I hardly read any fiction these days! Books on science and history have all but taken over. Maybe it’s the terrain that comes with being an academic — too much scholarly, intellectual stuff . The one exception is Joyce Carol Oates: I keep returning to her fiction again and again. In 2017, I read her exceptional short story collection Lovely Dark and Deep. Two recent collections of novellas — Evil Eye and Cardiff by the Sea — have left an even stronger and lasting impression*.
Most stories in these books are about women (students, junior co-workers, younger family members) who find themselves, willingly or unwillingly, drawn into the orbit of influential and successful men (wealthy patriarchs, distinguished poets, famous scientists and professors, or just husbands, sons, fathers, grandfathers). The men are the unequivocal villains of most stories: they are manipulative and sinister, often using their power, either at work or in a family relationship, to coerce or harass the women their lives. Still, Oates endows them with an intriguing complexity**.
Ensnared in relationships with such troublesome men, the women find themselves disoriented and sometimes physically threatened. A sense of foreboding pervades the stories and deepens as the narrative progresses. The suspense comes not from the plots (which tend to be straightforward) but from the psychological portraits of the characters, a slow unveiling of past traumas and sudden shifts in perspective. I am also amazed at the precision with which Oates sketches, in a few quick sentences, details of a coastal landscape, a large centuries-old house, a small New England town, an office building, the dresses and physical appearance of her characters. These details and the often tumultuous inner worlds of her characters blend seamlessly in Oates’ signature narrative style: short, urgent paragraphs interspersed with italicized words and phrases.
Not since The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories — a dazzling collection of Tolstoy’s fiction — have I come across such powerful short stories and novellas.
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* I also read Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, Oates’ 2020 novel last summer. I wasn’t as taken by it, but some scenes, characters, and passages were as astonishing as the best of her short stories.
** The uncle of the female protagonist in the lead novella of Cardiff by the Sea — a story that does not quite follow the narrative template I’ve outlined above — is the most interesting of the male characters.