che equivale, seguendo l'immagine testé evocata, a ridisegnare sul muro della memoria ciò che la calce ha definitivamente ottenebrato.
Oates è ben consapevole dell'inganno e sa cos'è la fiction. In quanto romanziera vi si è dedicata incessantemente. In questo libro quindi sceglie di rispettare i vuoti e le manchevolezze e a pennellate sicure rappresenta tratti significativi del suo paesaggio esistenziale, evocando spesso i quadri di Hopper: da bambina la fattoria, i genitori (soprattutto i genitori, amatissimi), il prediletto gallo Happy; da ragazzina la scuola, le amiche, la scoperta dei libri di narrativa (Alice in The Wonderland a rappresentarli tutti); da più adulta l'università, l'incontro con il marito...e la madre e il padre, sempre e costantemente.
Ma che cosa capiamo della Oates scrittrice? Della sua cifra stilistica, della sua prospettiva e del suo sguardo? Non molto, secondo me.
Benché, citando Henry James, lei stessa dichiari che la caratteristica fondamentale di uno scrittore è l'empatia, ed è ovviamente così, d'altro lato però affermare: "ciò che mi attrae come scrittrice non sono gli individui bensì gli avvenimenti e le circostanze" in qualche modo giustifica l'assenza di appeal empatico che i personaggi della Oates dimostrano.
Nulla a che vedere con l'autobiografia, insomma, ciò che oggi viene chiamato autofiction e che consiste nella reinvenzione della propria vita, o di parti di essa; il che equivale, seguendo l'immagine testé evocata, a ridisegnare sul muro della memoria ciò che la calce ha definitivamente ottenebrato.
Oates è ben consapevole dell'inganno e sa cos'è la fiction. In quanto romanziera vi si è dedicata incessantemente. In questo libro quindi sceglie di rispettare i vuoti e le manchevolezze e a pennellate sicure rappresenta tratti significativi del suo paesaggio esistenziale, evocando spesso i quadri di Hopper: da bambina la fattoria, i genitori (soprattutto i genitori, amatissimi), il prediletto gallo Happy; da ragazzina la scuola, le amiche, la scoperta dei libri di narrativa (Alice in The Wonderland a rappresentarli tutti); da più adulta l'università, l'incontro con il marito...e la madre e il padre, sempre e costantemente.
Ma che cosa capiamo della Oates scrittrice? Della sua cifra stilistica, della sua prospettiva e del suo sguardo? Non molto, secondo me.
Benché, citando Henry James, lei stessa dichiari che la caratteristica fondamentale di uno scrittore è l'empatia, ed è ovviamente così, d'altro lato però affermare: "ciò che mi attrae come scrittrice non sono gli individui bensì gli avvenimenti e le circostanze" in qualche modo giustifica l'assenza di appeal empatico che i personaggi della Oates dimostrano.
October 14, 2024
En memoar, som jag nog hoppats på skulle handla mer om skrivandet. Indelat i kapitel som, snappade jag upp någonstans, samlats ihop delvis av essäer publicerade på olika ställen, vilket gör att det blir en del överlappningar och upprepningar, som jag stör mig på. Intressant dock att läsa om hennes barndom och bakgrund, och lite roligt var det med kapitlet skrivet ur den glada kycklingens perspektiv, även om jag hade lite svårt att orientera mig först.
Har inte läst så mycket av Oates, har aldrig riktigt fastnat för hennes romaner.
Har inte läst så mycket av Oates, har aldrig riktigt fastnat för hennes romaner.
April 10, 2019
Ho scelto questo titolo perché un memoir, genere che amo; della Oates avevo letto Una famiglia americana che mi era piaciuto abbastanza. Dalla lettura emergono belle riflessioni sulla memoria, la scrittura, gli anni della sua formazione, indietro nel tempo in un’America paesana e rurale di immigrazione povera, flash di una vita in cui niente è scontato e il confronto con la società più ricca e evoluta spesso è frustrante. Una penna davvero felice.
September 25, 2015
I adored this book from beginning to end. Reading this memoir of the author's early childhood, her family in Niagara County, NY in the 1940's and the beautiful and scary tales of her life help the reader to understand the seeds of her writing. I had the good fortune of meeting Joyce Carol Oates last year and talking with her briefly at a writer's seminar. She explained that she likes to be a voice for those who do not have a voice, such as victims of sexual abuse, people with mental illness, small children, those in the underclass of society. I admire her ability to do this so well! I am trying to model her method in beginning to write. In this book, the author shares with us precious memories of her family, taking on first the perspective of a little girl who makes a pet of "the Happy Chicken" on the family farm; the feelings of her father and mother who were both abandoned by their parents as children; her thrill of starting school at a one-room schoolhouse in Millersport and admiring her teacher who was able to teach children ages 6 to 16 and maintain discipline and order somehow and inspired Joyce to become a teacher. She describes her family so lovingly. She learned about how men of that era (and probably of this, as well) were of two kinds- those who would never walk away from a fight, and those who would. She learned hard work, devotion, patience and gentleness, kindness and caring from her mother and father both, those parents who were not nurtured well in their own childhoods. She portrayed the feeling of being an only child for a number of years, then suddenly having a brother, then at 18, on her birthday, her baby sister was born, whom she was asked to name. Unlike Joyce, the baby could not ever talk, or read or write and needed care her whole life. Joyce described this tenderly and lovingly, questioning why some children have this condition and others have brilliance and opportunity. Joyce tried to unravel the secrets of her family tree, and sense how all of that history influenced her life. I will read this book over and over! I recommend it to all my siblings and relatives and friends.
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November 19, 2022Je ne lis pas d'autobiographie. Vraiment. Je me suis forcée parce que cela faisait partie de mon défi de lecture de l'année, et parce que j'ai apprécié quelques romans de Joyce Carol Oates, alors j'étais curieuse d'en découvrir plus sur cette autrice pleine de succès.
Même si Joyce Carol Oates prend un parti intéressant pour nous présenter un texte pas tellement linéaire, qui ne répond pas non plus à une chronologie bien établie, et qui récupère en plus des textes autobiographiques écris à d'autres occasions, j'ai franchement peiné à m'intéresser à son histoire. Je crois que j'attendais vraiment quelque chose de plus tourné vers l'écriture, vers ses débuts d'écrivaine, vers son rapport à l'écriture l'âge avançant. C'était ce que j'étais venue chercher, moi-même encore apprentie écrivaine, toujours curieuse de découvrir les processus créatifs chez mes consoeurs (et confrères).
Mais Joyce Carol Oates choisit de ne quasiment pas aborder le sujet, à part à de rares occasions, et souvent accompagnées de poncifs généralistes qui me faisaient lever les yeux au ciel. Joyce Carol Oates choisit en fait de se raconter sans parler d'elle. Et c'est un exercice déroutant, car si elle ne raconte pas son métier, si elle ne raconte pas sa vie à part dans les grandes lignes, ce qu'elle nous raconte donne l'impression d'être du vent accompagné d'un peu de poussière. On a des micro-particules de choses qui auraient pu, mais qui finalement ne resteront pas, ni ne graveront leur marque.
Il y a beaucoup de retenue dans cette autobiographie, et ce serait du voyeurisme que de vouloir en connaître plus, mais malheureusement pour moi, je l'ai trouvée passablement creuse. Ce n'est pas celle-ci qui me consolera avec le genre !
Même si Joyce Carol Oates prend un parti intéressant pour nous présenter un texte pas tellement linéaire, qui ne répond pas non plus à une chronologie bien établie, et qui récupère en plus des textes autobiographiques écris à d'autres occasions, j'ai franchement peiné à m'intéresser à son histoire. Je crois que j'attendais vraiment quelque chose de plus tourné vers l'écriture, vers ses débuts d'écrivaine, vers son rapport à l'écriture l'âge avançant. C'était ce que j'étais venue chercher, moi-même encore apprentie écrivaine, toujours curieuse de découvrir les processus créatifs chez mes consoeurs (et confrères).
Mais Joyce Carol Oates choisit de ne quasiment pas aborder le sujet, à part à de rares occasions, et souvent accompagnées de poncifs généralistes qui me faisaient lever les yeux au ciel. Joyce Carol Oates choisit en fait de se raconter sans parler d'elle. Et c'est un exercice déroutant, car si elle ne raconte pas son métier, si elle ne raconte pas sa vie à part dans les grandes lignes, ce qu'elle nous raconte donne l'impression d'être du vent accompagné d'un peu de poussière. On a des micro-particules de choses qui auraient pu, mais qui finalement ne resteront pas, ni ne graveront leur marque.
Il y a beaucoup de retenue dans cette autobiographie, et ce serait du voyeurisme que de vouloir en connaître plus, mais malheureusement pour moi, je l'ai trouvée passablement creuse. Ce n'est pas celle-ci qui me consolera avec le genre !
June 25, 2022
So, I am making it a bit of a point to read female writers, the genres I tend to read are primarily written by men, I guess, although some of my favorite writers are women—Annie Proulx, Jhumpa Lahiri, and increasingly Patricia Highsmith—Still, my male to female author ratio is at probably 10 to 1.
With Libby, you can simply write in the word “biographies” in search, and get a whole slew of them. I was scrolling through those that came up and saw this one, I have long heard of Joyce Carol Oates but had not read anything by her. I really enjoyed it—she grew up on a farm, her dad had extra jobs and they weren’t starving but it was a tiny bit hardscrabble, her mother’s step parents lived with them also.
I like her writing, her story was really interesting, how slender threads can change your whole life. I already knew she had written a book on boxing; she and her father used to watch the Gillette sponsored Friday night fights, also the Wednesday night fights, he took her to fights with him when she was a kid and she would be the only female in this entire venue. I will definitely read the book which I think is titled “on boxing “
I also got a books of hers from the library, the only one that was available, titled Hazards of Time Travel, I have about 5% remaining. I’m looking forward to the next one.
6-25-2022 update. So far this year my percent female writers is 28%. I have discovered some I really enjoy, including Kristin Hannah, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, and Ruth Ware.
With Libby, you can simply write in the word “biographies” in search, and get a whole slew of them. I was scrolling through those that came up and saw this one, I have long heard of Joyce Carol Oates but had not read anything by her. I really enjoyed it—she grew up on a farm, her dad had extra jobs and they weren’t starving but it was a tiny bit hardscrabble, her mother’s step parents lived with them also.
I like her writing, her story was really interesting, how slender threads can change your whole life. I already knew she had written a book on boxing; she and her father used to watch the Gillette sponsored Friday night fights, also the Wednesday night fights, he took her to fights with him when she was a kid and she would be the only female in this entire venue. I will definitely read the book which I think is titled “on boxing “
I also got a books of hers from the library, the only one that was available, titled Hazards of Time Travel, I have about 5% remaining. I’m looking forward to the next one.
6-25-2022 update. So far this year my percent female writers is 28%. I have discovered some I really enjoy, including Kristin Hannah, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, and Ruth Ware.
September 26, 2015
Joyce Carol Oates is such a beautiful writer, and this memoir casts light upon events, circumstances, and people from her life. She grew up in rural upstate New York, and I enjoyed reading her early memories of her love and friendship of her red hen and what she took from growing up on a farm. It seems no one escapes the lessons learned from school experiences and interactions with friends, and Oates shares a poignant relationship with a tormented high school friend and about her college and graduate experiences. Especially interesting was family background, the list of comfort foods we consumed as children, and insights about attitudes about what it means to be a man and boxing.
January 1, 2016
Don't read this unless someone is holding a gun to your head.
July 30, 2019
The name Joyce Carol Oates sounded vaguely familiar to me, although I’d never read any of her books. But “The Lost Landscape,” by her, ended up on my to-read list, and the library had it in kindle form. Thus it made it onto my Kindle for reading material during my trip to Germany.
The Lost Landscape is autobiographical. Rather than being written as a book, it’s a series of essays, many of which Oates had published somewhere else previously. Apparently she’s a pretty big deal as a literary writer, which made me feel worse that she was new to me.
Oates writes in a beautiful, literary way: “We begin as children imagining and fearing ghosts. By degrees, through our long lives, we come to be the very ghosts inhabiting the lost landscapes of our childhood.” She says many things that give you food for thought.
“The invention of photography in the nineteenth century — and the “snapshot” in the twentieth century — revolutionized human consciousness; for when we claim to remember our pasts we are almost certainly remembering our favorite snapshots, in which the long-faded past is given a visual immortality.”
Not every essay in this book was a winner to me. I almost abandoned the book altogether after skimming through “Happy Chicken,” a chapter written from the perspective of a chicken Oates had owned as a child.
“Both sides of my family were notable for reticence, and a stubbornness in reticence; these were not individuals for whom openness came easily, still less anything approaching “full disclosure.” The ardor of confession for which our era is known would have been astonishing to them, scarcely believable and in no way desirable.”
One thing I noted while reading these essays was that there were large bits of Oates’ life that she doesn’t delve into at all. We hardly know anything about her first husband (nothing at all of the second other than his name). No mention of why she never had children. She did have lovely essays on her parents, and lots of thoughts on writing memoirs, and of our memories in general: “The fact is — we have forgotten most of our lives. All of our landscapes are soon lost in time.”
“From birth: we smile, we smile happily, we smile very happily, to assure others that we are fine, indeed we are happy; we smile to assure others that we have no criticism of them, no quarrel, in fact no contrary thoughts of our own. But perhaps such smiles are not precisely lies since they don’t involve words.” I could have written that — and honestly, I wish I would have 🙂 It’s one of those wonderful moments where an author captures something I’ve felt many times.
There were mentions of 4-H that were very familiar, although Oates is older than I am (she was born in 1948): “When I explained that no one would see the (uneven) hem the instructor countered, with unassailable logic, ‘But, Joyce, you will know it’s there.’ yet to my shame I did not tear out the offensive stitches and resew the hem; probably, as I often did in those days, I gave up the project in childish despair … as I had eagerly memorized Bible verses in order to attend Bible camp at Olcott Beach, that had promised to be a great adventure, so too a scant year later I eagerly signed up for numerous 4-H projects in the hope of self-improvement and acquiring skills to make saleable items.” I well remember similar thoughts, and making various little crocheted items which my dad would offer for sale in the teachers’ lounge at his school. And oh, the guilt/fear of 4-H judges, and thinking to this day that I should try to do every little thing just a *little* bit better …
Oates details her stress over being granted a master’s degree in English literature, but not being recommended to the doctoral program: “It is always painful to be rejected even by those by whom we would not really wish to be accepted … to be accepted by my elders in one decade, I’d been required to be repudiated by my elders in an earlier decade.”
She writes of her dad’s love of music: “For a musical instrument — piano, violin — inhabits a complex sort of space: it is both an ordinary three-dimensional object and an extraordinary object, a portal to another world; it exists as a physical entity solely so that the physical can be transcended … Do you listen to music while you write? — this curious question is often asked of writers. The more attentive you are to music, the more distracted you are by hearing music while you try to work. For music is an exquisite art, not white noise.” I found that fascinating, and true. Often I can’t have music on in the background, because I begin actively listening to it and find I can’t do another task at the same time that requires thought.
I’m not sure I’ll look up any more of Oates’ work, because I have a suspicion that she may be a bit too literary for my tastes (she frequently references her own literary hero, James Joyce — whose “Ulysses” was one book I *did* give up on as totally unreadable). So, while parts of this book left me wanting more and other parts didn’t entice me, I found a lot to enjoy in “The Lost Landscape.”
The Lost Landscape is autobiographical. Rather than being written as a book, it’s a series of essays, many of which Oates had published somewhere else previously. Apparently she’s a pretty big deal as a literary writer, which made me feel worse that she was new to me.
Oates writes in a beautiful, literary way: “We begin as children imagining and fearing ghosts. By degrees, through our long lives, we come to be the very ghosts inhabiting the lost landscapes of our childhood.” She says many things that give you food for thought.
“The invention of photography in the nineteenth century — and the “snapshot” in the twentieth century — revolutionized human consciousness; for when we claim to remember our pasts we are almost certainly remembering our favorite snapshots, in which the long-faded past is given a visual immortality.”
Not every essay in this book was a winner to me. I almost abandoned the book altogether after skimming through “Happy Chicken,” a chapter written from the perspective of a chicken Oates had owned as a child.
“Both sides of my family were notable for reticence, and a stubbornness in reticence; these were not individuals for whom openness came easily, still less anything approaching “full disclosure.” The ardor of confession for which our era is known would have been astonishing to them, scarcely believable and in no way desirable.”
One thing I noted while reading these essays was that there were large bits of Oates’ life that she doesn’t delve into at all. We hardly know anything about her first husband (nothing at all of the second other than his name). No mention of why she never had children. She did have lovely essays on her parents, and lots of thoughts on writing memoirs, and of our memories in general: “The fact is — we have forgotten most of our lives. All of our landscapes are soon lost in time.”
“From birth: we smile, we smile happily, we smile very happily, to assure others that we are fine, indeed we are happy; we smile to assure others that we have no criticism of them, no quarrel, in fact no contrary thoughts of our own. But perhaps such smiles are not precisely lies since they don’t involve words.” I could have written that — and honestly, I wish I would have 🙂 It’s one of those wonderful moments where an author captures something I’ve felt many times.
There were mentions of 4-H that were very familiar, although Oates is older than I am (she was born in 1948): “When I explained that no one would see the (uneven) hem the instructor countered, with unassailable logic, ‘But, Joyce, you will know it’s there.’ yet to my shame I did not tear out the offensive stitches and resew the hem; probably, as I often did in those days, I gave up the project in childish despair … as I had eagerly memorized Bible verses in order to attend Bible camp at Olcott Beach, that had promised to be a great adventure, so too a scant year later I eagerly signed up for numerous 4-H projects in the hope of self-improvement and acquiring skills to make saleable items.” I well remember similar thoughts, and making various little crocheted items which my dad would offer for sale in the teachers’ lounge at his school. And oh, the guilt/fear of 4-H judges, and thinking to this day that I should try to do every little thing just a *little* bit better …
Oates details her stress over being granted a master’s degree in English literature, but not being recommended to the doctoral program: “It is always painful to be rejected even by those by whom we would not really wish to be accepted … to be accepted by my elders in one decade, I’d been required to be repudiated by my elders in an earlier decade.”
She writes of her dad’s love of music: “For a musical instrument — piano, violin — inhabits a complex sort of space: it is both an ordinary three-dimensional object and an extraordinary object, a portal to another world; it exists as a physical entity solely so that the physical can be transcended … Do you listen to music while you write? — this curious question is often asked of writers. The more attentive you are to music, the more distracted you are by hearing music while you try to work. For music is an exquisite art, not white noise.” I found that fascinating, and true. Often I can’t have music on in the background, because I begin actively listening to it and find I can’t do another task at the same time that requires thought.
I’m not sure I’ll look up any more of Oates’ work, because I have a suspicion that she may be a bit too literary for my tastes (she frequently references her own literary hero, James Joyce — whose “Ulysses” was one book I *did* give up on as totally unreadable). So, while parts of this book left me wanting more and other parts didn’t entice me, I found a lot to enjoy in “The Lost Landscape.”
August 6, 2018
I thought this was an exceptional and compelling book. Instead of concentrating on a chronological memoir which many writers would do, Oates gives us a series of thematic meditations on her family, her life as a young woman and her career as a prolific writer who came of age in the radical 1960's, in that most turbulent of democracies--America. Recently criticized for being politically incorrect for some of her Tweets, her voice is uncompromising and individual. Joyce Carol Oates grew up in a loving but semi-impoverished family in western New York State, which, she reminds us, was considered part of the American Midwest and you can see that in the descriptions of rural life and society in this book. She spent her childhood and teenage years on a struggling farm in the stultifyingly conventional 1950's and was by all accounts a hardworking student and a meek, introverted young woman who succeeded beyond her family's wildest dreams by graduating from high school, going to university and finishing graduate school. Though she appears to have lived a quiet, almost exemplary life as a teacher and a hugely successful writer, it is clear that Oates comes by her gothic and almost macabre novels honestly. Both of her parents had fathers who died violently--one in a bar fight, the other by suicide after trying to kill Oates' paternal grandmother. One of her neighbours was repeatedly abused by her father who later burned down the family home in a drunken rage. A close adolescent friendship with another A student was ended by her friend's suicide-by Drano- in a fit of self-hatred and depression. And so on. If this wasn't enough Oates and her husband went to live in Detroit in the sixties where they witnessed her beloved city crumble after the deadly race riots of 1967. It seems almost redundant to mention Vietnam and the appalling existence of her severely autistic younger sister. It is no wonder that a sense of the sheer randomness of fate and menace pervades many of her works. And yet, as she tells us, good can come from bad and there can be redemption. Or as she says, most of us build monuments from our wounds. If we survive.
October 10, 2018
Oates plays with the notion of memoir, remembering her childhood and young adulthood (mostly) through the lives of her parents and pet chicken. (Seriously, that chicken chapter almost did me in. It was twee and annoying and even a little creepy.) She deals with the issues of her rural childhood obliquely and sometimes diverts attention from herself completely by telling the stories of girls she knew in school. I think it is especially telling how much she dwells on the way violence defines her parents. Does she think it's in her DNA? Is that the answer to the question she has been asked, "Why is your writing so violent?" (BTW, it's not.) She returns again to the theme translating her popular short story "Where are You Going? Where Have You Been?" to the screen. Having read the New York Times article she wrote about this topic about a million times for my dissertation, there is nothing new there. I guess some questions continue to worry her. Overall, though, it was interesting and thought-provoking.
November 8, 2015
I found myself really liking the Joyce Carol Oates that came across in this memoir of hers. She is a woman of deep feeling and immense imagination...she reveals much of her country childhood and simple upbringing and through it all runs a thread of understanding and appreciativeness that is palpable on the page. She exudes intense love for her history and for the people in her life, especially her parents to whom she dedicated many of her books, even as she tells us about the craziness lurking about.... she is a very gentle soul with observational qualities that give her fiction the edge that it has.
I enjoyed reading about aspects of her childhood in western upstate New York....life on a farm, attending a one-room schoolhouse, her poor neighbors, her high school girlfriends, her church experiences, and on to her undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, the sister born when Oates was already 18 years old and heading out to college who turned out to be severely autistic, and then about her Masters program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (the same school where Wallace Stegner taught and where “Crossing To Safety” begins). She speaks of meeting her husband at Madison, becoming engaged within one month, and getting married two months later! (She writes more about him in “A Widow’s Story".) She tells us of her insomnia and tachycardia attacks.
Even as she reveals much about herself and her surroundings, people included, what really comes across is her sensitivity to the feelings and privacy of others....for her there is some “material that is too painfully personal, even after decades, to be set forth transparently”.
I am inspired to read more of her fiction...especially the writing that evokes people close to her - the novel “Missing Mom” which she calls “a portrait in words of a remarkable person” (her mom), and “The Gravedigger’s Daughter” which relies on the story of her grandmother and her gravedigger father who killed himself.
I enjoyed reading about aspects of her childhood in western upstate New York....life on a farm, attending a one-room schoolhouse, her poor neighbors, her high school girlfriends, her church experiences, and on to her undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, the sister born when Oates was already 18 years old and heading out to college who turned out to be severely autistic, and then about her Masters program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (the same school where Wallace Stegner taught and where “Crossing To Safety” begins). She speaks of meeting her husband at Madison, becoming engaged within one month, and getting married two months later! (She writes more about him in “A Widow’s Story".) She tells us of her insomnia and tachycardia attacks.
Even as she reveals much about herself and her surroundings, people included, what really comes across is her sensitivity to the feelings and privacy of others....for her there is some “material that is too painfully personal, even after decades, to be set forth transparently”.
I am inspired to read more of her fiction...especially the writing that evokes people close to her - the novel “Missing Mom” which she calls “a portrait in words of a remarkable person” (her mom), and “The Gravedigger’s Daughter” which relies on the story of her grandmother and her gravedigger father who killed himself.
July 13, 2016
Chapter One began with brief, almost diary-like entries, that quickly engaged me. Chapter Two was spoken by Happy Chicken, letting me know this would be unlike any other memoir I’ve read:
(After Joyce called ‘Happy Chicken!’) “And there I come running!...Here I am! I am Happy Chicken!
The Grandfather shook his head in disbelief. Never saw anything like this – Damn little chicken thinks he’s a dog!”
I hated saying goodbye to Happy Chicken, but it was time for Oates to tell her own story. Most, if not all, chapters were published as personal essays in various journals, so each one stands alone. We are not handed Oates’ life in straight chronology, but more by theme. She says, “…an episodic and impressionistic art most accurately replicates the meanderings of memory, and not chronological order.”
I love coming-of-age stories in fiction or memoir. Most of this book covers Oates’ childhood through early marriage. These were the years that made her a writer. As she says, “What is fleeting and transient in time, no doubt soon forgotten by adults, or rendered inconsequential in their lives, may burrow deep into the child-witness’s soul.”
She was born half way between my parents and me, so her early childhood in the country (north of Buffalo), attending a one-room school house, reminded me of my father. Her struggles with sexism in graduate school were too familiar to me.
Here were a few more quotes that impressed me:
“It is a rare homicide that destroys only one person.”
“Cruelty is a kind of stupidity.”
“I think we’re all cats with nine lives, or even more. We must rejoice in our elusive catness."
I’ll end with this quote that she ascribed to her father about boxing: “You have to be born with the talent to be trained.” I think that describes a great many skills and why few of us have Oates’ success in writing.
(After Joyce called ‘Happy Chicken!’) “And there I come running!...Here I am! I am Happy Chicken!
The Grandfather shook his head in disbelief. Never saw anything like this – Damn little chicken thinks he’s a dog!”
I hated saying goodbye to Happy Chicken, but it was time for Oates to tell her own story. Most, if not all, chapters were published as personal essays in various journals, so each one stands alone. We are not handed Oates’ life in straight chronology, but more by theme. She says, “…an episodic and impressionistic art most accurately replicates the meanderings of memory, and not chronological order.”
I love coming-of-age stories in fiction or memoir. Most of this book covers Oates’ childhood through early marriage. These were the years that made her a writer. As she says, “What is fleeting and transient in time, no doubt soon forgotten by adults, or rendered inconsequential in their lives, may burrow deep into the child-witness’s soul.”
She was born half way between my parents and me, so her early childhood in the country (north of Buffalo), attending a one-room school house, reminded me of my father. Her struggles with sexism in graduate school were too familiar to me.
Here were a few more quotes that impressed me:
“It is a rare homicide that destroys only one person.”
“Cruelty is a kind of stupidity.”
“I think we’re all cats with nine lives, or even more. We must rejoice in our elusive catness."
I’ll end with this quote that she ascribed to her father about boxing: “You have to be born with the talent to be trained.” I think that describes a great many skills and why few of us have Oates’ success in writing.
May 19, 2022
So typical of Joyce Carol Oates. One book can be stunning and the next very disappointing. Reading this writer's coming of age cleard up part of her mystery for me. Oates literally cannot help writing, she is a compulsive writer. No wonder some of her books do not go the distance.
Would not recommend the book to someone unfamiliar with American universities as a lot of it revolves around being educated in the USA.
Would not recommend the book to someone unfamiliar with American universities as a lot of it revolves around being educated in the USA.
October 26, 2015
Not a big fan of her fiction, but I teach and write memoir, so I picked this one up and am I glad I did! Though when I got to the chapter written by her pet chicken, I rolled my eyes. She is such a good writer that I couldn't stop reading what the chicken said!
Some of her childhood and adolescent memories foreshadow what she will write about in her novels: incest, murder, child abuse. The lost landscape of her youth (and mine) is poignantly portrayed - rural western New York State, the 1960s. Discovered that she taught at Detroit when my husband was a student there (he doesn't remember her but he does remember the 1967 riots she describes) and that the radial Weathermen's bomb blew up a townhouse in New York a few blocks from where she was doing a photo shoot for Vogue. Evocative of her era (and mine) as a young woman, and a loving homage to her parents, this memoir is a wonderful selection from a famous writer's "life and times."
I was interested that she doesn't believe a memoir should have a narrative structure, because our lives are not lived that way, yet she acknowledges that memoir is selective, like picking "up a handful of very hot stones." One "has to drop some, in order to keep hold of others."
Some of her childhood and adolescent memories foreshadow what she will write about in her novels: incest, murder, child abuse. The lost landscape of her youth (and mine) is poignantly portrayed - rural western New York State, the 1960s. Discovered that she taught at Detroit when my husband was a student there (he doesn't remember her but he does remember the 1967 riots she describes) and that the radial Weathermen's bomb blew up a townhouse in New York a few blocks from where she was doing a photo shoot for Vogue. Evocative of her era (and mine) as a young woman, and a loving homage to her parents, this memoir is a wonderful selection from a famous writer's "life and times."
I was interested that she doesn't believe a memoir should have a narrative structure, because our lives are not lived that way, yet she acknowledges that memoir is selective, like picking "up a handful of very hot stones." One "has to drop some, in order to keep hold of others."
December 29, 2015
This is my first book by Joyce Carol Oates. I realized afterwards that she is a prolific writer who once lived in Windsor, Ontario. This book appears to be her recollections and a hodgepodge of elements from her previous publications. She is a very good writer and this memoir contains selected pieces about her early childhood, schooling, friends, university experience, with some information on parents and grandparents as she dared to tell.
She mentioned several times in the book that she respects the privacy of others and must be careful of what she reveals in her writings lest she betrays or "violates" the other person. With this disclosure, I think the information she provided was carefully thought through prior to print.
I found it to be an okay book. I admire J C Oates for her determination and hard work. She moved on to graduate and post graduate studies through scholarships and hard work. I identify with her with her bouts of insomnia and her restless brain. There was no mention of any offspring nor did she write much about her relationship with Ray Smith although she was devastated when he died. She did remarry one year after his passing. Overall I would classify her writing as a bit scholarly and this could be because she was in academia for most of her life.
She mentioned several times in the book that she respects the privacy of others and must be careful of what she reveals in her writings lest she betrays or "violates" the other person. With this disclosure, I think the information she provided was carefully thought through prior to print.
I found it to be an okay book. I admire J C Oates for her determination and hard work. She moved on to graduate and post graduate studies through scholarships and hard work. I identify with her with her bouts of insomnia and her restless brain. There was no mention of any offspring nor did she write much about her relationship with Ray Smith although she was devastated when he died. She did remarry one year after his passing. Overall I would classify her writing as a bit scholarly and this could be because she was in academia for most of her life.
March 26, 2022
This is a reluctant memoir. Pieced together from republished articles, you can imagine a persuasive editor convincing Oates to pull them altogether in a book after the success of ‘A Widow’s Story: A Memoir’ - an autobiography charting the relationship with her husband and her grief at his passing.
It's most rewarding when Oates writes about her modest family and childhood growing up in upstate New York. For this is really the subject of the book. It's a time of restraint- the 40s and 50s. She writes tellingly: ‘It is the way of some families to keep emotion tight, tight, tight within - as if grasped by a fist.’ Ultimately, she is full of admiration for her parents who provided such stability despite their own impoverished and violent domestic backgrounds.
Oates holds back tantalisingly too. She writes extensively of her insomnia as a graduate student at the University of Madison, which led to all night wanderings as a ‘night hawk’. This is also at a time that she had just met her husband to be and was recently in love. But she explicitly tells the reader that she is not going to write in any detail about her husband. This leaves her own inner turmoil largely an enigma beyond the fact that she was unhappy in her graduate studies.
It's most rewarding when Oates writes about her modest family and childhood growing up in upstate New York. For this is really the subject of the book. It's a time of restraint- the 40s and 50s. She writes tellingly: ‘It is the way of some families to keep emotion tight, tight, tight within - as if grasped by a fist.’ Ultimately, she is full of admiration for her parents who provided such stability despite their own impoverished and violent domestic backgrounds.
Oates holds back tantalisingly too. She writes extensively of her insomnia as a graduate student at the University of Madison, which led to all night wanderings as a ‘night hawk’. This is also at a time that she had just met her husband to be and was recently in love. But she explicitly tells the reader that she is not going to write in any detail about her husband. This leaves her own inner turmoil largely an enigma beyond the fact that she was unhappy in her graduate studies.
June 5, 2016
Couldn't make up my mind if I liked this book or not; parts of it spoke to me bringing up childhood memories (Sunday drives, etc.), other parts were boring. It is a book to be reread and pndered; probably won’t reread it, that’s not me, like to move on to other things. Favorite quotes – At 24% “…my father who thought a thunderstorm was an occasion for rejoicing and not cowering indoors.” I love a good storm. “A child sees her father at a little distance…is baffled and thrilled by her father in precisely those ways in which the father eludes the child...’ You will not ever know me, but it is allowed that you can love me.’” “…mother is the known, or so the child imagines…” At 25% “…never complained…not occurred to him that there might be legitimate grounds for complaint. Work has been much of his life…hardly uncommon for its time and place.” At 94% “And when we’re young we can’t comprehend how personalities shift inexorably over time…how the body shifts, shrinking by degrees into its frame, becoming less certain, humble. As if the shadows of the elderly begin to fade.”
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