Joyce Carol Oates – The Faith of a Writer – Comment

 

Joyce Carol Oates continues to write prolifically to this day. The Oates 'cannon' in sheer volume is, for any writer, overwhelming and daunting. To read only a few of her works is to barely make a dent. As far as the American literati is concerned, she stands level with Vidal, Hemingway, Faulkner, Updike, Bellow, and Chandler. For American literature over the last century, Joyce Carol Oates is a force of nature. In this thin volume are 14 essays on writing and being a writer.

The most common question Professor Oates is asked is: When did you know you were going to be a writer?

Answer:

To me, the very question is a riddle, unanswerable. My instinct is to shrink from it: the assumption that I think of myself as a “writer” in any formally designated, pretentious sense. I hate the oracular voice, the inflated self-importance of the Seer.

Oates attempts to talk about writing undogmatically, something provisional...the process of writing than the uneasy, uncertain position of being a writer.

Returning to her childhood, the fascination with the story was instantly there. It wasn't the written word that intrigued her young mind, but the coloring books that sparked that storytelling gene. Remembering the written word, it was The Gold Bug and Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Recalling her feelings about these stories, she didn't know what to make of it. Time moves forward, and she says she Persisted with Edgar Allan Poe.

One can see the influence of Poe in her writings, as the stories appear banal on the surface, later revealing a vile undercurrent of human evil and the macabre.

In the Chapter, To a Young Writer, the advice is straightforward and simple:

Write your heart out.

Never be ashamed of your subject and of your passion for your subject.

The chapters I found to be the most informative are: Notes on Failure and Reading as a Writer.

I came away from Oates' comments on Chekhov, Kafka, Joyce, and Woolf. The early works from many of these writers were never published, however, led the way to their individual masterpieces. Feeling like a failure, persistence paid off. In the case of James Joyce, his first unpublished novel, Stephen Hero, paving the way to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Would Portrait ever have been written if the uncompleted Stephen Hero had been published? Joyce made a list of “epiphanies” or “spiritual manifestations,” later incorporated into Dubliners and Ulysses.

In the Chapter, Blonde Ambition Greg Johnson's interview about Oates' novel Blonde, a fictional text about Norma Jeane Baker, better known as Marilyn Monroe. Personally, what I found interesting was the author's answer concerning her writing process:

With a novel of such length, it was necessary to keep the narrative voice consistent and fluid. I was continually going back and rewriting, and when I entered the last phase of about 200 pages, I began simultaneously to rewrite the novel from the first page to about 300 to assure this consistency of voice. (p.147)

I remember at school being told over and over again,... there is no such thing as writing, only rewriting. JCO takes this to a whole new level.

The “advice” given that I believe to be the most powerful and true is:

Is there any moral to be drawn from this compendium, any general proposition? Read widely, read enthusiastically, be guided by instinct, and not design. For if you read, you need not be a writer; but if you hope to become a writer, you must read.

The Faith of a Writer – Life, Craft, Art is a text any budding writer or practicing writer should read.

An inspiring text.