widows tale
Oehling, Rick
Just finished A Widow's Story late last night. Then fell asleep at 10 pm, four hours earlier than my usual bedtime. I think I wanted to dream my way back in to this book that was very tough to get through. But which I am going to remember.
It is unlike any other Oates book because here she really is writing of her life. For me, the psychic edges of this book are jagged and threatening in a way distinct from anything else she's written.
I know she blurred the line between fiction and "real life" in her novel "them" where "Joyce Carol Oates" is Maureen's teacher who flunks her. Writing of the novel later, Oates expressed surprise that readers in 1969 (the heyday of Barth, Barthes and Bartheme and METAFICTION!) did not see how she was also playing with a metafictional conceit within a realistic fiction. She did it very briefly in Wonderland.
But Oates has never written a novel that resembles Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook where a first person narrator recounts the daily life of the woman writer, what she is reading, thinking, feeling as she crafts her life and fiction. (I mention the Golden Notebook because I understand its a book Oates greatly admires.) Oates creates a writer as her narrator and its Skyler Rampike of My Sister, My Love, a tormented boy 50 years her junior and utterly believable.
All of which is to say: I don't think " Widow's Story" should be read as fiction but as her first real memoir.
But I think it is intended as a wildly distorting mirror. By providing herself (the Widow) no solace, no kindness, the book is strangely consoling to the reader. (In my case still naif; I haven't experienced very much death... yet.) Just as all the flowers & gifts sent to Oates become depressing in their cheerfulness, so the cheerlessness of the tale comes to offer the reader (me anyway) this very real fortitude.
Its in the humor I think -- "The widow is deranged, but she is not that deranged!" Oates writes after reading the gift plant warning label: Not for consumption by humans.
And the strength of friendship. It warmed the cockles of my gay heart to no end to read of how close JCO is to the gay writer Edmund White, the author of numerous excellent books including The Married Man. They watch TV late at night in the hotel room -- the classic straight woman/gay man date! Oates suggests near the end that her friends kept her alive.
So I'm curious what all of you think about it. Oates is svery private person and I think she has used that effectively as a fiction writer. The outside of the house could not be more decorous: peek in the mailbox, THERE ARE STORMS INSIDE!
That's a widow's story.
Rick
PS Maslin's review is like reading "The Grapes of Wrath" and saying at the end: I still don't know how to make wine."
_______________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oehling, Rick [oehl...@uww.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 12:05 PM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [JCO:1023] MY SISTER MY LOVE
My Sister, My Love is one of my favorites. Oates also wrote a long non-fiction piece about the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case. You can find the link to it on the "My Sister, My Love" page of Celestial Timepiece. There is also a poem included on the page about Jon Benet Ramsey. I never understood the poem until I saw that it's "tornado" shape is intended to resemble the effect of being choked (or, more precisely, "garotted") to death. It's a stunner.
Skyler Rampike is one of my favorite Oates characters.
Rick
________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of P S Bonas [pbo...@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:10 AM
To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [JCO:1022] MY SISTER MY LOVE
I'm half-way through reading My Sister, My Love.
If I had any idea that I would be enjoying this book as much as I am right now I would have read it much sooner.
Oates' has turned this story into an absolute twisted ride of fun ! !
Peggy
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Bill Coyle
Eric Anderson
Hi Rick
It’s nice to hear your reactions to A Widow’s Story. It’s an incredibly moving read. As an avid JCO reader it’s so fascinating to see her writing straightforwardly as herself and it’s brave of her to open up her personal life like this in the hope of helping other people. There’s a new audio interview which has just appeared here: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/02/28/joyce-carol-oates-2
From the responses of callers she’s obviously helping many other people who are dealing with grief.
Interesting to hear her directly respond in this interview to the issue raised in the Maslin review.
Randy’s responses to it which he posted on the Celestial Timepiece website is well-thought out and correct.
Maybe the book should be classified in that genre known as Life Writing, not that classification is that important. But it seems to have been created with the thought in mind that to share one’s own personal story some of the emotional experiences she had will probably overlap with other people’s experiences.
It’s interesting to compare the memoir with Missing Mom since that’s a book she wrote similarly out of grief for the death of a loved one. Perhaps she had the same impulse when writing Missing Mom to share in the hope of helping others who were making the transition from “child” to “orphan” due to the loss of a parent (even if the child in question is someone who is a full grown adult). I wonder why she felt it was more appropriate to write this book as a novel rather than a memoir. The circumstances she writes about in Missing Mom are very different from the death of her own mother so maybe she wanted to capture something about a sudden loss as depicted in the novel.
We also have the recent story collection Sourland to read as a fictional counterpart to A Widow’s Story as well. In the stories which involve widows she seems to be getting at some of the feelings which maybe were emotionally true or projections of how it felt to be suddenly abandoned from a spouse’s death. Interesting to think how these responses to powerful emotional experiences are organized in an artist’s mind and come out in different forms of writing.
I thought after the Journals were published we would never get anything close to a memoir from Oates since it seemed to detail her life quite fully. So it was very touching to be able to read A Widow’s Story and heartening to hear she has so many trusted friends she can rely on for comfort.
Other than the very moving account of such a personal loss, a tragedy that comes out of the book for me is her decision to close the Ontario Review. It was such a wonderful publication and it was the highlight of my writing life to have a story appear in it. I wonder if anyone who worked on Ontario Review or any professional acquaintances offered to step up and help run the publication following Raymond’s death. I certainly would have been happy to.
Eric
> From: oehl...@uww.edu
> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 09:48:41 -0600
> Subject: [JCO:1025] widows tale
>