fossil figures
Oehling, Rick
I can heartily recommend Oates new story "Fossil-Figures" published in the story anthology "Stories: All-New Tales" Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantnio (William Morrow, 2010). I found it in our university library. (It's only available in hardcover.) Strange, disturbing tale of twins, opposites. With startlingly pointed political commentary near the end that I enjoyed enormously.
Rick
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jane Ward [jwar...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 7:01 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [JCO:955] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story collection)
I too was struck by Rick's description of JCO writing: "the brilliance
of the work alters the gray terrain like a lightening-illuminated
landscape" Nice phrase! So aptly describes my feelings about JCO's
writing.
Jane
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:13 PM, V L Bucci <ginn...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>> the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>>>> lightening-illuminated landscape<<<
>
> gee rick these words really capture JCO's initial effect on me some 35 yrs
> ago: you have it in a nutshell! Up till now I've only been able to
> visualize it. I remember thinking, it was as though I were standing at the
> edge, gazing into clouds, yet somehow invigorated.. Alternatively (this may
> mean something to some, I hope), I pictured a John R Neill drawing from an
> early Oz book which has Dorothy bowed under a low but inestimably long
> Kansas horizon, amid clouds and wind, gazing toward (one presumes) the
> Deadly Desert, and beyond, Oz.
>
> At that time there was trouble brewing in my personal life, though I knew
> nothing but a sense of foreboding; JCO's works helped me become articulate
> in all sorts of trouble which foreshadow themselves thus. I have returned
> to her work several times since then, most recently when a family member was
> becoming increasingly ill over a period of years.
>
> I have always looked to JCO to 'illuminate' 'the gray terrain.'
>
> THANK YOU.
>
> Ginny
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:00 AM
> To: <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: RE: [JCO:948] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
> collection)
>
>> Hi Max, and Everyone,
>> Well I'm mid-way through the stories in SOURLAND. I'm finding the stories
>> superb... and utter debilitating. "Amputee" haunted me for days. Every
>> story hard going. Kids lacerating themselves to ward off catastrophe.
>> Mothers gone sour. None of the stories are about grief in any obvious sense,
>> but the sense of being stuck in TERRIBLE TIME, having to slough through it,
>> reminds me again and again of that part of grieving that is hardest to face,
>> the part of just having to endure it, to get through it. There is nothing
>> redemptive feeling about this part but it has to be survived, I guess. A
>> lot of the stories in SOURLAND seem to involve loved ones growing pale and
>> meager in hospital rooms. Did I read somewhere that SOURLAND comes out the
>> period just after Raymond Smith's death? Maybe the stuck-in-quicksand
>> inertia of the stories has some sort of transferred cryptic link to feelings
>> JCO experienced in the weeks before and after Ray's passing. If so, it
>> makes my heart go out to her. There seems to be a heavy burden of real grief
>> in SOURLAND but the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>> lightening-illuminated landscape.
>> Rick
>> ________________________________________
>> From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On
>> Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com]
>> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 10:35 AM
>> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
>> Subject: [JCO:946] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
>> collection)
>>
>> It's being reviewed as one of her best short sotry collections. And of of
>> her scariest.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>>
>> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> toneclusters...@googlegroups.com
>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>>
>> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
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>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
>
> --
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> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>
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>
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--
Jane Ward
Lewistown, Illinois
http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/
http://eaglenature.com/
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Oehling, Rick
i felt this time that i had to over-interpret it for the students, initially. when i first read WONDERLAND 25 years ago I think I went into a trance early in the book when the unimaginable is imagined (for the passive reader) and, almost like Jesse, I "deep-froze" what had happened. By which I mean, I remember thinking "I can't think about that now... but I can't forget it either... I'll freeze it and think about it later." But Jesse never consciously returns to Christmas, 1939 so the reader needn't either. We keep running "into the dark" with him. But I think the memory of that day hangs like an altarpiece in some locked chapel of Jesse's soul. (I know it does in mine!) Maybe that is why the first 35 pages feel so intensely remembered, the empty fields "filling with snow and time." The opening page that feels like film footage played on a loop.
The students (freshmen!) certainly "got" the book far more than the last time I tried teaching it. One of the students brilliantly observed in her essay that Shelley is trying to "kill" everyone in the family. Not with a gun, but by erasing them in her mind as Noel commands her.
Which made me think: Jesse's daughter is unknowingly repeating the pattern of the grandfather she has never heard mention of, perhaps haunted by a too-silent ghost.
RO
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:03 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [JCO:957] fossil figures
Shoshanna Crumpler
From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu>
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, November 16, 2010 12:43:31 AM
Subject: [JCO:958] RE: fossil figures
>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>>
>> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>
> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>
> For more options, visit this group at
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--
Jane Ward
Lewistown, Illinois
http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/
http://eaglenature.com/
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Max Alberts
Good morning Rick,
I wanted to reply to your thoughtful interpretation of WONDERLAND and of Shelley's character. I perceive her as the recipient of generations of family craziness. Therefore her "identity" is hopelessly up for grabs. Therefore she becomes, literally, 'The Fetish," the anima within Jesse's dreamwork. I'm not surprised that Oates has "disowned" this novel. It brought her all kinds of nutty attention and seemed to encourage students who wanted to study with her--me included--who were into all kinds of drugs and alcohol. (I remember being in her Joyce seminar at the U of Windsor and noting that of the 8 of us in the group, at least 5 were either stoned or otherwise intoxicated, and it was 1:00 in the afternoon.)
I'm also interested in what version of the book you taught, which ending?
Thanks.
Best,
MAX
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Oehling, Rick
Thanks for the insight into Shelley as 'The Fetish'-- that is dead-on.
I think I know what you mean about JCO disowning the book at one point; however, I wonder if that situation hasn't changed some. Her "Afterword" in the recent editions shows that her relationship with the book is extremely complex; I think it's pretty close to her heart.
All current editions used the revised ending, but that is also the one I prefer. One student had purchased the original hardcover on-line so I lent him an extra old mass market I had (the one with the baffling illustration of Jesse with some woman -- surely not Helene or Shelley -- in a small town?).
I'm fascinated by what you said about the seminar. A number of my students noted that the book was not like any version of Alice in Wonderland they had seen and a surprising number described it as "brutally realistic" The scenes involving counter-culture youth are so harsh on their sloppiness and death-hungry emptiness that I would think that reading/discussing it stoned would be a particularly bad trip. We had just had our first child when I read WONDERLAND in 1988 and so drugs were the furthest thing from my mind. I would think that powerful drugs and WONDERLAND would make for an unhappy combination but can also see how they could lead to the rapturous but troubling early responses she received to WONDERLAND that made her uneasy.
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com]
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [JCO:960] RE: fossil figures
Good morning Rick,
I wanted to reply to your thoughtful interpretation of WONDERLAND and of Shelley's character. I perceive her as the recipient of generations of family craziness. Therefore her "identity" is hopelessly up for grabs. Therefore she becomes, literally, 'The Fetish," the anima within Jesse's dreamwork. I'm not surprised that Oates has "disowned" this novel. It brought her all kinds of nutty attention and seemed to encourage students who wanted to study with her--me included--who were into all kinds of drugs and alcohol. (I remember being in her Joyce seminar at the U of Windsor and noting that of the 8 of us in the group, at least 5 were either stoned or otherwise intoxicated, and it was 1:00 in the afternoon.)
I'm also interested in what version of the book you taught, which ending?
Thanks.
Best,
MAX
--- On Mon, 11/15/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu> wrote:
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu>
Subject: [JCO:958] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 11:43 PM
Just wrapped up teaching WONDERLAND. It was way more successful than a previous attempt.
i felt this time that i had to over-interpret it for the students, initially. when i first read WONDERLAND 25 years ago I think I went into a trance early in the book when the unimaginable is imagined (for the passive reader) and, almost like Jesse, I "deep-froze" what had happened. By which I mean, I remember thinking "I can't think about that now... but I can't forget it either... I'll freeze it and think about it later." But Jesse never consciously returns to Christmas, 1939 so the reader needn't either. We keep running "into the dark" with him. But I think the memory of that day hangs like an altarpiece in some locked chapel of Jesse's soul. (I know it does in mine!) Maybe that is why the first 35 pages feel so intensely remembered, the empty fields "filling with snow and time." The opening page that feels like film footage played on a loop.
The students (freshmen!) certainly "got" the book far more than the last time I tried teaching it. One of the students brilliantly observed in her essay that Shelley is trying to "kill" everyone in the family. Not with a gun, but by erasing them in her mind as Noel commands her.
Which made me think: Jesse's daughter is unknowingly repeating the pattern of the grandfather she has never heard mention of, perhaps haunted by a too-silent ghost.
RO
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:03 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [JCO:957] fossil figures
Hello all,
I can heartily recommend Oates new story "Fossil-Figures" published in the story anthology "Stories: All-New Tales" Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantnio (William Morrow, 2010). I found it in our university library. (It's only available in hardcover.) Strange, disturbing tale of twins, opposites. With startlingly pointed political commentary near the end that I enjoyed enormously.
Rick
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Jane Ward [jwar...@gmail.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jwar...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 7:01 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [JCO:955] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story collection)
I too was struck by Rick's description of JCO writing: "the brilliance
of the work alters the gray terrain like a lightening-illuminated
landscape" Nice phrase! So aptly describes my feelings about JCO's
writing.
Jane
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:13 PM, V L Bucci <ginn...@comcast.net<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ginn...@comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>> the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>>>> lightening-illuminated landscape<<<
>
> gee rick these words really capture JCO's initial effect on me some 35 yrs
> ago: you have it in a nutshell! Up till now I've only been able to
> visualize it. I remember thinking, it was as though I were standing at the
> edge, gazing into clouds, yet somehow invigorated.. Alternatively (this may
> mean something to some, I hope), I pictured a John R Neill drawing from an
> early Oz book which has Dorothy bowed under a low but inestimably long
> Kansas horizon, amid clouds and wind, gazing toward (one presumes) the
> Deadly Desert, and beyond, Oz.
>
> At that time there was trouble brewing in my personal life, though I knew
> nothing but a sense of foreboding; JCO's works helped me become articulate
> in all sorts of trouble which foreshadow themselves thus. I have returned
> to her work several times since then, most recently when a family member was
> becoming increasingly ill over a period of years.
>
> I have always looked to JCO to 'illuminate' 'the gray terrain.'
>
> THANK YOU.
>
> Ginny
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:00 AM
> To: <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: RE: [JCO:948] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
> collection)
>
>> Hi Max, and Everyone,
>> Well I'm mid-way through the stories in SOURLAND. I'm finding the stories
>> superb... and utter debilitating. "Amputee" haunted me for days. Every
>> story hard going. Kids lacerating themselves to ward off catastrophe.
>> Mothers gone sour. None of the stories are about grief in any obvious sense,
>> but the sense of being stuck in TERRIBLE TIME, having to slough through it,
>> reminds me again and again of that part of grieving that is hardest to face,
>> the part of just having to endure it, to get through it. There is nothing
>> redemptive feeling about this part but it has to be survived, I guess. A
>> lot of the stories in SOURLAND seem to involve loved ones growing pale and
>> meager in hospital rooms. Did I read somewhere that SOURLAND comes out the
>> period just after Raymond Smith's death? Maybe the stuck-in-quicksand
>> inertia of the stories has some sort of transferred cryptic link to feelings
>> JCO experienced in the weeks before and after Ray's passing. If so, it
>> makes my heart go out to her. There seems to be a heavy burden of real grief
>> in SOURLAND but the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>> lightening-illuminated landscape.
>> Rick
>> ________________________________________
>> From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On
>> Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
>> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 10:35 AM
>> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [JCO:946] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
>> collection)
>>
>> It's being reviewed as one of her best short sotry collections. And of of
>> her scariest.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>>
>> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> toneclusters...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=unsub...@googlegroups.com>
>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>>
>> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> toneclusters...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=unsub...@googlegroups.com>
>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
>
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>
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--
Jane Ward
Lewistown, Illinois
http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/
http://eaglenature.com/
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Oehling, Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Shoshanna Crumpler [shojo...@ymail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 5:33 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [JCO:959] RE: fossil figures
Professor Rick, where do you teach ? ( Just nosy. ) Lucky students!
________________________________
From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu>
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, November 16, 2010 12:43:31 AM
Subject: [JCO:958] RE: fossil figures
Just wrapped up teaching WONDERLAND. It was way more successful than a previous attempt.
i felt this time that i had to over-interpret it for the students, initially. when i first read WONDERLAND 25 years ago I think I went into a trance early in the book when the unimaginable is imagined (for the passive reader) and, almost like Jesse, I "deep-froze" what had happened. By which I mean, I remember thinking "I can't think about that now... but I can't forget it either... I'll freeze it and think about it later." But Jesse never consciously returns to Christmas, 1939 so the reader needn't either. We keep running "into the dark" with him. But I think the memory of that day hangs like an altarpiece in some locked chapel of Jesse's soul. (I know it does in mine!) Maybe that is why the first 35 pages feel so intensely remembered, the empty fields "filling with snow and time." The opening page that feels like film footage played on a loop.
The students (freshmen!) certainly "got" the book far more than the last time I tried teaching it. One of the students brilliantly observed in her essay that Shelley is trying to "kill" everyone in the family. Not with a gun, but by erasing them in her mind as Noel commands her.
Which made me think: Jesse's daughter is unknowingly repeating the pattern of the grandfather she has never heard mention of, perhaps haunted by a too-silent ghost.
RO
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu<mailto:oehl...@uww.edu>]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:03 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [JCO:957] fossil figures
Hello all,
I can heartily recommend Oates new story "Fossil-Figures" published in the story anthology "Stories: All-New Tales" Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantnio (William Morrow, 2010). I found it in our university library. (It's only available in hardcover.) Strange, disturbing tale of twins, opposites. With startlingly pointed political commentary near the end that I enjoyed enormously.
Rick
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Jane Ward [jwar...@gmail.com<mailto:jwar...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 7:01 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [JCO:955] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story collection)
I too was struck by Rick's description of JCO writing: "the brilliance
of the work alters the gray terrain like a lightening-illuminated
landscape" Nice phrase! So aptly describes my feelings about JCO's
writing.
Jane
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:13 PM, V L Bucci <ginn...@comcast.net<mailto:ginn...@comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>> the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>>>> lightening-illuminated landscape<<<
>
> gee rick these words really capture JCO's initial effect on me some 35 yrs
> ago: you have it in a nutshell! Up till now I've only been able to
> visualize it. I remember thinking, it was as though I were standing at the
> edge, gazing into clouds, yet somehow invigorated.. Alternatively (this may
> mean something to some, I hope), I pictured a John R Neill drawing from an
> early Oz book which has Dorothy bowed under a low but inestimably long
> Kansas horizon, amid clouds and wind, gazing toward (one presumes) the
> Deadly Desert, and beyond, Oz.
>
> At that time there was trouble brewing in my personal life, though I knew
> nothing but a sense of foreboding; JCO's works helped me become articulate
> in all sorts of trouble which foreshadow themselves thus. I have returned
> to her work several times since then, most recently when a family member was
> becoming increasingly ill over a period of years.
>
> I have always looked to JCO to 'illuminate' 'the gray terrain.'
>
> THANK YOU.
>
> Ginny
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu<mailto:oehl...@uww.edu>>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:00 AM
> To: <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: RE: [JCO:948] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
> collection)
>
>> Hi Max, and Everyone,
>> Well I'm mid-way through the stories in SOURLAND. I'm finding the stories
>> superb... and utter debilitating. "Amputee" haunted me for days. Every
>> story hard going. Kids lacerating themselves to ward off catastrophe.
>> Mothers gone sour. None of the stories are about grief in any obvious sense,
>> but the sense of being stuck in TERRIBLE TIME, having to slough through it,
>> reminds me again and again of that part of grieving that is hardest to face,
>> the part of just having to endure it, to get through it. There is nothing
>> redemptive feeling about this part but it has to be survived, I guess. A
>> lot of the stories in SOURLAND seem to involve loved ones growing pale and
>> meager in hospital rooms. Did I read somewhere that SOURLAND comes out the
>> period just after Raymond Smith's death? Maybe the stuck-in-quicksand
>> inertia of the stories has some sort of transferred cryptic link to feelings
>> JCO experienced in the weeks before and after Ray's passing. If so, it
>> makes my heart go out to her. There seems to be a heavy burden of real grief
>> in SOURLAND but the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>> lightening-illuminated landscape.
>> Rick
>> ________________________________________
>> From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On
>> Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<mailto:maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
>> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 10:35 AM
>> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [JCO:946] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
>> collection)
>>
>> It's being reviewed as one of her best short sotry collections. And of of
>> her scariest.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
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>>
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>>
>
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--
Jane Ward
Lewistown, Illinois
http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/
http://eaglenature.com/
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Max Alberts
Rick,
I just wanted to clarify that the seminar I described was taught by Oates, and it was on James Joyce. I believe we were reading ULYSSES at the time. I was Oates's teaching assistant then, and the graduate creative writing program was very small--this was 1976. It was a wild time and those of us who gravitated to Oates were by definition on the fringe. I bet she was glad to get out of Windsor....Her journals reflect her extreme distaste towards her students who used. (By 1988 I was also raising a child and my days as an addled grad student were long behind me. But believe me, I had my day. Lots of us probably identified with Shelley more than any other Oates character.) Ha! |
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Oehling, Rick
I'm with you. Addled grad school days/haze were states I knew well, though I doubt I remember them well.
BLONDE, WONDERLAND, DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL and WHAT I LIVED FOR are my favorite Oates novels. I do think she achieved a ULYSSES-like density in WHAT I LIVED FOR that is unlike any other novel by her -- perhaps because it all takes place in one Memorial Day weekend. Because I read it all the first time during a Memorial weekend trip to Ann Arbor, MI (I was working for Borders and attending a conference), for years afterwards I would try each May to reread as much of the novel as I could. I would usually get caught up in it and read most of it. There is also an excellent audio version of it. It begins with a brief quote from ULYSSES.
"He wanders. He rests." ???
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com]
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [JCO:963] RE: fossil figures
Rick,
I just wanted to clarify that the seminar I described was taught by Oates, and it was on James Joyce. I believe we were reading ULYSSES at the time. I was Oates's teaching assistant then, and the graduate creative writing program was very small--this was 1976. It was a wild time and those of us who gravitated to Oates were by definition on the fringe. I bet she was glad to get out of Windsor....Her journals reflect her extreme distaste towards her students who used. (By 1988 I was also raising a child and my days as an addled grad student were long behind me. But believe me, I had my day. Lots of us probably identified with Shelley more than any other Oates character.) Ha!
--- On Tue, 11/16/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu> wrote:
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu>
Subject: RE: [JCO:961] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 9:26 AM
Hi Max
Thanks for the insight into Shelley as 'The Fetish'-- that is dead-on.
I think I know what you mean about JCO disowning the book at one point; however, I wonder if that situation hasn't changed some. Her "Afterword" in the recent editions shows that her relationship with the book is extremely complex; I think it's pretty close to her heart.
All current editions used the revised ending, but that is also the one I prefer. One student had purchased the original hardcover on-line so I lent him an extra old mass market I had (the one with the baffling illustration of Jesse with some woman -- surely not Helene or Shelley -- in a small town?).
I'm fascinated by what you said about the seminar. A number of my students noted that the book was not like any version of Alice in Wonderland they had seen and a surprising number described it as "brutally realistic" The scenes involving counter-culture youth are so harsh on their sloppiness and death-hungry emptiness that I would think that reading/discussing it stoned would be a particularly bad trip. We had just had our first child when I read WONDERLAND in 1988 and so drugs were the furthest thing from my mind. I would think that powerful drugs and WONDERLAND would make for an unhappy combination but can also see how they could lead to the rapturous but troubling early responses she received to WONDERLAND that made her uneasy.
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 8:38 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [JCO:960] RE: fossil figures
Good morning Rick,
I wanted to reply to your thoughtful interpretation of WONDERLAND and of Shelley's character. I perceive her as the recipient of generations of family craziness. Therefore her "identity" is hopelessly up for grabs. Therefore she becomes, literally, 'The Fetish," the anima within Jesse's dreamwork. I'm not surprised that Oates has "disowned" this novel. It brought her all kinds of nutty attention and seemed to encourage students who wanted to study with her--me included--who were into all kinds of drugs and alcohol. (I remember being in her Joyce seminar at the U of Windsor and noting that of the 8 of us in the group, at least 5 were either stoned or otherwise intoxicated, and it was 1:00 in the afternoon.)
I'm also interested in what version of the book you taught, which ending?
Thanks.
Best,
MAX
--- On Mon, 11/15/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>> wrote:
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
Subject: [JCO:958] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 11:43 PM
Just wrapped up teaching WONDERLAND. It was way more successful than a previous attempt.
i felt this time that i had to over-interpret it for the students, initially. when i first read WONDERLAND 25 years ago I think I went into a trance early in the book when the unimaginable is imagined (for the passive reader) and, almost like Jesse, I "deep-froze" what had happened. By which I mean, I remember thinking "I can't think about that now... but I can't forget it either... I'll freeze it and think about it later." But Jesse never consciously returns to Christmas, 1939 so the reader needn't either. We keep running "into the dark" with him. But I think the memory of that day hangs like an altarpiece in some locked chapel of Jesse's soul. (I know it does in mine!) Maybe that is why the first 35 pages feel so intensely remembered, the empty fields "filling with snow and time." The opening page that feels like film footage played on a loop.
The students (freshmen!) certainly "got" the book far more than the last time I tried teaching it. One of the students brilliantly observed in her essay that Shelley is trying to "kill" everyone in the family. Not with a gun, but by erasing them in her mind as Noel commands her.
Which made me think: Jesse's daughter is unknowingly repeating the pattern of the grandfather she has never heard mention of, perhaps haunted by a too-silent ghost.
RO
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:03 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [JCO:957] fossil figures
Hello all,
I can heartily recommend Oates new story "Fossil-Figures" published in the story anthology "Stories: All-New Tales" Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantnio (William Morrow, 2010). I found it in our university library. (It's only available in hardcover.) Strange, disturbing tale of twins, opposites. With startlingly pointed political commentary near the end that I enjoyed enormously.
Rick
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Jane Ward [jwar...@gmail.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jwar...@gmail.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jwar...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 7:01 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [JCO:955] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story collection)
I too was struck by Rick's description of JCO writing: "the brilliance
of the work alters the gray terrain like a lightening-illuminated
landscape" Nice phrase! So aptly describes my feelings about JCO's
writing.
Jane
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:13 PM, V L Bucci <ginn...@comcast.net<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ginn...@comcast.net><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ginn...@comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>> the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>>>> lightening-illuminated landscape<<<
>
> gee rick these words really capture JCO's initial effect on me some 35 yrs
> ago: you have it in a nutshell! Up till now I've only been able to
> visualize it. I remember thinking, it was as though I were standing at the
> edge, gazing into clouds, yet somehow invigorated.. Alternatively (this may
> mean something to some, I hope), I pictured a John R Neill drawing from an
> early Oz book which has Dorothy bowed under a low but inestimably long
> Kansas horizon, amid clouds and wind, gazing toward (one presumes) the
> Deadly Desert, and beyond, Oz.
>
> At that time there was trouble brewing in my personal life, though I knew
> nothing but a sense of foreboding; JCO's works helped me become articulate
> in all sorts of trouble which foreshadow themselves thus. I have returned
> to her work several times since then, most recently when a family member was
> becoming increasingly ill over a period of years.
>
> I have always looked to JCO to 'illuminate' 'the gray terrain.'
>
> THANK YOU.
>
> Ginny
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:00 AM
> To: <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: RE: [JCO:948] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
> collection)
>
>> Hi Max, and Everyone,
>> Well I'm mid-way through the stories in SOURLAND. I'm finding the stories
>> superb... and utter debilitating. "Amputee" haunted me for days. Every
>> story hard going. Kids lacerating themselves to ward off catastrophe.
>> Mothers gone sour. None of the stories are about grief in any obvious sense,
>> but the sense of being stuck in TERRIBLE TIME, having to slough through it,
>> reminds me again and again of that part of grieving that is hardest to face,
>> the part of just having to endure it, to get through it. There is nothing
>> redemptive feeling about this part but it has to be survived, I guess. A
>> lot of the stories in SOURLAND seem to involve loved ones growing pale and
>> meager in hospital rooms. Did I read somewhere that SOURLAND comes out the
>> period just after Raymond Smith's death? Maybe the stuck-in-quicksand
>> inertia of the stories has some sort of transferred cryptic link to feelings
>> JCO experienced in the weeks before and after Ray's passing. If so, it
>> makes my heart go out to her. There seems to be a heavy burden of real grief
>> in SOURLAND but the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>> lightening-illuminated landscape.
>> Rick
>> ________________________________________
>> From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On
>> Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
>> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 10:35 AM
>> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [JCO:946] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
>> collection)
>>
>> It's being reviewed as one of her best short sotry collections. And of of
>> her scariest.
>>
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>> Groups "Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates Discussion Group."
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>> To post to this group, send email to tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
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>>
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/toneclusters?hl=en
>>
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>>
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>
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--
Jane Ward
Lewistown, Illinois
http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/
http://eaglenature.com/
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Oehling, Rick
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 10:31 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [JCO:964] RE: fossil figures
Max Alberts
Folks,
If you really want to get a sense of Oates's genius and her incredible range, I suggest the books referred to by critics as her "Gothic Trilogy"--Bellefleur, A Bloodsmoor Romance and Mysteries of Winterthurn. (There was to be a fourth, The Crosswicks Horror, but for reasons unknown--to me--it was never published.) It seems to me that in those novels Oates taps into the wild psychic forces that initially shaped and continue to inform this country. Of the three, Winterthun is my favorite, but they're uniformly wonderful and deeply imaginative--not to mention subversive.
Anyone read any of them so we can start a chat? |
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Adva Weinerman
Marya: A Life
I was looking for the Winterthurn on goole and found a new title which is old but never seen in my library nor heard mentioned in this forum.
Has anyone read it?
Does any of you know of second hand online stores that sends books overseas? Would be thankful for information.
Thanks, Adva
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Max Alberts
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 7:58 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at
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Jane Ward
Marya: A Life is a great book. It really provides insight into later JCO protagonists. Have you tried AbeBooks?
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=Marya%3A+A+Life&x=50&y=9
They will ship overseas.
Jane
Adva Weinerman
Jane hi, thanks for the recommendation. Also thanks for the bookstore, I will try and see tonight if they ship second hand books overseas. That will be splendid. There are so many books in ridiculous price to be bought out there and I don't mind a used book, after all, I use our library extensively.
All the best, Adva
בברכה, אדוה
050-2508617
09-7442327
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jane Ward
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 3:34 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Version: 9.0.869 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3262 - Release Date: 11/18/10 09:37:00
Max Alberts
| Marya: A Life is a novel about a brilliant young woman who has grown up in an extremely harsh--and crazy--upstate New York environment and moves away to become a successful academic. (Sound familiar?) --- On Wed, 11/17/10, Adva Weinerman <adva...@netvision.net.il> wrote: |
Oehling, Rick
The issue of race in My Heart Laid Bare was fascinating... and unanticipated. I wonder if Oates isn't something of a visionary thinker about race; she seems at the far edge of our society's preoccupation with/dread of the subject and breaking new ground. I just taught Because It is Bitter... and feel more than ever that the book's fatalism is the truest way to tell the story of a black boy and a white girl in the late '50's... just before -- bitterly just before -- the changes of the next decades. As in Wonderland, the day Kennedy is shot plays a major role in the tragedy.
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com]
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [JCO:970] Gothic Series
Marya: A Life
Has anyone read it?
Thanks, Adva
Folks,
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 10:31 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [JCO:964] RE: fossil figures
Max
I'm with you. Addled grad school days/haze were states I knew well, though I doubt I remember them well.
BLONDE, WONDERLAND, DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL and WHAT I LIVED FOR are my favorite Oates novels. I do think she achieved a ULYSSES-like density in WHAT I LIVED FOR that is unlike any other novel by her -- perhaps because it all takes place in one Memorial Day weekend. Because I read it all the first time during a Memorial weekend trip to Ann Arbor, MI (I was working for Borders and attending a conference), for years afterwards I would try each May to reread as much of the novel as I could. I would usually get caught up in it and read most of it. There is also an excellent audio version of it. It begins with a brief quote from ULYSSES.
"He wanders. He rests." ???
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:45 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [JCO:963] RE: fossil figures
Rick,
I just wanted to clarify that the seminar I described was taught by Oates, and it was on James Joyce. I believe we were reading ULYSSES at the time. I was Oates's teaching assistant then, and the graduate creative writing program was very small--this was 1976. It was a wild time and those of us who gravitated to Oates were by definition on the fringe. I bet she was glad to get out of Windsor....Her journals reflect her extreme distaste towards her students who used. (By 1988 I was also raising a child and my days as an addled grad student were long behind me. But believe me, I had my day. Lots of us probably identified with Shelley more than any other Oates character.) Ha!
--- On Tue, 11/16/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>> wrote:
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
Subject: RE: [JCO:961] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 9:26 AM
Hi Max
Thanks for the insight into Shelley as 'The Fetish'-- that is dead-on.
I think I know what you mean about JCO disowning the book at one point; however, I wonder if that situation hasn't changed some. Her "Afterword" in the recent editions shows that her relationship with the book is extremely complex; I think it's pretty close to her heart.
All current editions used the revised ending, but that is also the one I prefer. One student had purchased the original hardcover on-line so I lent him an extra old mass market I had (the one with the baffling illustration of Jesse with some woman -- surely not Helene or Shelley -- in a small town?).
I'm fascinated by what you said about the seminar. A number of my students noted that the book was not like any version of Alice in Wonderland they had seen and a surprising number described it as "brutally realistic" The scenes involving counter-culture youth are so harsh on their sloppiness and death-hungry emptiness that I would think that reading/discussing it stoned would be a particularly bad trip. We had just had our first child when I read WONDERLAND in 1988 and so drugs were the furthest thing from my mind. I would think that powerful drugs and WONDERLAND would make for an unhappy combination but can also see how they could lead to the rapturous but troubling early responses she received to WONDERLAND that made her uneasy.
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 8:38 AM
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Subject: Re: [JCO:960] RE: fossil figures
Good morning Rick,
I wanted to reply to your thoughtful interpretation of WONDERLAND and of Shelley's character. I perceive her as the recipient of generations of family craziness. Therefore her "identity" is hopelessly up for grabs. Therefore she becomes, literally, 'The Fetish," the anima within Jesse's dreamwork. I'm not surprised that Oates has "disowned" this novel. It brought her all kinds of nutty attention and seemed to encourage students who wanted to study with her--me included--who were into all kinds of drugs and alcohol. (I remember being in her Joyce seminar at the U of Windsor and noting that of the 8 of us in the group, at least 5 were either stoned or otherwise intoxicated, and it was 1:00 in the afternoon.)
I'm also interested in what version of the book you taught, which ending?
Thanks.
Best,
MAX
--- On Mon, 11/15/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>> wrote:
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
Subject: [JCO:958] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 11:43 PM
Just wrapped up teaching WONDERLAND. It was way more successful than a previous attempt.
i felt this time that i had to over-interpret it for the students, initially. when i first read WONDERLAND 25 years ago I think I went into a trance early in the book when the unimaginable is imagined (for the passive reader) and, almost like Jesse, I "deep-froze" what had happened. By which I mean, I remember thinking "I can't think about that now... but I can't forget it either... I'll freeze it and think about it later." But Jesse never consciously returns to Christmas, 1939 so the reader needn't either. We keep running "into the dark" with him. But I think the memory of that day hangs like an altarpiece in some locked chapel of Jesse's soul. (I know it does in mine!) Maybe that is why the first 35 pages feel so intensely remembered, the empty fields "filling with snow and time." The opening page that feels like film footage played on a loop.
The students (freshmen!) certainly "got" the book far more than the last time I tried teaching it. One of the students brilliantly observed in her essay that Shelley is trying to "kill" everyone in the family. Not with a gun, but by erasing them in her mind as Noel commands her.
Which made me think: Jesse's daughter is unknowingly repeating the pattern of the grandfather she has never heard mention of, perhaps haunted by a too-silent ghost.
RO
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:03 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [JCO:957] fossil figures
Hello all,
I can heartily recommend Oates new story "Fossil-Figures" published in the story anthology "Stories: All-New Tales" Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantnio (William Morrow, 2010). I found it in our university library. (It's only available in hardcover.) Strange, disturbing tale of twins, opposites. With startlingly pointed political commentary near the end that I enjoyed enormously.
Rick
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Jane Ward [jwar...@gmail.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jwar...@gmail.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jwar...@gmail.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jwar...@gmail.com>]
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 7:01 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [JCO:955] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story collection)
I too was struck by Rick's description of JCO writing: "the brilliance
of the work alters the gray terrain like a lightening-illuminated
landscape" Nice phrase! So aptly describes my feelings about JCO's
writing.
Jane
On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:13 PM, V L Bucci <ginn...@comcast.net<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ginn...@comcast.net><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ginn...@comcast.net><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ginn...@comcast.net>> wrote:
>>>> the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>>>> lightening-illuminated landscape<<<
>
> gee rick these words really capture JCO's initial effect on me some 35 yrs
> ago: you have it in a nutshell! Up till now I've only been able to
> visualize it. I remember thinking, it was as though I were standing at the
> edge, gazing into clouds, yet somehow invigorated.. Alternatively (this may
> mean something to some, I hope), I pictured a John R Neill drawing from an
> early Oz book which has Dorothy bowed under a low but inestimably long
> Kansas horizon, amid clouds and wind, gazing toward (one presumes) the
> Deadly Desert, and beyond, Oz.
>
> At that time there was trouble brewing in my personal life, though I knew
> nothing but a sense of foreboding; JCO's works helped me become articulate
> in all sorts of trouble which foreshadow themselves thus. I have returned
> to her work several times since then, most recently when a family member was
> becoming increasingly ill over a period of years.
>
> I have always looked to JCO to 'illuminate' 'the gray terrain.'
>
> THANK YOU.
>
> Ginny
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 12:00 AM
> To: <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
> Subject: RE: [JCO:948] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
> collection)
>
>> Hi Max, and Everyone,
>> Well I'm mid-way through the stories in SOURLAND. I'm finding the stories
>> superb... and utter debilitating. "Amputee" haunted me for days. Every
>> story hard going. Kids lacerating themselves to ward off catastrophe.
>> Mothers gone sour. None of the stories are about grief in any obvious sense,
>> but the sense of being stuck in TERRIBLE TIME, having to slough through it,
>> reminds me again and again of that part of grieving that is hardest to face,
>> the part of just having to endure it, to get through it. There is nothing
>> redemptive feeling about this part but it has to be survived, I guess. A
>> lot of the stories in SOURLAND seem to involve loved ones growing pale and
>> meager in hospital rooms. Did I read somewhere that SOURLAND comes out the
>> period just after Raymond Smith's death? Maybe the stuck-in-quicksand
>> inertia of the stories has some sort of transferred cryptic link to feelings
>> JCO experienced in the weeks before and after Ray's passing. If so, it
>> makes my heart go out to her. There seems to be a heavy burden of real grief
>> in SOURLAND but the brilliance of the work alters the gray terrain like a
>> lightening-illuminated landscape.
>> Rick
>> ________________________________________
>> From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On
>> Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
>> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 10:35 AM
>> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [JCO:946] Has anybody read SOURLAND yet? (JCO's new story
>> collection)
>>
>> It's being reviewed as one of her best short sotry collections. And of of
>> her scariest.
>>
>>
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Jane Ward
Lewistown, Illinois
http://walkwithmepart2.blogspot.com/
http://eaglenature.com/
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Max Alberts
Rick,
Try Mysteries of Winterthurn instead of Bellefleur.
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Adva Weinerman
I have mentioned this before, and will do so again, have any of your noticed how Oates inserts into traditional names little spelling changes? Marya is a Russian name actually. Mar-ya. There are many instances or am I imagining?
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Gary Couzens
----- Original Message -----From: Max AlbertsSent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 4:19 PMSubject: RE: [JCO:972] Gothic Series
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu>
Subject: RE: [JCO:971] Gothic Series
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010, 9:29 AM
The issue of race in My Heart Laid Bare was fascinating... and unanticipated. I wonder if Oates isn't something of a visionary thinker about race; she seems at the far edge of our society's preoccupation with/dread of the subject and breaking new ground. I just taught Because It is Bitter... and feel more than ever that the book's fatalism is the truest way to tell the story of a black boy and a white girl in the late '50's... just before -- bitterly just before -- the changes of the next decades. As in Wonderland, the day Kennedy is shot plays a major role in the tragedy.
Rick
________________________________
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 8:59 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [JCO:970] Gothic Series
Marya: A Life is a novel about a brilliant young woman who has grown up in an extremely harsh--and crazy--upstate New York environment and moves away to become a successful academic. (Sound familiar?)
From: Adva Weinerman <adva...@netvision.net.il>
Subject: RE: [JCO:967] Gothic Series
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 4:41 PM
Marya: A Life
I was looking for the Winterthurn on goole and found a new title which is old but never seen in my library nor heard mentioned in this forum.
Has anyone read it?
Does any of you know of second hand online stores that sends books overseas? Would be thankful for information.
Thanks, Adva
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Max Alberts
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 7:58 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [JCO:966] Gothic Series
Folks,
If you really want to get a sense of Oates's genius and her incredible range, I suggest the books referred to by critics as her "Gothic Trilogy"--Bellefleur, A Bloodsmoor Romance and Mysteries of Winterthurn. (There was to be a fourth, The Crosswicks Horror, but for reasons unknown--to me--it was never published.) It seems to me that in those novels Oates taps into the wild psychic forces that initially shaped and continue to inform this country. Of the three, Winterthun is my favorite, but they're uniformly wonderful and deeply imaginative--not to mention subversive.
Anyone read any of them so we can start a chat?
--- On Tue, 11/16/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu> wrote:
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu>
Subject: RE: [JCO:965] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 7:58 PM
________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 10:31 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [JCO:964] RE: fossil figures
Max
BLONDE, WONDERLAND, DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL and WHAT I LIVED FOR are my favorite Oates novels. I do think she achieved a ULYSSES-like density in WHAT I LIVED FOR that is unlike any other novel by her -- perhaps because it all takes place in one Memorial Day weekend. Because I read it all the first time during a Memorial weekend trip to Ann Arbor, MI (I was working for Borders and attending a conference), for years afterwards I would try each May to reread as much of the novel as I could. I would usually get caught up in it and read most of it. There is also an excellent audio version of it. It begins with a brief quote from ULYSSES.
"He wanders. He rests." ???
Rick
________________________________
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:45 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [JCO:963] RE: fossil figures
Rick,
I just wanted to clarify that the seminar I described was taught by Oates, and it was on James Joyce. I believe we were reading ULYSSES at the time. I was Oates's teaching assistant then, and the graduate creative writing program was very small--this was 1976. It was a wild time and those of us who gravitated to Oates were by definition on the fringe. I bet she was glad to get out of Windsor....Her journals reflect her extreme distaste towards her students who used. (By 1988 I was also raising a child and my days as an addled grad student were long behind me. But believe me, I had my day. Lots of us probably identified with Shelley more than any other Oates character.) Ha!
From: Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>>
Subject: RE: [JCO:961] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 9:26 AM
Hi Max
Thanks for the insight into Shelley as 'The Fetish'-- that is dead-on.
I think I know what you mean about JCO disowning the book at one point; however, I wonder if that situation hasn't changed some. Her "Afterword" in the recent editions shows that her relationship with the book is extremely complex; I think it's pretty close to her heart.
All current editions used the revised ending, but that is also the one I prefer. One student had purchased the original hardcover on-line so I lent him an extra old mass market I had (the one with the baffling illustration of Jesse with some woman -- surely not Helene or Shelley -- in a small town?).
I'm fascinated by what you said about the seminar. A number of my students noted that the book was not like any version of Alice in Wonderland they had seen and a surprising number described it as "brutally realistic" The scenes involving counter-culture youth are so harsh on their sloppiness and death-hungry emptiness that I would think that reading/discussing it stoned would be a particularly bad trip. We had just had our first child when I read WONDERLAND in 1988 and so drugs were the furthest thing from my mind. I would think that powerful drugs and WONDERLAND would make for an unhappy combination but can also see how they could lead to the rapturous but troubling early responses she received to WONDERLAND that made her uneasy.
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com> [tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Max Alberts [maxalbe...@yahoo.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=maxalbe...@yahoo.com>]
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 8:38 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [JCO:960] RE: fossil figures
Good morning Rick,
I wanted to reply to your thoughtful interpretation of WONDERLAND and of Shelley's character. I perceive her as the recipient of generations of family craziness. Therefore her "identity" is hopelessly up for grabs. Therefore she becomes, literally, 'The Fetish," the anima within Jesse's dreamwork. I'm not surprised that Oates has "disowned" this novel. It brought her all kinds of nutty attention and seemed to encourage students who wanted to study with her--me included--who were into all kinds of drugs and alcohol. (I remember being in her Joyce seminar at the U of Windsor and noting that of the 8 of us in the group, at least 5 were either stoned or otherwise intoxicated, and it was 1:00 in the afternoon.)
I'm also interested in what version of the book you taught, which ending?
Thanks.
Best,
MAX
--- On Mon, 11/15/10, Oehling, Rick <oehl...@uww.edu<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oehl...@uww.edu>> wrote:
Subject: [JCO:958] RE: fossil figures
To: "tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>" <tonecl...@googlegroups.com<http://us.mc657..mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com><http://us.mc657.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tonecl...@googlegroups.com>>
Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 11:43 PM
Just wrapped up teaching WONDERLAND. It was way more successful than a previous attempt.
i felt this time that i had to over-interpret it for the students, initially. when i first read WONDERLAND 25 years ago I think I went into a trance early in the book when the unimaginable is imagined (for the passive reader) and, almost like Jesse, I "deep-froze" what had happened. By which I mean, I remember thinking "I can't think about that now... but I can't forget it either... I'll freeze it and think about it later." But Jesse never consciously returns to Christmas, 1939 so the reader needn't either. We keep running "into the dark" with him. But I think the memory of that day hangs like an altarpiece in some locked chapel of Jesse's soul. (I know it does in mine!) Maybe that is why the first 35 pages feel so intensely remembered, the empty fields "filling with snow and time." The opening page that feels like film footage played on a loop.
The students (freshmen!) certainly "got" the book far more than the last time I tried teaching it. One of the students brilliantly observed in her essay that Shelley is trying to "kill" everyone in the family. Not with a gun, but by erasing them in her mind as Noel commands her.
Which made me think: Jesse's daughter is unknowingly repeating the pattern of the grandfather she has never heard mention of, perhaps haunted by a too-silent ghost.
RO
________________________________________
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 11:03 PM
Subject: [JCO:957] fossil figures
Hello all,
I can heartily recommend Oates new story "Fossil-Figures" published in the story anthology "Stories: All-New Tales" Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantnio (William Morrow, 2010). I found it in our university library. (It's only available in hardcover.) Strange, disturbing tale of twins, opposites. With startlingly pointed political commentary near the end that I enjoyed enormously.
Rick
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I dont know how I missed reading Winterhurn; but I'm enthusiastic to read it now after hearing the good reviews here on this list,
Peggy
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:19:36 -0800
From: maxalbe...@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: [JCO:972] Gothic Series
V L Bucci
I loved 'Because it is Bitter' too, tho I'll have to skim it again after yrs
to remember why (getting too senior at 61!)...
anecdote: Bellefleur got me reading JCO again. I had swallowed the '70's
novels whole, not the least because I am from upstate NY backwater, & was
living in A2 at the time she was at Windsor & Wayne State... swore off sadly
when she went psychic or something (Portuguese monk?)... A decade later, I
was a young mom & pregnant w/2nd when I found 'Bellefleur' at my curb in the
Brooklyn brownstone in which I then lived. Decided reading this book would
prove I could still 'do things' despite my status. AND PUT IT IN THE LAV.
Oh, I had prejudices against multiple-viewpoint after some yrs of tutelage
by a published fiction-writer. Nevertheless, found the teeny chapters from
many points of view lent themselves well to a, shall we say, interrupted
life? (not to mentioned, worked for multiple lav trips..)
PLEASE go back to Bellefleur. It's a winner & well worth the trouble. :-)
Thanx for the 'My Heart Laid Bare' tip, haven't tried that one yet.
Ginny
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Oehling, Rick" <oehl...@uww.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 10:29 AM
To: <tonecl...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [JCO:971] Gothic Series