more widows
Oehling, Rick
Thank you, Bill. I was having a hard time finding the words but you expressed it so well.
I have been having a hard time thinking of works that are "like" "A Widow's Story" in theme or treatment of subject matter. But I keep returning to the Irish short story writer Mary Lavin. She was widowed fairly young and, as a writer, was a late bloomer. Her 1960s widow stories are justifiably famous: "In a Cafe" "The Cuckoo Spit" "In the Middle of the Fields" especially. Very unsentimental depictions of widowhood... including the widows furious rages that she must keep "under wraps" as insane inappropriate anger is indecorous to say the least. This is a central theme of "A Widow's Story." Back in the '80's I had a hard time finding interesting reviews of Lavin's stories, though there was very wise one by Joyce Carol Oates, a writer I had heard of but scarcely knew.
I had a superb "Literature by Women" class taught by Sue Hilsinger in 1980 where we read NOVELS by Porter, Stein, McCullers, Hurston, Woolf, Bowen, Murdoch, Lessing (The Golden Notebook!), and Sarton! In one semester! But no Lavin, Flannery O'Connor or Joyce Carol Oates.
Rick________________________________________
From: tonecl...@googlegroups.com [tonecl...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bill Coyle [bil...@msn.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 1:13 PM
To: toneclusters
Subject: RE: [JCO:1026] widows tale
Rick, I think you are absolutely right in identifying "Widow's Tale" as a memoir and not a work of fiction. Every story, fiction or otherwise, is the result of choices: what details to include and which to leave out and how to give coherence to the resulting story. I'm sure Oates used her great skill as a novelist (story teller) to enhance her memoir, but none of this is to say that it's fictional or made up. Bill
> From: oehl...@uww.edu
> To: tonecl...@googlegroups.com
> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 09:48:41 -0600
> Subject: [JCO:1025] widows tale
>
> Hi all
> 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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