Oates, Joyce Carol

Oates, Joyce Carol,

1938–, American author, b. Lockport, N.Y., B.A. Syracuse Univ., 1960, M.A. Univ. of Wisconsin, 1961. She taught English at the Univ. of Detroit and the Univ. of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and has been affiliated with Princeton since 1978. Oates writes about contemporary American life, which she sees as often defined by violence. She is particularly concerned with the connection between violence and love. Her characters are mainly ordinary, inarticulate people who sublimate the terrible things that happen to them. Although some of her novels have been labeled gothic, the violence in them is neither mysterious nor necessarily dramatic; it occurs randomly as in everyday life.

Extraordinarily prolific, Oates has published more than 140 books in a variety of genres, among them dozens of novels. These include With Shuddering Fall (1964); a trilogy: A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967, rev. ed. 2003), Expensive People (1968), and them (1969); Wonderland (1971); Childwold (1976); Cybele (1979); Bellefleur (1980); Solstice (1985); Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990); What I Lived For (1994); My Heart Laid Bare (1998); Blonde (2000), a fictional work based on the life of Marilyn MonroeMonroe, Marilyn,
1926–62, American movie actress, b. Los Angeles as Norma Jean Baker or Norma Jeane Mortenson. Raised in orphanages after 1935 and first married at 14, Monroe, who began her career as a pin-up model, became a world-famous sex symbol and, after her death, a
..... Click the link for more information. ; Mudwoman (2012); a Gothic mystery, The Accursed (2013); A Book of American Martyrs (2017); and Hazards of Time Travel (2018), dystopian sci-fi constructed with elements of the present world. Oates's numerous short stories are collected in such volumes as Wheel of Love (1970), A Sentimental Education (1981), Heat (1991), Will You Always Love Me? (1996), Faithless (2001), Wild Nights! (2008), Lovely, Dark, Deep (2014), and Beautiful Days (2018). Oates also has written thrillers as Rosamond Smith, plus poems, plays, and children's fiction. Her nonfiction includes a book on boxing (1988); A Widow's Story (2011), which chronicles the aftermath of her husband's sudden death; The Lost Landscape: A Writer's Coming of Age (2015); and essays, reviews, and literary criticism.

Bibliography

See G. Johnson, ed., The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007); L. Milazzo, ed., Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates (1989); biography by G. Johnson (1998); studies by L. W. Wagner, ed. (1979), E. G. Friedman (1980), T. Norman (1984), H. Bloom, ed. (1987), J. V. Creighton (1992), M. C. Wesley (1993), G. Johnson (1987 and 1994), B. Daly (1996), and G. Cologne-Brookes (2005).

Oates, Joyce Carol (Rosamond Smith, pen name)

(1938– ) writer, poet; born in Lockport, N.Y. She studied at Syracuse University (B.A. 1960) and the University of Wisconsin (M.A. 1961), and taught at the University of Windsor, Ontario (1967–78) and Princeton (1978). A prolific writer, she published literary criticism, plays, short stories, and poetry, but is best known for her violent visionary novels.