Where is Here?

by Joyce Carol Oates

In dramatic, tightly focused narratives charges with tension, menace, and the shock of the unexpected, Where Is Here? examines a world in which ordinary life is electrified by the potential for sudden change. Domestic violence, fear and abandonment and betrayal, and the obsession with loss shadow the characters that inhabit these startling, intriguing stories. With the precision and intensity that are the hallmarks of her remarkable talent, Joyce Carol Oates explores the unexpected turns of events that leave people vulnerable and struggling to puzzle out the consequences of their abrupt reversals of fortune. As in the title story, in which a married couple find their controlled life irrevocably altered by a stranger's visit, the fiction in this new collection is punctuated again and again by mysterious, perhaps unanswerable, "Out of what does our life arise? Out of what does our consciousness arise? Why are we here? Where is here?" Like the questions they pose, these tales -- at once elusive and direct -- unfold with the enigmatic twists of riddles and, often, the blunt shock of tragedy. Where is Here? is the work of a master practitioner of the short story.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, School

203 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Joyce 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.

Reviews

[Mango · Rating 4 out of 5]

A riveting short story that addresses abusive behavior and how much it can shape a child. A must-read for sure.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not read any JCO in a while and have an entire shelf of books by her. I have also decided that it is time to focus on some short stories since my brain seems hard pressed to retain significant quantities of detail in longer stories. I just finished a book of short stories where most were ten pages or less and I enjoyed most of them. However, the final two stories were 30 and 35 pages and I didn’t enjoy them so much. So, when I say SHORT, I am serious. It turns out that there are 35 stories in this book of less than 200 pages. Really short stories!

I open this book with the hope of being entertained. That is one way of having your life improved without interference of significant money or morality. Considering JCO is a well known and prolific author, this book published in 1992 has been rated by relatively few GR readers.

Oates takes me places that I might not otherwise go and gives me a strong sense that I am right there.

The women’s room in the Trailways station was a familiar, dreary place: the kind of public place you never think of when you’re away from it, but once you push open the door, step inside, you realize it has been there all along, waiting for you. The lipstick scrawls on the cinderblock walls, the mirrors specked with grime, stained sinks with hairs visible in the drains, stained toilets. I rushed in, steeling myself for some disagreeable sight or odor, and one of the mirrors showed me wild-looking in the face, damp eyes and a mouth that appeared lipless. I winced, looked away, refused to acknowledge myself before I was ready to be seen.

The twenty year old is getting ready for a date and is late. There will be an uncertain transformation in just a few minutes and I will experience it in her mind’s eye. Trevor “raising a slow hand to signal me from the farthest end of the bar, looking me over, smiling, teeth like a skull’s, liking what he saw, maybe.”

Ready for the next story? It is also two pages and waiting for you right now. You could pause, take a breath, ready yourself. That is what we do in life, isn’t it? What’s next?

Remember that I expressed some hope of being entertained? Well, good luck with that! I forgot. This is Joyce Carol Fucking Oates. Her entertainment will cost you some piece of mind. She makes you think. But not necessarily will she make you smile.

She fled, she returned home.
And she did telephone the SPCA. And the local police.
And whether they came to the woman’s house at the end of the dirt road and saved Shot from his misery, or made any difference at all in the dog’s life, she didn’t know; she kept her windows closed in the morning and kept her air-conditioning unit on. It was hot weather, in any case.
Often, she heard dogs barking. In the distance.
Any number of dogs. For the world was filled with barking dogs after all.

The book is filled with special people. One or more in every short story.

And then the murderer was arrested. And confessed. (A local man, a resident too of the welfare hotel.) And though Dennis Brewer was innocent (presumably) people continued to view him with a certain degree of suspicion. It was as if the man had been absorbed and been contaminated by evil as freshly laundered white sheets, hung out to dry, might absorb and be contaminated by polluted air. Even the children could not shake off the expectation, or was it the perverse unspoken hope, that their uncle Dennie had done something special – was something special. Though of course they knew better. As everyone knew better.

Got to love JC Fucking Oates. But be careful of her sharp edges. Four stars.

[g a b s ⚡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

i had read this for english class and *surprise, surprise* i actually liked it 4.7/5, recommended to people who like gothic literature and confusing stories

[Shelby · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 Stars
I really did not like this book. I guess it is because it was not really my type of book. I thought this book was just to dark for me. I know that it is supposed to be like that but I thought that it was kind of boring. I thought the book was kind of hard for me to simply because the book was boring and not my type. I was not sure what to except being I had to read this book. I would not read this book again simply because I did not really like it. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes gothic literature.

[Kristen Fort]

Specifically the story, "Where is Here?" - from the textbook.

[Davi Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apesar de admitir que as melhores histórias me tocaram e deixaram reflexivo, outras me causaram incômodos.
Senti certa inconsistência nos contos que se propõem a desafiar a escrita formal, o que acaba atrapalhando a leitura sem um motivo claro, na maioria das vezes. Muitos deles também terminam de forma abrupta, o que funciona melhor nos contos que mergulham na psiquê de seus personagens ou focam em cenas mais pontuais, mas parece fora de lugar nos que propõem narrativas mais complexas.
Os capítulos que mais me marcaram a memória foram Old Dog e The Artist, um mais curto e um mais longo, que tiram o melhor de suas quantidades de páginas. O primeiro traz uma cena simples, com um significado profundo revelado, e o outro trabalha um mistério especulativo construído aos poucos.

[Sara Alanis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 ⭐️

I’m obsessed with the way this woman writes.
My favorite ones were “Running” and “Pain.”

[Cass · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am unsettled in all the best ways, I love literature

[Dannie JO · Rating 2 out of 5]

My opinion of this book will change after I discuss it with my Professor, other than that I'm extremely confused...who is that guy. For some reason my brain is not up to speed tonight. Also I don't know if it's because i'm not a fan of scary genre bur I did not appreciate the suspense... I wanted to know what happen so bad...the pace needed to be faster in my opinion.

[Sommer Ann McCullough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an intense collection of short stories. A must read for anyone who loves dramatic, twisted and dysfunctional people/situations. A real page turner and captivating read.

[Marie Knox · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was rubbish.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

The longer I think about the title story, the lonelier I feel. Good stuff!

[Kennedy Steckelberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

just read it for english but i lowkey freak heavy

[Rachel Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely a book I'm going to have to come back to when I'm older. I could see the beauty in the writing, and I could sense that there were thematic and stylistic choices that she made that were supposed to mean something, but being seventeen, a lot of the stories didn't resonate with me (and I'm not sure they were supposed to). I'll make sure to revisit this at some point, because three stars doesn't feel like I'm doing her writing justice.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Oates' best short stories, this intriguing piece of speculative fiction posits a visitor from the past visiting the current occupants of the house he grew up in as a boy. The man explains that he is "in town on business" and would simply enjoy the opportunity to walk down memory lane

Immediately the occupants, a family of mother, father, and son, are set on edge, uncertain about the way to handle such a visit. The visit ends abruptly with the family clearly disturbed, but during the visit we notice "my favorite place when I was a child" and odd mathematics homework that might reveal the true anxiety of being lost in time and space.

I recommend this story without reservations of any kind. I hope it disturbs you as much as it did this reader.

[Jade Dove · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent book of short stories by the great JCO. If you're new to her work, this is a great start. She's a master prose-writer and her themes of tension, the darkness of human nature and the things that move us and motivate us are all present here.

[Elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool video from the short story “Where is Here”: https://youtu.be/CBu57LU7gZI

[Annalise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad

[Samica · Rating 3 out of 5]

tense but ultimately boring

[Aidan Hennessy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good question

[Lamar · Rating 4 out of 5]

istihbal part 3! read in class

[Ana Hein · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Dianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Title story only

[Garfieldlover4000 · Rating 3 out of 5]

What

[keith koenigsberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

These little vignettes are raw, straight-for-your-throat things, sometimes only a page long. Great stuff.

[Gale...? · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Where is Here? short story was awesome! Keep it up!

[Valerie Valentine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every time I read this author, I am blown away by her grasp of the human condition. Her ideas are diverse and vast, phenomenally insightful, if a bit dark. She hits extreme points of emotion and always takes on challenging, diverse voices. I'm not a man so I can't vouch but it seems like she does male POV really well. She even gets into a dog's mind. Some of these stories were haunting - there were a lot in the collection, many short bites but a few longer... Insomnia was disturbing, a medical student helps her ill brother commit suicide and gets mixed up with a violent drug dealer. In Love, Forever a woman murders her 3 children for her boyfriend. Some bizarre dynamics between strangers in several but all seem somehow believable, if only because they existed in this prolific writer's mind.

[Brianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic collection of short stories. Poetic without being flowery.

[Rachel]

Do not like her short stories as much as her novels- gotta be honest.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections of short stories I have ever read. Read "Area Man Found Crucified." If you don't like that one, you will not like this book. If you do...keep reading!