Product Description
Sixteen neo-gothic tales of horror, the grotesque, and the dark side of the human imagination focus on the themes of violence in American society and the exploitation of women and children.Amazon.com Review
The central haunting of this collection of 16 tales is notanything so concrete as a building haunted by a ghost, but rather theinterior haunting of a human being by their ever-shifting sense ofself. As Joyce Carol Oates puts it (in a fascinating afterword on thenature and history of the grotesque), "The subjectivity that is theessence of the human is also the mystery that divides us irrevocablyfrom others . . . all others are, in the deepest sense,strangers." These stories, while all dark, cover a range ofstyles and subjects. Some are vividly violent; several are subtleand/or ironic. The New York Times praised this collection for"pull[ing] off what this author does best: exploring the trickyjuncture between tattered social fabric and shaky psyche, whileserving up some choice macabre moments." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Disturbing and Disappointing
Joyce Carol Oates' Haunted is an excellent collection of stories that, for the lack of a better word, are "scary". However, these are not "scary" in the sense that Edgar Allan Poe or H.P Lovecraft are. These tales are much more like the plot of an episode of Twilight Zone with a twist at the end. As other reviewers have stated, her stories range from traditional scary stories that could to told on Halloween, to creepy tales with psychological implications, to horrific passages of violence.

The majority of the tales center around the relationship between a woman/girl and an abusive man. In most of the stories, the man and woman are related to each other though sometimes it takes a while to figure out their relationship. Though when reading these stories for the first time, the plots and characters may seem harmless. The terrifying elements lay just below the surface. Unlike in other scary story collections, Oates rarely shows the reader what is exactly to be feared. Instead, she describes and fear and panic surrounding the event and lets the reader infer. This technique makes the tales even more grotesque and horrific because there is no defined conclusion and it is up to the reader's imagination.

Oates also uses a variety of techniques that have become familiar to her readers. In one story, she begins each sentence with the word "because" which makes the tale almost seem like a free verse poem. Another story is segmented with each passage numbered as if the entire story is a list of some sort.

Though descriptions of the tales may sound interesting, the majority of the stories are incredibly upsetting. Instead of murderous hitchhikers or clawed murderers, these are stories that burrow deep into the reader's psyche and wreck havoc. These are not for readings around a campfire or for someone who wants chills on Halloween. The kinds of chills that these stories give are far deeper and are not easily ignored.

Not her best, but still pretty good.
Joyce Carol Oates, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (Dutton, 1994)

I've been a fan of Joyce Carol Oates for coming up on twenty years now. I was first introduced to her through her short fiction ("The Rose Wall", published in the inaugural issue of the sadly-defunct Twilight Zone magazine, to this day the best publication of its kind), and I've always had a soft spot for her "weird" fiction because of that; this was a book that was right up my alley, in other words. And while, like most short story collections, it was a touch uneven, for the most part it met my expectations quite nicely.

Joyce Carol Oates seems to be a writer people either love or hate. (A quick check of the Amazon ratings for the book, which are almost perfectly split between love and hate, reinforces this.) Criticizing Oates for "transparent plot[s]" and "banal characterization", as one Amazon reviewer does, is entirely justified, and perhaps more so here than in most of the Oates books I've read; there are certainly few characters here equal to those in, say, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart or I Lock My Door Upon Myself. But one does not necessarily read Oates for great depth of character, and in this case certainly not for startlingly original plot (most of the tales here are Oates' takes on already-existing stories, e.g. "The Turn of the Screw" from the ghost's perspective; given Oates' recent spate of retelling books [Zombie, Black Water, Blonde, etc.], this should not be a surprise); one reads Joyce Carol Oates for the lushness of the language, for the sheer pleasure of reading. And from that perspective, Haunted delivers. Not as well as in Oates' best work, to be sure, but it does deliver. *** ½

No one does it like Joyce Carol Oates

The author's stories are always unsettling, and the fascinating part sometimes is trying to figure out just why you've gotten the creeps so badly. The horrors she writes about are almost never easily definable.

Bad First Experience With Oates
I really looked forward to reading this collection of short stories.I love well-crafted, gothic tales, and from what I'd heard, Oates, an author I'd never before read, is something of a master.Sadly, nothing about Haunted indicated as such.

First of all, I'm all for leaving a story off in such a manner that the reader has to work a bit to connect the dots.However, if the author does not give enough information for the reader to conceptualize a logical ending, well, what's the point?Oates started each of her stories interestingly enough, but then they trailed off into oblivion with the ending coming abruptly and disappointingly.

Secondly, I found Oates' style in this collection to be careless at best.Her sentences lacked punctuation to the point that they were sometimes indecipherable.There were moments when her sentences didn't even make sense.While this sort of thing is common in experimental writing, Haunted did not strike me as hoping to achieve an experimental tag.

I will say that the most enjoyable aspect of the book for me was the afterword.Here Oates went on an impressive, fascinating, and well-written explanation of what gothic writing is, who its masters are, and what purpose it serves.Really, really good stuff.

Haunted has not turned me off from Oates.I've heard too many good things about her to avoid giving her a second chance.However, for me, she's got a great deal of ground to make up.

~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume I: A Collection of Short Stories

Up and Down Your Spine I Shall Pace and Stomp Hyenas
Please permit me an introduction...this is my newest ally, the pink and fluffy malcontent known as DREAD. Wanna meet his momma? Her name is Joyce Carol Oates and she weaves ensnaring webs of dystopian mortal landscapes that cause me to raise an eyebrow towards the filthy gleaming curs of nightmarish origin that procreate and assimilate through our tenures like phantasmogorical mirthpots.

Yeah. I like the book. Read it. ... Read more

Product Description

Celebrated author Joshua Seigl, an idiosyncratic bachelor and confirmed recluse—young but in failing health—reluctantly admits to himself that he must hire a live-in assistant to help him with his increasingly complicated professional and personal affairs. Then one day at the bookstore he encounters Alma, a young woman covered with bizarre tattoos, who stirs something inside him. Unaware of her torturous past—the abuses she's suffered, the wrongs she's committed, the virulent hatred that seethes within her—Seigl decides that she is the one, and he has no idea that he is bringing an enemy into his home.

Customer Reviews (33)

An uneven blend of realism, satire, and the Gothic
Joyce Carol Oates has dedicated this novel to Philip Roth and, not incidentally, she borrows one of his stock characters: the middle-aged Jewish writer suffering a crisis in intellect, faith (or faithfulness), health--you name it. The Zuckerman/Sabbath/Kepesh here is Joshua Siegl, a curmudgeonly, one-hit-wonder novelist with two debilitating ailments: writer's block and a degenerative nerve disease, neither of which he is ready to acknowledge.

Impulsively, Siegl hires Alma, an uneducated and effectively homeless young woman, to help with his everyday household, office, and eventually nursing duties. Each of this unlikely pair comes with a fiendish sidekick: Jet is Siegl's erratic, jealous, and meddlesome sister, while Alma (unbeknownst to her employer) owes her salvation from the streets to her "boyfriend" Dmitri, an obsequious waiter who does double duty as an anti-Semitic thug.

The themes that dominate the early sections of the novel are treated with unequal success. Since the source and depth of Alma's and Dmitri's anti-Semitism remains vague and unfocused, Oates's emphasis on their bigotry--and, more important, her inability to persuade us why it is directed solely at Seigl--seems more essential to the plot than to the characters. Indeed, there are moments when the book resembles a B-movie featuring a household visitor who turns out to be a vengeful monster. In contrast, the portrayal of the lopsided relationship between Joshua as boss and Alma as employee is brilliantly satirical and wickedly funny; Siegl is an employer who can't see the contempt his helper, whom he treats like a maid and student and daughter and mistress all in one, harbors for him.

And then, about halfway into the novel, the Pygmalion-style relationship between Seigl and Alma becomes tangibly and unexpectedly believable, when the writer becomes more than just an ornery old has-been with health issues and Alma transcends her role as bruised street urchin with a mysterious past. These chapters--the best in the novel--are graced by wondrous prose. But the novel shifts yet again when Oates's fondness for the Gothic wins out over her penchant for realism: all along, Oates has been planting various (and far too obvious) plot kernels and she gathers them for a paint-by-numbers finale that seems stolen from one of her Rosamond Smith thrillers. It's an ending most readers will see coming long before they get to it, and the novel's melodramatic flourish feels incongruous to all that has gone before it.

The Tattooed Girl
The book was an entertaining read. I thought the treatment of sematism was interesting. The plot kept me wanting more. I would reccommend this book to a friend.

So who amoung us isn't flawed?
Others here have given the plot outline of this book -- hopefully none have revealed the ending, which is as dramatic as any Hollywood Thriller.What I didn't see anyone say is that this is another case of Oates giving us characters who are deeply flawed / damaged individuals who are struggling through life the best they can. And as Oates develops these characters, we, the readers, are led down the path of caring about them, hurting for them and forgiving them for their imperfections.

As you read the story you know that there are other things each character might do (this is fiction after all and the author can do what she wants with these people) but Oates won't let them do romantic things (that we the reader want them to do so we can feed on our cherished cultural myths). Oates won't let them simply solve all the problems because in reality there are no simple solutions: not in this story and not in real life

Oates makes her characters make bad decisions, she exposes how vulnerable people are (all people, her characters and her readers too) to wrong-headed ideas and unfulfilled needs: be that hate and prejudice, or pride, or envy, or the need for love and acceptance. We are all deluded in someway or another, meanwhile we imagine ourselves to be rational.The story shows us that decisions made by the intellectual and by the illiterate can be equally self-destructive. Oates makes her characters see what they want to see, not what is real or what is obviously in front of them. (For example: the girl won't/can't leave her abusive boyfriend; and the intellectual believes the girl likes him while she is contemplating killing him.)

All of this ends up being an exploration of and ultimately an exposition about the human condition. Oates makes characters that are way too much like all of us--that is like real humans. Which means they are flawed, imperfect and prone to being deluded about themselves and others.And like the tattoos on the girl that are not done well--and which she doesn't really know who put them on her or why they did it--they keep her/us from being beautiful.

But Oates doesn't leave us there in the dump. While we have all been damaged in our march through life. Oates insists on making all her characters worthy of being cared about. I think that is her genius. Over and over she tells us -in this book and in others--that being flawed does not equal bad, or pitiful, or unworthy. It is just the state of things and that we cannot understand each other--and possibly improve the human condition--if first we do not accept the fact that human are not only not perfect they are and not perfectible.

Joyce can make any story interesting.
What a contrast of two opposite people who cross paths and grow from hatred to a mutual respect and caring for each other. I think she can make anything a great tale. Oates never lets me down.

Good, But a Little Long
Like many readers here, I first encountered Oates though her short stories which I have found to be compelling and wonderfully written.I found this book to be one of her best short stories.Unfortunately, it is a 307 page novel, not a short story.Oates had a great idea,interesting plot, realistic characters (especially, and sadly, Jet), subtle message, and, as usual, wonderful use of language (I have not read any of Oates' poems, but intend to now).

The story was just too damn long:Two-thirds of the way into the book, I kept thinking "get on with it, Carol!We get the idea!Appearances!Bigotry! Destiny!Move it on!"It was all I could do not to flip to the last chapter (a peach of an ending, I might add).

It all could have been said in 70 pages, to much greater effect, especially with the evocative language skills that Oates has at her disposal.

Well, on to my next Oates novel! ... Read more

Product Description

In twenty-nine provocative essays, Joyce Carol Oates maps the "rough country" that is both the treacherous geographical and psychological terrain of the writers she so cogently analyzes—Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, E. L. Doctorow, and Margaret Atwood, among others—and the emotional terrain of Oates's own life following the unexpected death of her husband, Raymond Smith, after forty-eight years of marriage.

Product Description
The Mulvaneys, at first a close and very lucky family, drift apart over the years, until the youngest son, Judd, discovers the secret of their downfall and sets out to help reunite the family. 75,000 first printing.Amazon.com Review
A happy family, the Mulvaneys. After decades of marriage, Mom and Dad are still in love--and the proud parents of a brood of youngsters that includesa star athlete, a class valedictorian, and a popular cheerleader. Home isan idyllic place called High Point Farm. And the bonds of attachment withinthis all-American clan do seem both deep and unconditional: "Mom pausedagain, drawing in her breath sharply, her eyes suffused with a speciallustre, gazing upon her family one by one, with what crazy unbounded loveshe gazed upon us, and at such a moment my heart would contract as if thiswoman who was my mother had slipped her fingers inside my rib cage tocontain it, as you might hold a wild, thrashing bird to comfort it."

But as we all know, Eden can't last forever. And in the hands of JoyceCarol Oates, who's chronicled just about every variety of familialdysfunction, you know the fall from grace is going to be a doozy. By thetime all is said and done, a rape occurs, a daughter is exiled, muchalcohol is consumed, and the farm is lost. Even to recount these events inretrospect is a trial for the Mulvaney offspring, one of whom declares:"When I say this is a hard reckoning I mean it's been like squeezing thickdrops of blood from my veins." In the hands of a lesser writer, this couldbe the stuff of a bad television movie. But this is Oates's 26th novel, andby now she knows her material and her craft to perfection. We Were theMulvaneys is populated with such richly observed and complex charactersthat we can't help but care about them, even as we wait for disaster tostrike them down. --Anita Urquhart ... Read more

Customer Reviews (493)

THE BEST
ITEM ARRIVED IN WONDERFUL CONDITION AND IN THE MOST TIMELY MANNER.HAVE AND WILL CONTINUE TO RECOMMEND THIS SELLER TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

terrible. awful. mind numbing. etc.
HORRIBLE. I seriously tried for 2 years to get through this book, and finally just gave up on it before I would have to resort to harming myself. Between this book, and another one of Oates' books (Rape: A Love Story) I am turned off from reading any of her books for good. If you're not careful, these books just may have you proving that the phrase "bored to death" really does happen...

Abridged cut way to much
The book is quite good but the abridged audio cuts way to much of the flavor of the story and looses the characters motivations. Abridged books are in my opinion a waste but this one is a bigger waste that most.

Taking happiness where you find it.......
One never expects much happiness in an Oates' story.This one begins with a "happy" family, drops into a deep chasm, and for those who survive, ends in an epilogue that is over-the-top happy. A celebration on the Fourth of July has all the giddiness that comes with too much sugar, excitement, and fireworks.
Still, it's a troubling book. I can't forgive the Mulvaney parents (I'm a parent and a grandparent) for, instead of supporting Marianne, their raped daughter, sending her away, and having little to do with her for years.The scene at her father's bedside when he is dying and wants to see Marianne, so she drives madly there to see him, seems a bit contrived. She's still saying, "I'm sorry." For what? Has she never learned that she isn't to blame for anything that happened and that her parents basically abandoned her at her time of greatest need?
Decisions have their consequences. The father of the clan loses his business, his home, and finally his life while the rest of the family eventually nurse themselves into reasonably healthy, well-adjusted people. It's a good story, worth reading.RVing Solo Across America . . . without a cat, dog, man, or gun> /[[ASIN:1587219298 Where Lilacs Bloom

First book I've read of Oates and now my last.
I could just repeat some of the other one star reviews.This was the first book I've read by Joyce Carol Oates and I probably would not have read it if it had not been recommended by a "friend".I don't think I would ever be motivated to read another of her books.

It was one of the most tedious books I have ever read, the characters were shallow, there was practically no wisdom or perception in the whole book and I have to say I found myself aghast that the father would reject his daughter, supposedly the apple of his eye, because she had been raped.He obviously only "loved" her as an extension of his own ego.After reading mostly 4 and 5 star books by Pulitzer prize winning (and even noble prize winning) authors, I found the style incredibly boring. I like to spend my time being productive and found myself so frustrated that this was a total waste of time for me. ... Read more

Product Description
An incisive collection of interviews with one of the leading lights of American writing.

Joyce Carol Oates has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award.

In her acceptance speech for the National Book Award in 1970, Joyce Carol Oates remarked that "language is all we have to pit against death and silence." In this remarkable new collection of interviews spanning more than 35 years of Oates's career, she talks candidly and insightfully about literature, the writing life, her background, and many other topics. These interviews should interest not only Oates's many fans but anyone who cares about contemporary American literature.

The interviews range from Robert Phillip's in The Paris Review to Lawrence Grobel's in Playboy. Though previously published, often in literary magazines, the majority have never appeared in book form.

From the Interviews:
"If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I've found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."
"I take my writing seriously, but I don't take myself seriously…that is, I don't feel pontifical or dogmatic. Writing is an absolutely fascinating activity, an immersion in drama, language, and vision." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Long-Awaited Updating
It had been years since anyone gathered Oates' recent interviews and discussions under one cover, and this collection is a good one. Drawing for its subject matter the texts of articles and conversations regarding (but mostly by) Oates, from such sources as The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Playboy, and more than a dozen other publications, Johnson, Oates' second most ardent fan after me, has done a sound job as editor of this project. These discussions show Oates as a thoughtful individual, often puzzled by the state of human society, and it is easy to see from her words how her efforts to comprehend the goings-on in this life manifest so often in her books. Within "Conversations" one can learn of Oates's views on Marilyn Monroe, subject of her novel Blonde, her attitudes on race, religion, violence, politics, family, love, the supernatural, and contemporary and past America. Most of all anyone who reads this book will become better informed about Oates' masterful insights into the malleable craft of writing. At times it is desirable to know little about a writer and therefore to have a more filtered and directed experience in reading her or his material, and at other times it is not (such as Sylvia Plath, whose life story has been fried into her works to the point a neutral reading is an impossibility)but with an iconic figure such as Joyce Carol Oates, background knowledge can greatly enhance an appreciation of her nearly one-hundred published books. I really enjoyed Joyce Carol Oates: Conversations, and I'm very glad Mr. Johnson took the time to put this work out there. He has my appreciation. ... Read more

Product Description
Joyce Carol Oates's selected early stories. Oates has chosen twenty-seven of her early stories, many of them O. Henry Award and/or Best American Short Story selections, for this volume, the only collection of her early stories available. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

You'll be charmed by Oates' world
There must be a lot of people, who became Oates'fans after they read "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Typically, Teenagers tend to disobey adults like their parents and teachers and to be self-centered. Heroine Connie is such a girl. Connie's charactor will arouse sympathy from readers. There must be many points that we used to think and behave like her when we were teenagers.
Connie is a self-centered girl. She is not chummy with her family and always resists her mother. She does not go to a church, does not help her mother, is not interested in family matters, and looks down on people. She cares her appearance, hangs out with her friends, likes shopping, and listens to rock'n rolls. She is, so-called, a typical rebellious teenager. One day, a mysterious guy shows up and causes something wired for her.
Joyce Carol Oates, the author of this novel, has been recieved many awards. This work was made into the movie, retitled for "Smooth Talk." This book will attract you and is worth reading. I think you will like it.

award-winning author for a REASON!
It bothers me to imagine people who are interested in finding out more about the works of Joyce Carol Oates may not buy this book because there aren't any really in-depth reviews of it.So I'd like to give you my insight into the novel.

I first became interested in Oates after reading "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been", the short story, for a college English course.After reading the story, I was instantly hooked.It is EXCELLENT, and so worthy of being read you could buy the book for that reason alone.I went on to write a fairly large essay on it simply because I enjoyed it so much, and I felt the need to analyze it so that I could better understand what is behind the story.If I had not done so, I probably would be in the "I just didn't GET it" category like some of the other more casual readers.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is, on the surface, a short story about a 15-year old girl named Connie.Connie is vain and self-involved, full of the sense of superiority that comes from being young and thinking you know everything.She has a strained relationship with her family.Connie believes her mother is jealous of her because the mother's looks have faded with age and children, while Connie is still young and beautiful.Connie's sister June is (in Connie's eyes) "chunky" and "plain".Connie enjoys looking down on other people, especially socially inept or unattractive boys.

One day her family is safely away at a barbecue, and a boy Connie has only once seen before while at a drive-through restaurant pulls up at her house accompanied by a male friend.Typically, Connie is at first only conscious of her appearance--does she look nice enough to greet the semi-stranger?She is unaware of any danger at having a strange man/boy show up at her house while she is home alone.The guy--who introduces himself as "Arnold Friend"--invites Connie to go for a ride in his car.Connie first thinks Arnold is around her own age, but as she stares at him longer and longer suspects something strange is going on: "She could see then that he wasn't a kid, he was much older--thirty, maybe more".And indeed, something strange IS going on.

I don't want to give away the rest of the story.I think I'd rather leave you wondering what happens to Connie and if her parents show up in time to make Arnold high-tail it out of there.In fact, the story has a rather open-ended conclusion, but that makes it all the more tantalizing.

Like most of the stories in the novel, when you first read the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" you are probably not going to immediately understand it.There are those who have said they despise Oates, but those are the people who won't like her writing because they don't WORK at it.Yes, you may have to WORK if you want to understand her stories.The best suggestion I can offer you is--READ EACH STORY THROUGH AT LEAST TWICE if you don't understand it the first time around!Don't get frustrated.Be willing to invest a little extra time in this book; you will be rewarded for your patience.I honestly believe it will be worth your while.You may find my suggestion boring and tedious.It's easy to simply give up on a story when you don't understand it right away.I urge you--don't make that mistake with this book.

Joyce Carol Oates is widely read for a REASON!The novel contains stories which received O. Henry Awards, in addition to other stories which were previously printed in such places as The American Literary Anthology and The Best American Short Stories.Again, Oates's work may not be the most easily comprehensible.But this is a very good collection of her works, and it will give you a great idea of her writing style.I hope you are as taken with it as I am.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
I'm actually reading the story "Where are you going, where have you been?" in my English 11 class. I'm looking for some help on interpreting it... I really don't understand it at all! I'm wondering if it is a dream sequence, or if it really "happened"... It reminds me of "The Yellow Wallpaper". I have no idea why... But it does. Anyone up to helping me get his story? My e-mail is ...

Somewhat unsettling but very well-written
There is something very unnerving to me about these stories, something that makes me feel exposed and unsettled.Many of the stories deal with awkwardness and youthful vulnerability, and the mood is contagious.

Regarding the famous title story "Where Are You Going", my husband suggested that it is a dream sequence about a young girl's decision to lose her virginity, rather than an actual occurrence.This makes it a little less tense ~ but only a little.

Every story is very well-written and captivating, though not exactly pleasant.These subjects are hard to look in the eye.

A perfect introduction to the works of Joyce Carol Oates
I first read "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" in a english course I took and it had such a profound effect on me I was prompted to pick up a copy of this book. To say the least her stories areprofoundly moving, thought provoking and insightful. If you don't know muchof her work, I would recomend this collection as a starter. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Very disappointing
I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't happen.The problem is that it started off really good, I enjoyed the whole beginning of the book and into the murder of Jesse's whole family by his father.Unfortunately as intriguing that part of the book goes, it fell totally flat after that.
It's written very beautifully, as I think Joyce Carol Oates is a wonderful writer, however this book just dragged on and on.When I got to the part where Trick picked a fight with Jesse & Helene, and they realized he did it on purpose becuase he wanted to die, I just had to end it right there and return the book to the library.To me this book was just a run on sentence, a VERY LONG run on sentece. It didn't go anywhere, I don't feel the story ever fully developed.

Worthy Effort
A doctor with a troubled past is so engrossed in his professional life that he loses touch with the humanity he serves, and a troubled daughter rebels until she is essentially brainwashed and ravaged by drugs.Oates called the novel gothic in tone.I considered it tedious at times.It is a psychological novel for the most part, and it seems that the concern over getting at these issues made the actual story and motivation of the characters difficult to follow at times.Overall, a decent work.Anyone who likes Oates will like this.For those who don't, it will be hit and miss.

Past the point of no return
I was past the point of no return, about two hundred pages, when I tired of the characters themselves who seem to be one dimensional and who act without introspection.Oates was able to give ample exposure to the dark side of behavior, but actions andevents seemed to come out of nowhere without foreshadowing.The mystery of human emotions which Oates is known to explore seemed to be revealed as philospical treatise rather than as artfully drawn characterizations.All in all the novel seems more like a social commentary than a human drama.

Classic Oates
I love Joyce Carol Oates novels, and this is one of her masterpieces imho. The characters are most fascinating and strange, and the plot is complex and hard to foresee. Highly recommended!

the great american novel
the great american novel. right up there with grapes of wrath, an american tragedy and catcher in the rye. ... Read more

Product Description
The first paperback reprint since 1986 of the author's favorite among her several acclaimed and controversial Gothic novels.

In Mysteries of Winterthurn, the brilliant young detective-hero Xavier Kilgarvan is confronted with three baffling cases—"The Virgin in the Rose-Bower," "The Devil's Half-Acre," and "The Blood-Stained Gown"—that tax his genius for detection to the utmost, just as his forbidden passion for his cousin Perdita becomes an obsession that shapes his life.

"Exactly why Mysteries of Winterthurn, or more specifically, the youthful detective hero Xavier Kilgarvan remains so close to my heart is something of a mystery to me. It must be that Xavier, the painstaking, often frustrated, balked, discouraged and depressed amateur detective so misunderstood by his public, is a self-portrait of a kind: after Xavier has achieved a modicum of fame, or notoriety, in his 'hazardous' profession, he comes to feel that his public image is terribly misleading, since the public can have no awareness of the 'painstaking labor, the daily and hourly "grind," of the detective's work: and is woefully misled as to the glamorous ease with which mysteries are solved' as novels may appear, at a distance, to be 'easily' written if the novelist has a reputation for being prolific."—Joyce Carol Oates, from the Afterword ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Case of The Mysterious Narrator
My take on this last novel in Oates' Gothic trilogy - and Oates's self-proclaimed favourite of the three -diverges somewhat from the other four reviewers here. The other reviewers have covered well the aspects of the novel that reveal how disparagingly women were treated, and how the class-system in turn of the Twentieth Century America was so rigid so that one is compelled rather to call it a caste system, the social divisions are so strong, and the consequences of it so nearly unthinkable to the modern mind.

But what intrigued me from the very start was the narrator, who obtrudes himself from the very beginning in an "Editor's Note."At first, he seems to be a commonplace citizen of Winterthurn in the 1880s, with similar prejudices and anachronistic judgements and, most importantly, employing the lush, seductive archaic language of the time.It is only at the beginning of the third and last mystery that he reveals that he is a modern chronicler (i.e. late 20th Century) yet still employing this archaic language and holding these prejudices that seem so foreign.Indeed, to the modern mind, he gets almost everything wrong - from his dismissal of "Iphiginia" and her poems, so obviously modelled on Emily Dickinson, to his verdict on the last mystery, the Jekyll and Hyde nature of which and the obvious logical culprit even the reviewers here seem to have missed.

He's a self-proclaimed chronicler of factual events, supposedly relying on documents, yet assumes the omniscient perspective throughout the book.This contradiction is outrageously apparent in chapters such as "Quicksand" - probably my personal favourite of the book.

And the language! How wonderful and esoteric for logophiles such as myself, yet employed in a rather tedious way - the prime example being the use of "withal" and its contradictory meanings of "moreover" and "nevertheless" - sometimes employed four or five times in a single page, causing the reader to pause slightly each time to twig, by context, which one of these two meanings this wily narrator is signifying!

So what is a reader to make of all this?First, let me state here for the record that, contra Oates, I find the second novel in the trilogy, A Bloodsmoor Romance, to be the finest, most virtuosic of the three.

But, in assessing the disjointed, paludal, well, mess of these three mysteries, the seemingly obtuse throwback of a narrator, and his luxuriant, archaic stylism, my eye wanders back to the Editor's Note at the start of it all and the last sentence of it:

"Yet it were well for the contemporary reader to withhold judgment; and to reflect that our ancestors, though oft appearing less informed than ourselves, were perhaps far more sensitive, - nay, altogether more astute, in comprehending Evil."

And, well - Who knows? - Perhaps they were.

Mystery reigns supreme
The atmosphere of Mysteries of Winterthurn is that of twilight . Mystery and enigma seem to be the order of the day in the novel. Three murders are committed and Xavier the traditional detective starts the journey of identifying the perpetrators. While Xavier is shown throughout trying to resolve the mysteries and identify the killers, Oates is engaging the readers throughout the incidents and events in probing the reasons for the violence which claimed the lives of an innocent child in the first murder case, poor factory girls in the second case and a clergyman in the third. The typically Gothic question "who is the culprit?'' turns into the more difficult question `Why'. And in answering the question "why" the entire society is identified as the real culprit through its biased beliefs which see women, children and the poor as creatures of no human or social consequence.

Oates' Favorite Novel

Yep, I read her saying just that.

The concluding book in the Gothic Trilogy, is really three novellas with the same main character, a young man whom we see rise from a schoolboy interested in criminology, to become the foremost detective of his time, the late 1800's.

The first story is set in the dreary, "Sleepy Hollow-like" hamlet of Winterthurn, in the bog country of upstate New York. In the man's family mansion, in a room locked from the inside, his cousin has been found near death and her infant son dead, covered with small bite marks. People begin to say the rather creepy Baroque "demon-cherubs" lining the walls as decoration came alive and attacked the couple. Did they? Can logic overcome superstition? Just what IS the answer?

Hint: it's gruesome stuff.

The next story is about the serial killing of several local factory girls. A Jewish accountant is blamed and the detective seeks to show it is really the flamboyant oldest son of a prominent local family who is doing it. It is a race against time since the locals want to lynch the Jewish man, held under light guard at the town jail.

The last story, set half a lifetime after the opening novella, features one of the beautiful female cousins in the first tale, who is found tied to a chair while her husband, an Episcopalian rector, is lying in front of her beaten to death on the rectory floor, with small paper hearts scattered all over his body.

Kinda grim, eh?

For lovers of authentic gothic fiction--not its pale modern descendant--the time spent reading Mysteries of Winterthurn will be time cherished. I recommend it without reservations. But fair warning, it is not for the faint of heart, or those whose attention spans cannot handle the demands of expertly measured prose.

Mysteries of Winterthurn
Oates has taken some vintage American crimes and fictionalized them to shed light on the true "mysteries of Winterthurn" : The attitudes towards class and gender which make the true culprits and events highly explicable to the reader, but not to the inhabitants of Winterthurn. The aristocratic inhabitants of Winterthurn (the poorer ones don't matter) are willfully blind to facts which conflict with their images of each other, which enables a vicious sex killer to operate with ease, or for a lady to get away with crimes which would have been detected quickly if commited by a poor woman. The poor can be hired, fired, scapegoated, raped, even murdered at will, and the parallels between their economic vulnerability and degradation, and their vulnerability to violence is deftly handled. Oates'description of Riviere du Loup, the working class community which Winterthurn uses as a refuge dump and as a place where any crime may be commited against the lower class inhabitants by the wealthy young men of Winterthurn, is chilling and plausible.

And for the record : Ms Oates didn't merely go back and take old crimes and recast them event-for-event with her own fictional characters in the roles of murderer, victim, witness...Instead, she takes elements from many different crimes and recombines them. Recognizing the famous cases adds to the pleasure of the book. Here are some of the famous crimes which she used in the plotting of "Winterthurn":

The Lizzie Borden case,
The Hall-Mills murder case, aka the minister and the choir singer,
The Thomas Piper "Bat Belfry Murders",
The Leo Frank tragedy,
and I believe I detect traces of
Mary Rogers,
Theodore Durrant, and
Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray.

The distancing effect of the archaic language helps to make it clear to the reader that the plight of the poor and downtrodden has changed little in the decades gone by. The language will add to some reader's pleasure ; others will find it off putting. It requires the reader to really think about the information s/he is being given, as the narrator is the 'incompetent omniscient' : A third person narrator who knows everything, including the most private thoughts of the characters, but who misses entirely the truth of the crimes and the motives of the actors. This makes the portrait of Erasmus Kilgarven, one of the most evil villians in modern American literature, all the more horrific.

Enthralling and Challenging.A twisted and romantic journey
Fascinating book, when one considers that Oates is writing in the early 1980s in a retrospective style and language.She completely hits the Victorian mark.Don't expect "easy reading"-- this one takestime and committment, but it's worth it.Elements of horror, romance, andhistorical interest are blended in a fairly balanced manner.The firsttale in this 'trilogy' of sorts gets bogged down a bit with all of theKilgarvan family trivia, but it is essential to the rest of the tales. Work through it.Xavier Kilgarvan is truly one of the most unique andengaging (and pitiful) characters of all the detective/mystery genre.Themost impressive aspect of this novel is that Oates leaves mysteries asmysteries.Meaning, she does not rend the veil of mystery in somehackneyed (though at times clever) manner, like so many writers in thisgenre (Doyle).The supernaturally strange events in Winterthurn remainshrouded (and as you will see, justifiably so) even after extensiveexamination and "ratiocination" (Oates' word).In the end, theTruth (if there be such a thing) is left for us to speculate.Theimportance (and the fun) lies in the journey, not in an unattainabledestination! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

More sinister offerings by one of today's best short fiction writers...
Joyce Carol Oates has floored me with the best that short fiction could offer.With collections like The Female of the Species and Transgressions, she has written stories that disturb you in more ways than one.Her stuff is literary, with a touch of suspense and terror for good measure.The Museum of Dr. Moses, while not her best effort, continues to bring in amazing efforts.

"Hi!How Ya Doing?" is about a friendly jogger whose casual inquiry drives a woman over the edge.Children are driven away from their normal lives after a family tragedy turns to a media scandal in "Bad Habits." Obsessive love is depicted beautifully, if disturbingly in "Valentine, July Heat Wave."Suspense and mystery are the main theme in "The Museum of Dr. Moses."

Those are my favorite stories in this collection.The others -- "Suicide Watch," "Stripping," "Feral," "The Hunter," "The Twins," etc. -- are good, but not as engaging as other Oates efforts I have read.You cannot go wrong with this author.Not if you're in the bargain for a high quality read.I cannot recommend her enough.

Pleased this ole Neanderthal...
I suppose some literary geniuses out there think it beneath an author of JCO's caliber to stoop to writing horror (which is what this anthology is-- ignore the "mystery and suspense" tag), a waste of her talents they call it. Well, I'd like to balance out their criticism by lavishing this book with praise! I speak for all my fellow horror loving slobs when I say that this book delivers the chills!

The second story, "Suicide Watch" was jaw-droppingly disturbing as the reader is left to reach his own conclusion about what happened to the main character's grandson. A fantastic read!

Another story that was so good it made me wanna cry was "Feral" in which a yuppie couple's boy drowns, is revived but something is different about him after the near-death incident. Another truly chilling read.

"Valentine, Heat Wave," "Bad Habits," and "The Museum of Dr. Moses" were all tales that floored me as well. Really, there was only one I didn't dig ("Stripping"), other than that one stinker, the rest is gold.

Joyce Carol Oates is widely recognized as one of the best writers of the last half century, but among horror fans, she is seldom mentioned, which puzzles me as so much of her work is amazingly gruesome and scary.

Highly reccomended!

Review of Oates' "The Museum of Dr. Moses"
I found the stories dull and ponderous. They seemed to be going nowhere and that's exactly where they left me when I finished laboring through them.

Macabre
While agreeing with fans of Joyce Carol Oates that her prose and general writing style are second to none, this collection of macabre stories failed to please. Perhaps the stories are just TOO unpleasant and, although I'm as sure as can be that I'll be condemned as precious and unworthy to understand such a brilliant writer, I still choose torisk running the gauntlet of her followers to state that these stories both depressed and sickened me. My reading time is too precious to waste any of it on feeling depressed and demoralized, even by such a fine writer as Joyce Carol Oates.

Chilling tales of evil in the ordinary
Oates' stories don't include a single ghost or supernatural event. Instead these 10 macabre tales focus on the happenstance of evil colliding with ordinary life. Many of the stories carry a sense of inevitability.

The opening story homes in on the bullying personality of a beefy runner who likes to startle the weaker runners in his path. You know how it's going to end and can only watch, with a certain uncomfortable satisfaction.

Some, like "Valentine" - a monologue from a spurned man to his lover - have a Poe-like feel, lucid but unhinged. From the first word the outcome is certain, but the reader is riveted all the same.

Others imagine the psychological effects of a very specific event - the change in a long-awaited child after a near-death accident; or the strange, halting absorption of understanding that Daddy is a serial killer.

These are stories to be read singly, not in a gulp. They are visceral, gruesome and unsparing of the darker aspects of human nature; also beautifully crafted and compelling. ... Read more

Product Description
A master of the american short story

Included in this rich collection are: The Piazza, Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Lightning-Rod Man, The Encantadas, The Bell-Tower, and The Town-Ho's Story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (43)

Mankind Adrift in an Amoral Universe
Reading, be the target novels, short stories, poems, or road maps, demands an investment from readers of a certain number of hours from their life spans.Perhaps I am too demanding, but I feel that, if I am to trade a portion of my life for the message left for me by an author, the message should be meaningful, and I should lay down the completed book feeling that I have gained something positive from having read it:a new insight, a new word added to my recognition vocabulary, or a new vicarious experience.I also detest having my attention diverted from the author's message by having to stumble around malapropisms, misspellings, or nonstandard punctuation.This collection of short stories (and I have no objection if one wishes to characterize "Billy Budd" as a novella)does not disappoint.From these eight stories I have gleaned new vocabulary and new vicarious experiences, and in none of them is the writing any less than superb.

This is not to claim that the writing is always easily read.The acceptable and educated writing style of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was far more periphrastic than is today's streamlined and, at times, abbreviated and almost staccato style.Simple sentences were not preferred over compound-complex sentences.Writers were not hesitant to select words that best fit their purpose, the number of syllables and the antiquity of a word notwithstanding.We tend to see such writing today as "dense, impenetrable and boring," but just think of the opportunity to expand one's vocabulary and to practice concentrating on the meaning being conveyed by those wonderfully detailed sentences! Communicating through the written word requires a joint effort on the part of both the author and the reader, and only those readers who are willing to put forth the effort are likely to truly enjoy Melville's stories.

I find it strange that most of the reviews posted here deal only with "Billy Budd" for the other seven stories are magnificent and deserve attention.Each one makes its own comment on the nature of mankind and of humanity's relationship with the universe.None is a "happy" story, for Melville did not see mankind's place in the cosmos as a happy one."The Piazza" shows us how much our dreams and imaginations exceed reality and how mundane, unfulfilling and prosaic reality is compared with the gilded sheen with which we adorn our imagined perceptions of things unknown, being certain that they are better than our own reality.

"Bartleby" is, for me, the most demanding story to grasp, and it still defies my feeble attempts at explication.Bartleby certainly prefers (to use his own term) not to comply with the expectations and requirements of the society around him, and in fact he is quite successful in not conforming to the social norms--but at a terrible price.Is Melville commenting on the fact that individuals are never truly free to pursue their own preferences?I believe so, but I also believe that this too simplistic; there is more to be found in this story.

"Benito Cerino" is a surreal account of the captain of a slave ship who becomes the slave when the slaves become the masters.Eventually rescued, the captain remains a broken man, freed of his bondage only to face an early grave.The fascination of this story lies in the masterful way Melville reveals the true nature of things to us through the perceptions of Captain Amasa Delano, who boards the Spanish slaver with helpful intentions and a large measure of innocent naivete.The story slowly unfolds through his eyes and ears as, very slowly, his suspicions increase that all is not right aboard Don Benito's ship.This is by far one of the most suspenseful stories in print in the English language.

"The Lightning Rod Man" shows us how successful charlatans can be when they prey on the fears of their victims, unethical behavior made even worse by the fact that the charlatans create those fears themselves.Perhaps there is also an implied comment here on the gullibility of those who become such prey, for the successful man in this story is the charlatan himself.

For vivid description of a desolate and hostile environment, it would be difficult to trump the series of vignettes grouped under the title "The Encantadas."If there is an enchantment to these barren volcanic islands, it is surely an evil one in Melville's view.His introducing each vignette with an epigraph, largely from Spencer's Faerie Queene, effectively sets the tone and mood for what follows, and the tone is always somber.

"The Bell-Tower" is rather intriguing in that it could have emerged from a contemporary science fiction story, a genre quite unknown in Melville's day.It is a pithy commentary on man's increasing reliance on his own inventions and creations rather than nature's (or God's if one prefers).The message is, as we should now come to expect, that man suffers from such misplaced reliance.

"The Town-Ho's Story" is reminiscent of "Billy Budd" and the reader feels that one has strongly influenced the other, although the outcomes are surprisingly different.I'm a little surprised that none of the reviews that I've found here have drawn a parallel between Billy Budd (the handsome sailor) and Jesus Christ or between John Claggart and Judas Iscariot or between Captain Vere and Pontius Pilot.Now before another reader takes me to task, please note that I am not claiming that Melville intentionally made any such parallels, yet I believe that Melville's symbolic characters can be seen in a somewhat similar light as those of the Christian allegorists.

All of these stories reveal the amoral nature of the universe, an amorality that mankind sees as dark and painful because it does not cater to his desires.Melville's skills at drawing verbal pictures for his readers are masterful but, like an artist executing a complicated painting, he is not always quick and easy to interpret.If the reader will approach these stories slowly and thoughtfully--and with a dictionary at hand--thenhe or she will be rewarded with a memorable experience.

The Fall of Billy Budd
Set in the 1790s during the Napoleonic Wars, Herman Melville's short story, Billy Budd, Sailor, is an exposé of the classic debate over the nature of man.Melville's story is filled with long and often pointless sentences, and the story lacks a clear sense of organization. Despite the difficulty of the read, Billy Budd is still a worthwhile piece of fiction due to Melville's marvelous ability to present the themes of the subjectivity of justice and the fragility of innocence.

Billy Budd is a young, handsome, naïve sailor aboard the English ship the HMS "Bellipotent".He has been forced into service but works hard and follows orders anyways. One day, he is accused by the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart, of attempted mutiny. Claggart lies to the captain out of his own envy of the young sailor even though the penalty for mutiny is death by hanging. The situation is especially serious due to several recent mutinies aboard other ships in the navy.Captain Vere is then presented with a difficult situation. Billy Budd had always been a hard worker and favorite of those on board the ship, but naval laws were inflexible. The main focus of the book revolves around Vere's choice of conscience or the letter of the law.

The story is short, but it is by no means a quick read. Billy Budd was published after Herman Melville had died. Sadly, the book was unfinished. Although the themes are present, the structure of the book is in total disarray. The dialogue is fragmented in places, and there appears to be lack of true development for any of the characters. However, Billy Budd's situation still allows Melville to expound his themes. Billy represents innocence and Claggart represents evil. Melville pits these age old opponents against each other in a decidedly new way which makes this book a good read for any mature reader. Like the Biblical story of The Fall, Billy Budd has his innocence corrupted by a man who hates Billy for his favored status aboard the ship. Naval Law would see Billy hanged, but Captain Vere has a hard time consenting to this. Vere, along with the reader begin to question the true nature of justice. Who says what is right and what is wrong, and how are we to really know? Billy's tragedy will ultimately leave any reader with more questions than answers.

I had to read this book twice, but after the second time, I was able to fully appreciate Melville's brilliance. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys classical literature. However, I would not recommend this book for anyone who just wants an entertaining story. Try something in the James Clavell or Ken Follett catalogue if entertainment is what you seek.

Bill Budd : Ishmael's Idiot Cousin
I went into Billy Budd expecting fully unique characters, dynamic adventure scenes, amusing-to-analyze homoeroticism, and original themes. What I got was a flat, uninspired narrative that would have been furiously marked in red by any high school English teacher for its excessive description and dull prose. Melville, what the heck!?? I go from a breathtaking adventure novel to this yawn-inspiring allegorical novella?

When Moby Dick indulges in diversions, it's like humoring a genius uncle who interrupts a riveting tale of his past for an educational discourse on different types of whales. When Billy Budd breaks up its narratives it's like suffering through a boring lecture from a professor who assumes his idiotic students haven't done the assigned reading.

Talk about a disappointment! I suspect that many people who claim to like Billy Budd do so because it's short and easy to analyze, and you can say things like "Oh, Moby Dick is next on my list. I loved Billy Budd." Did you really? I'll admit that the issues are compelling- innocence corrupted by evil, religion's role in perpetuating war, the condemnation of modern warfare which honors efficiency over valor... and so on... but they are not explored in an interesting or particularly thought-provoking way.

I agree with some other reviewers that this story reads like a draft rather than a finished work. Perhaps if Melville had further developed this it would have evolved into something brilliant, but he died before that could happen. I find the notion of Starry Vere arguing strongly for a decision which he finds unconscionable compelling, and I like Claggart's sociopathic obsession with handsome Billy. These could have been fleshed out- perhaps at the expense of the over-long professions of Billy's ethereal beauty- but they were left awash in a sea of messy, weak plot.

I doubt I will bother reading most of the stories. Herman Melville remains one of my favorite authors because of the intense enjoyment I derived from Moby Dick, but my opinion of him has been tarnished after reading this.

Sailors' Favorite Framed, Takes Rap
*BILLY BUDD, a classic tale by America's Herman Melville, was written 40 years after his burst of creative energy.Melville still possessed the feeling for a good story, but he wrote it in a language so ornate and (to our modern eyes) stilted, that one can hardly absorb it.Nevertheless, BILLY BUDD deals with a timeless human issue---the nature of justice.Billy, a handsome young sailor, has been impressed into the British Navy where he incurs the jealousy or instinctive dislike of an officer.Billy has done nothing to warrant his wrath and is highly popular among everyone.This officer, rather more intellectual than most, proves tenaciously vindictive.He endeavors to trap Billy in a mutinous plot, but Billy rejects the idea.At last the officer goes to the captain and accuses Billy of mutiny directly.The captain too likes Billy and cannot believe the accuser.He calls Billy, who in tense circumstances is apt to stutter or be tongue-tied.When presented with the officer's accusations, Billy cannot speak.He strikes the officer.The conclusion is swift and sad.I should not reveal the ending, but the question of "what is justice ?" lies at the center of it.

*Other Tales---these are neither very enjoyable nor easy to read except for BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER, an amusing story that might remind readers of one episode from "Sinbad the Sailor". Bartleby, a copyist or scrivener arrives at a lawyer's office and is hired.He seems to have no past, no present.We discover that he even lives at the office, never goes out.He gradually refuses to do all work, but will not leave the premises.How to get rid of him ?I could tell you the end, but in the immortal words of Bartleby himself, "I would prefer not to."This is a minor classic.

The difference between to be right and to be moral!
Billy Budd has never known a home beside the sea.Orphaned, and apparently un-cared for, even though he has a personal innocence, and beauty about him, he is at one with the sea.

In his innocence, he is unaware that his superior, Claggert, is also his nemesis, and one can only speculate why Claggert has such antipathy towards him.

Although there is nothing Captain Vere can do to save the poor boy, after Billy Budd unexpectedly lashes out at Claggert, we are waiting for something to happen to avoid the unfair morality of the story.While Vere has right in his decision to condemn Billy Budd, it is an immoral decision.Is what is right and what is moral it always the same thing?Not in this case, and perhaps that is Melville's point.Well meaning people can do what is right, can act in a manner that is correct, but isn't there a higher consideration.Why does there have to be a conflict with morality and correctness, with humanity and duty.

This short novel provides yet another addition to the literature in which to question right and wrong, good and evil.I think that this is an unanswerable question.

While the themes within this story and universal, and well presented, the language is nineteenth century.Parts of the narrative are difficult to get through, and many of the metaphors require a nineteenth century outlook.But the issues it raises are worth thinking about, and that certainly comes through, at least to me, ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

Well crafted, entertaining, and disturbing stories from a short story master
Joyce Carol Oates is a master of the short story form, and the stories in this collection are well crafted, entertaining, and disturbing.The subtitle of this collection--"Tales of Mystery and Suspense"--is a bit misleading, however.Yes, many of these stories are suspenseful and most of them have an ominous or mysterious tone, but these are not conventional mystery stories.In many of the stories (including Split/Brain, Strip Poker, Nowhere, Bleeed), the protagonist finds himself or herself in a precarious situation, and the suspense is linked to whether the protagonist will be able to extricate himself/herself from that situation.Other stories track the actions of an unhinged individual (Give Me Your Heart, The Spill), and the suspense is tied to what actions the protagonist commits.Sexual crimes and other forms of violence play a large role in most of these stories, and many of the protagonists are young people caught in compromising positions.While these stories are not conventional mysteries, they will keep you turning the pages.

Excellent Stories From Oates.

I don't have to tell anyone that Joyce Carol Oates knows how to write strong fiction that leaves you thinking about them long after you've read the last sentence. She's very, very good at what she does, and this collection of stories will not let her fans down.

Don't expect normal horror or suspense, rather a selection of stories that deals with the darkness that lives within us all, and how her flesh and blood characters deal with their darknesses. Very well written, and not boring if you love intelligent storytelling.

I honestly can't pick a favorite story, because I felt they were all quite good. I would tell any Oates fans that if you've loved any of her previous collections, that this one will not let you down, either.

A slim volume that packs a hard emotional punch.

DEADLY MYSTERIES OFTEN BEGIN AT HOME
In this short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates, themes of love connect the stories.Obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable love.We visit forbidden and chilling places with the characters.

Most notable stories include the titled selection "Give Me Your Heart," in which a woman pursues an obsessive love...someone who shunned her years ago.Her relentless quest takes us to dark and disturbing places.

In "Smother," an unstable young artist relives bits and pieces of nightmare memories until one day, everything clicks into place.When her mother, a professor and apparently upright individual, is brought into the mix, we see her perspective on events.Who will we believe?

"The First Husband" carries us along on a second husband's journey to exact revenge after he discovers that his wife has lied about the relationship.Will the consequences be too overwhelming?

Haunted pasts intrude on the present in these ten razor sharp stories that reveal that deadly mysteries often begin at home.

As usual, I found these journeys fascinating and compelling.I would definitely rate this collection, Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense, with five stars.

Dark Tales About Relationships Gone Awry
I am a fan of Joyce Carol Oates, and I particularly like her short stories, which are usually much darker than her novels. Give Me Your Heart does not disappoint when it comes to dark, twisted tales, but I wouldn't have subtitled this collection "Tales of Mystery and Suspense." These short stories are all about twisted relationships, relationships that may have started off healthy but taken a wrong turn and gone horribly awry.

I have to admit that getting through this collection was a bit difficult for me. I can't put my finger on what was missing, but this collection was not as satisfying as other Oates novels and short stories I've read. I don't know whether I've simply become inured to her plot twists, but I didn't find this collection as shocking or engrossing as her earlier collections of stories, The Collector of Hearts : New Tales of the Grotesque being a prime example. Still, there are some gems here, and overall, I enjoyed the collection. Joyce Carol Oates rarely disappoints.

where is justice?
ten more stories by oates.these are categorized as mystery and suspense.they're mystery stories with no solution, the kind of tv mystery dramas like 'columbo' where before the first commercial you know how the crime was committed and by whom; that's where oates ends her stories, suspended, suspension, suspense, with the exception of`the first husband' and `bleed' which are horror stories.

`give me your heart' is a letter of a woman stalking an old lover.

`split/brain' is an intuitive suspicion a woman will or will not act upon told in a stream of consciousness style in a single paragraph.

`strip poker' and `nowhere' are parallel stories about young teen aged girls, one 13, the other 15, both with incarcerated fathers, both girls in lakefront scenarios with groups of men in their 20s, drinking heavily.

`smother' is aboutinfantcide,a theme suggested in a couple of the other stories.

`tetanus' is about a pre teen glue sniffer who threatened to stab his mother and brother, taken into custody and left at family services with a sympathetic counselor.

`the spill' is a overly long story about a woman who marries a man living in the foothills of the adirondack mountains with his sons from a first marriage, his elderly aunt and mother and his retarded nephew, john henry.`the spill' is written in the style ofedith wharton's `ethan frome' and john steinbeck's `of mice and men'.

`vena cava' is about a marine corporal home from the war, wounded physically and psychologically.

these aren't stories with happy endings. these are stories of events we read about in our newspapers, hoping they never become our stories.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

excellent
The chapter from Wieland is excellent; I have read the novel, and found it one of the best gothic novels of America. I figure it is the way schizophrenia works in human mind. I also enjoyed Melville's "the tartarus of maids". Maybe it is not strictly a gothic tale, but it has a gothic atmosphere, and many levels of reading. I like the way the landscape is depicted, and the feelings it conjures. It is really an industrial nightmare, possibly inspired by the XIX century industrial revolution, and the terrible labour conditions of that time.
The legend of Sleepy hollow is a brilliant combination of gothicism, humour, and a thorough or exhaustive description of primitve dutch communities, rural life, and the lovely place where they settled. It is not so easy a combination, so the writer must have been very gifted to create it, and make of it one of the american classics. I did not like to much Ambrose Bierce's "The damned thing", It certainly is not the best gothic tale of this writer. He had wrote many other and moreinteresesting gothic tales, like "an episode in owl creek bridge".
It seems that american writers of the nineteen century were higlyinfluenced by religious puritanism, and - mainly - by its dark side, and destructive behaviour. For instance, "The man of adamant", of Hawthorne, and the above mentioned Wieland.
I did not like to much Gertrude Ashterton tale. Neither did I like Sherwood Anderson "death in the woods"; it is simply a sad story of a miserable woman, but it lacks interest. I enjoyed a lot, Lovecraft`s, derleth`s, and Faulkner tales. "The lonesome place" is a remarkable tale, about our dark places of our minds, and our fears of those places. Faulkner story is about a decadent southern aristocrat, that slightly reminded me of Tenesse Williams` Blanche DuBois. (even if they were not alike in any apparent sense) E.B. White story, "The door", is an unsettling tale of what happens in human mind when confronted with apparently insoluble problems. I do not know if it is a gothic story, but is a very good one. "The lovely house", by Shirley Jackson, has a feeling of impending danger... you feel that things are not so lovely as they look, that people are not what they seem to be, and that something bad is about to happen. Paul Bawles story is somewhat poor, I did not like it to much, notwithstanding the reference to drug use.
William Goyen tale, and "The Penny Arcade", are excellente literary works, but cannot be considered gothic. "Cat in glass", by Nancy Echemendy, is hundred per cent gothic, and a very good story. "Replacements", is quite weird and interesting. I did not like Stephen King tale, "The Reach", it is very long and not very good. There is a short tale called "time and again", that cannot be considered gothic either, but is quite good, unsettling, and weird. "The last feast of Harlekin ", is one of the best tales of the books. Gradually you start to feel a dangerous athmosphere, unfathommable misteries from ancient times, and fear of the unknown, and of what it is about to happen.
Mrs. Oates selection of american gothic tales includes many excellent, some good and a few definitively mediocre stories. I do think that in spite of some flaws, it is a book to recommend to anyone interested in good literature.

This book is a keeper...
I had to get this book for a Gothic class I recently took, and absolutely loved it!This is the kind of book that you keep and read over and over again.One of the things that I really liked was the way Oates selected authors and put them in chronological order through the book.I can't think of anything I would change about this collection - all the stories are very unique in their own way.

a rather tepid hodgepodge of weirdness..
Since I love gothic novels I eagerly dove into 'American Gothic Tales', a large collection of gothic short stories.And with Joyce Carol Oates as the editor I thought for sure this book would be terrific.Well, it wasn't.Not even close.

While it is hard to write a singular review of so many varied stories, let me say that hardly any of the stories were memorable.Worse, some of the stories were almost incomprehensible.As with other collections of short stories, I would have greatly appreciated some blurb by the editor in front of each story explaining its significance.Instead we have dozens of stories smashed together without interruption, with no real pattern to them.


Bottom line: I found very few jewels in this otherwise dull collection of stories.Not recommended.

Some great stories, some lame
I was rather disappointed in this book.Some of the stories were great.Most were unimpressive and a couple I would not have called 'gothic' by any definition I know of.I would instead reccomend the Oxford book of Gothic Short Stories.

A Better Name Would Be American Tales of the Weird
I don't necesarily agree with Joyce Carol Oates' defintion of Gothic literature in her introduction or that all of the stories in this collection are Gothic. The editor does a good job on the back cover, in her biographic section, and in the final page, of trying to advertise herself as being not only a "genius" but "rank[ing] on the spine-tingling chart with the masters". I beg to disagree.

Traditionally, Gothic literature deals with the dark and mysterious and with the tortured soul. I had great difficulty seeing some of these stories as being gothic at all. Some of these stories would better fit the category of "tales of the weird", but some don't even fit in that category. For example, there's a two-page story of a man leaving his wife and trying to wrest the baby from her arms in the dark. There's another with two men in a spaceship contemplating life. Another is merely a story of someone tripping on drugs.

Granted, there are some good gothic and weird stories here. The stories are placed in the book chronologically. Many of the earlier stories are anti-climatic with endings that are little more than a tiny "Boo!" (if that). Such a story is Oates' own attempt at a gothic story, "The Temple". Others are page-turners. In trying to put in some more obscure stories, she's left out better ones by the same author. For example, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" would have been a better Gothic literature choice for displaying Nathaniel Hawthorne's talents. And authors like H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, who greatly inspired writers of this genre, should have more inclusions in the book.

If this book were to truly be a book of good gothic literature, the following stories would remain (favorites starred): *Brown's exerpt from Wieland, *Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", Hawthorne's "The Man of Adamant" and "Young Goodman Brown", Poe's "The Black Cat", Perkin's "The Yellow Wallpaper", James' The Romance of Certain Old Clothes", Bierce's "The Damned Thing", *Wharton's "Afterward", Anderson's "Death in the Woods", *Lovecraft's "The Outsider", Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily", Derleth's "The Lonesome Place", *Jackson's "The Lovely House", *Cheever's "The Enormous Radio" (more twilight zone than gothic), *Bradbury's "The Veldt" (more science fiction than gothic), Doctorow's "The Waterworks", *L'Heureux's "The Anatomy of Desire", Oates' "The Temple", *Rice's "Freniere", Millhauser's "In the Penny Arcade", *King's "The Reach", Johnson's "Exchange Value" (good but not really gothic), *Crowley's "Snow", *Ligotti's "The Last Feast of the Harlequin" (a wonderful story in memory of Lovecraft), *Tuttle's "The Replacements", *Etchemendy's "Cat in Glass", and Baker's "Subsoil".

Even though I felt that some of the selections for this anthologywere poor choices, the good selections makes this a worthwhile read. Had she replaced the non-gothic and anti-climatic stories with more good stories by the above authors, the book would have been perfect. I will definitely be looking more into works by some of the authors like Ligotti and Wharton. I will not, on the other hand, be seeking out works by the editor. Her self-advertisement has fallen upon deaf ears. ... Read more

Product Description
Having gone into hiding with her mother when she was only eight, Ingrid becomes a vulnerable teen, desperate for a father and ripe for the abuses of a cult leader, until she escapes and struggles to heal and grow into a healthy and happy young woman. 40,000 first printing. Tour." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

THE ETERNAL CRAVING FOR LOVE
Ingrid Boone is the child of a handsome man and a beautiful woman, whose obsession with one another is like a powerful force.But her love for each of them, especially the innocence and blind trust she places in her father sets her up for the hunger that will follow her forever after; in the wake of a violent crime, her father abandons her and her mother.

Desperate to recapture his lost love, hungry for any kind of mercy at a man's hand, Ingrid allows boys and men to abuse her, searching for affection in the alcohol, drugs, and sex they offer.Then, finally, she gives herself over to the charismatic leader of an outlaw cult, Satan's Children, and she descends into the blackest of despairs.

There's a point in the story, narrated by Ingrid, where she simply states:"It's the men who treat you like s...t you're crazy for.For only they can tell you your punishment is just."

Witnessing a violent human sacrifice, and then left to starve in a dank dungeon, Ingrid's eventual escape brings about her redemption.

There was something so lyrical about this descent into darkness, for always at the forefront is the possibility that, no matter what this girl was subjected to, she had a strong enough spirit to come through it.Maybe having had the love of her father at one point, she could believe in some small part of herself that she was worth loving...even though her behavior throughout her teens and early twenties suggested otherwise.Seeking that love ultimately would lead to her devastation, but then again, would propel her forward toward salvation.

Man Crazy: A Novel is an exploration of our eternal craving for love and the devastating effect of its loss.

Five stars.

Could it get any uglier?
Admittedly, I am not a Joyce Carol Oates fan, and this book reminded me again why.I slogged through the first 150 pages thinking, "OK, the story will get focused and take off any minute now."It didn't.Page after page, ugly thoughts and ugly actions, rambling plot, lack of direction.AlthoughI try to stick with a book once I've gotten into it, I gave myself permission to quit reading this one.Maybe I'm missing something, but what, I can't determine.I like dark books.I like true crime books.I like fiction.Not this, never.

Ugh! Horrible read. Ruined my vacation.
No doubt Oates has a colorful imagination; nor that she is an eloquently descriptive writer. However, there has to be a line drawn between what we can imagine, or write, and what we should. It's a depressing tale told in horrifyingly explicit detail. Is it well written? Yes. Is it worth reading? Absolutely not. The imagery is truly disgusting.

Sex, satanism, and self loathing
Described as a novel, it may also be categorised as a series of short stories, centred on the point of view of a female character in various stages of growth - although that term can only be used in the temporal sense. Six of the "chapters" originally appeared as short stories in a range of magazines. An epilogue and prologue were tacked on to the total thus a "novel".Fair enough.But If you imagine a notice board with a series of snapshots depicting various stages of a life then you will get the idea.Each can exist on its own, but looked at in sequence and overall, a larger picture emerges.Some pictures are packed with detail, others offer a glimpse of a moment. THis technique is fitting to the way in which we all of us tend to remember our respective pasts - happy times tend to be foggy blanks where months and years may drift by suddenly punctuated by a dramatic incident. Ms Ingrid Boone has her share of drama. If there is an overall theme it may centre on self loathing, or the search for love, sentiments that are central to manyyoung women growing up in Western society where immediate survival is not an issue. The attraction the likes of the infamous Mr Manson, or even Jimmy Jones, have to young women is a central concern on MAN CRAZY.Is it that when the female child is abandoned by the father it reasons that the fault is one's own, by not being atttractive enough for the father to WANT to stay. The Manson character and Satanist she is beguiled by may be confirming her own view of herself, confirming the loathing, and thus being "honest". In any case, their is much to disgust, including the constant scratching of Ingrid of herself, picking at the pimples, picking at the sores, picking at the scabs, as if trying to destroy the evidence of her loathing - her body. Is the obsession we have with our bodies - Princess Diana and the millions she spent on maintaining her appearance, the series Nip and Tuck - are these evidence of the dislike we have for our bodies?Is Ingrid just an extreme manifestation of millions of young women as the emerge from childhood and realise they do not look like Princess Diana and that that is BAD, and therefore they are worth LESS?Nothing sentimental about Ms Oates' take on being a young woman in a certain place at a certain time. THought provoking and memorable.

A Truly Heartbreaking Read
Man Crazy, by Joyce Carol Oates, chronicles the childhood and adolescence of Ingrid Boone, who, with her beautiful young mother Chloe, is forced to flee her normal life multiple times on account of a violent, nearly-absent but ever-present father. Set in Northern New York, in a string of towns bordering the Chautauqua River and Mountains, Man Crazy is written in Ingrid's voice--often in streams of consciousness and reflections on memories--and follows her through various events in her young life:the vision of ghosts under a farmhouse porch; secret visits with her father; the plagiarism of a poem, recited at an assembly; the dozens of encounters with faceless men in the backs of cars; the acid trips; the initiation into a satanic cult led by enigmatic Enoch Skaggs.Her uncertain relationship with her mother is what caused her life to take the direction it did, while at the same time it is her mother who pulls her out of her degradation; thus, the novel has a redemptive quality.Ingrid's life is a troubled one as she looks back on it, telling her story to a counselor.By the end of the novel, Ingrid has reformed, has turned her life around; she is the age of 21, but seems a hundred years old.

The voice Oates gives to Ingrid is a distinctive one; as I mentioned, the story is told in fragments of memory and streams of consciousness, often written in fragments, run-on sentences, and paragraphs that continue for pages.Once I got used to this somewhat confusing manner of writing, I really enjoyed the way Oates uses language for the purpose of character development.Ingrid's voice is honest, simple, and forthright, while at the same time her meanings are multi-layered; in many cases, she is saying more than she thinks she is.Oates also uses her gift for language to paint disturbing, haunting pictures with her words: a teetering bridge, drug and sexual abuse, a decapitation, a dank basement where people are trapped, forced to eat garbage to stay alive.These images are powerful and hard to read about--but at the same time, I found myself unable to stop reading.This novel is beautiful in its simplicity yet startling in its dimensions.

I was unsatisfied with the ending of the novel, however.It seemed as though Oates was eager to give Ingrid a happy ending, but I was left wondering:How can Ingrid possibly love anyone else, when she's just learning to love herself?Nevertheless, I couldn't put this book down; it is a powerful, realistic portrayal of a girl who is given a new beginning after being in the lowest possible state, and it both broke my heart and made it soar. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Aimless and depressing
I'm not very enthusiastic about this book although I finished it. The story had some strange and disturbing twists, but never really gripped this reader. It reminded me in some ways of Bonfire of the Vanities--big shot gets in lots of trouble with the law--but with a very different kind of ending. Basically though the characters seemed humorless and drab. They didn't seem to be drawn from life (unless perhaps your life is Princeton where I believe Oates is a faculty member). In the dialogue the characters kept saying things like "Why on earth did you...?" and "What earthly reason was there for...?" The earth was invoked in this way at least forty times. I guess I never figured out what on earth the author was trying to get across except that even apparently happy and successful lives can be pretty aimless and depressing--like this book. If that turns you on, by all means read it.

By the way, Oates in this book uses the two most overused words in the English language:"rebarbative" and "epicene."If you know what these words mean without having to look them up, American Appetites is for you.

Think About The Title
This book is set at the end of the 1980's, a decade rightly or wrongly remembered as being about the celebration of greed. The "appetites" of American consumers in that ten years and in this novel itself, for food, for clothing, cars, toys, sex, even for lurid news stories to draw them away from the boredom the collective excesses of an age of plentitude cannot cure, are given the weight of Oates' keen judgment.

The novel opens with the seemingly placid life of a middle-aged married couple, Glennis and Ian, who reside ina wealthy New York suburb nestled in the foothills of the Hudson River. The couple is wealthy, prosperous, respected, and by all measures of the 1980's, successful: as a bonus, they are even happy. At the beginning it seems there is simply no plot to create out of a setting so ideal. But Oates has other ideas...

The central story here is about the accidental death of Glennis, a famed cookbook writer, who falls or is shoved backward through the magnificent plate glass picture window of her dining room, in the midst of an explosive argument that began with a drunken Glennis falsely accusing her husband, Ian, of having an extra-marital affair. Though he is grief-stricken at the loss of his wife, the only woman with whom the vaguely staid Ian has ever been intimate, a death that seemed doubly shocking considering how important Glennis was to the first quarter of the novel during which she appeared with her well-written, three dimensional aspects poised to assume the role of central character, Ian finds himself accused of murder, arrested, and placed on trial, The case gathers steam and what had initially began as a clear example of a misunderstanding grows in intensity until it is covered by media on a national level. Ian, more or less innocent of wrongdoing in his wife's death, throughout the book never rising above the sorrow at his loss, hires the best of lawyers but soon realizes that with the multitude of lies wedged against the truth, his future looks grim, indeed. He tells the truth but the muddled facts seem to condemn him. Only his and Glennis' daughter stands on his side, truly convinced of her father's innocence. Ian comes to realize his entire fate rests in the hands of a young woman he barely knows and has not been able to locate, the stranger he had been trying to help and with whom Glennis was convinced he was having an affair. Ian struggles to find the woman, but she seems to have vanished: possibly, given the nature of the circumstances that compelled Ian to help her in the first place, she might be dead, herself.

American Appetites is not the courtroom drama this review or any description of its plot might make it appear to be. Using food and elaborate cookbooks as a metaphor for the inexhaustible "hunger" of American consumers for stimulus of any pleasurable sort,Oates shows us late-twentieth-century society in all its gluttonous excess, and weaves in a suspenseful battle for a man's life while she's at it.

More than it seems...think about it!
This saga of successful lives torn apart by murder, Oates's 19th novel, appeals to the more sophisticated, mature reader. Ian and Cynthia McCullough, apparently happily married for 26 years, living interesting but average lives (Ian is a demographic expert working in social science research and Glynnis is a food writer working on a cookbook tentatively titled "American Appetites") are suddenly involved in a drunken brawl. Glynnis falls through a window and dies. Ian is charged with murder, goes to trial.

This story, in the hands of one of America's most skillful writers, turns out to be an expose of evidence against American appetites for food, wine, drink, power and sex. This is superb fiction that works on several levels, leaving the thoughtful reader with a great deal to think about.

spot on
"interstices" is another oft-repeated word. I found this book's main characters so annoying about midway through the book; people do things that make no sense, or an aspect of their chacter that would cause them to behave this way is missing. The ending is weird both in its brevity and occurance, and the book also feel dated, from the 1980's - who wants to relive the 80's in upper-class suburbia?

Mostly aimless and depressing.
I'm not very enthusiastic about this book although I finished it.The story had some strange and disturbing twists, but never really gripped this reader.It reminded me in some ways of Bonfire of the Vanities--big shotgets in lots of trouble with the law--but with a very different kind ofending.Basically though the characters seemed humorless and drab.Theydidn't seem to be drawn from life (unless perhaps your life is Princetonwhere I believe Oates is a faculty member).In the dialogue the characterskept saying things like "Why on earth did you...?" and "Whatearthly reason was there for...?"The earth was invoked in this wayat least forty times.I guess I never figured out what on earth the authorwas trying to get across except that even apparently happy and successfullives can be pretty aimless and depressing--like this book.If that turnsyou on, by all means read it. ... Read more

Product Description
This singular collection is nothing less than a political, spiritual, and intensely personal record of America"s tumultuous modern age, as experienced by our foremost critics, commentators, activists, and artists. Joyce Carol Oates has collected a group of works that are both intimate and important, essays that move from personal experience to larger significance without severing the connection between speaker and audience.
From Ernest Hemingway covering bullfights in Pamplona to Martin Luther King, Jr."s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," these essays fit, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, "into a kind of mobile mosaic suggest[ing] where we"ve come from, and who we are, and where we are going."
Among those whose work is included are Mark Twain, John Muir,
T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Tom Wolfe, Susan Sontag, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Joan Didion, Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Hoagland, and Annie Dillard.Amazon.com Review
The title The Best American Essays of the Century seems transparent enough, but don't be deceived. What Joyce Carol Oates has assembled is not so much a diverse collection as a sonorous march through what keeps getting called the American century. Read this not as a collection to dip into but as a history--a history of race in America. Oates says it best herself in her introduction: "It can't be an accident that essays in this volume by men and women of ethnic minority backgrounds are outstanding; to paraphrase Melville, to write a 'mighty' work of prose you must have a 'mighty' theme." The mighty pens at work here belong to, among others, Zora Neale Hurston ("How It Feels to Be Colored Me"), Langston Hughes ("Bop"), and James Baldwin ("Notes of a Native Son"). Oates has opted not for the most unexpected but for the most important and stirring essays of our time.

Other chords sound repeatedly as well: the problem of our relationship with nature (Annie Dillard, John Muir, and Gretel Ehrlich); the difficulty of identity in disrupted times (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion, and Michael Herr). In her essay "The White Album," Didion famously declares: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." The stories Oates has collected are not easy. Here is the hard-won truth, from writers unwilling to forgive even themselves. Even Martin Luther King Jr. doesn't let himself off the hook, as he writes in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail": "If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me." --Claire Dederer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

of great value
This is a treasure of the Best American Essays of the last hundred years. It's funny that Joyce Carol Oates chooses one of her OWN essays for the book, but it is a good one!

journalism & literature
Republica, periodismo y literatura/ Republic, Newspaper and Literature: La cuestion politica en el periodismo literario durante la Segunda Republica espanola. Antologia (1931-1936) (Spanish Edition)

Uneven in Quality
I was only able to obtain an abridged version of this collection on audiotape -- which did not include Baldwin's, Gould's, Hemingway's, Twain's, or Fitzgerald's essays.The particular collection I reviewed included three especially compelling essays:Dubois' essay comparing the return to a southern town of two Johns (one black, one white), which is a brilliant exploration of the Jim Crow system; Muir's essay about his near death experience with his dog Stickeen that is a wonderful treatment of man vs. nature; and Mansfield's recounting of the Battle of Okinawa, which is one of the best anti-war pieces I've ever read.

A number of the other pieces are fair to mediocre.I think what Oates ignores in her collection is the primacy of political writing in the latter half of the 20th century.Some of the finest writing today is not in the Muir tradition, but explores contemporary politics.Some of those political essays from the pages of the Atlantic or New Republic or New York Times or Washington Post should have been included.They are not mere current events writing, but are important historical documents and perhaps reflect where the best and the brightest essayists have put their talents over the last 50 years.

Still, the three essays named above make this collection worthwhile.

chocolate box of 20th-century thinking
This is a fantastic sampling of American memoir and reflections on race, gender, nature, literature, and other topics of broad interest. It features the century's greatest, starting with Twain, ending with Bellow. The volume is beautifully introduced by Atwan and Oates, both of whom help chip away at the manifold mystery of what makes a good essay. If memoir is of particular interest to you, you will appreciate the poetic sensibilities of the writers. The position essays are equally lucid. I will be teaching a course shortly on developing narrative style and feel fortunate to have stumbled upon this collection. For readers who are looking for varied and pleasant readings, the works in this book will provide that with a challenging edge.

AnEssay for Every Taste
I loved this book because it illustrated to me how much our society has and hasn't changed over the years. The writing was exquisite which was a pleasant respite from today's 24/7 verbal and informational assaults which are produced so quickley and usually without much pondering or maturing of themes and ideas. I see the essay as a slowly dying art form and I am just an average American who loves to read and think and write, I'm definitely not an academic predicting the end of civilization because of the pace of life and thinking brought about by technology. ... Read more

Product Description

When he died in 1937, destitute and emotionally as well as physically ruined, H. P. Lovecraft had no idea that he would one day be celebrated as the godfather of modern horror. A dark visionary, his work would influence an entire generation of writers, including Stephen King, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, and Anne Rice. Now, the most important tales of this distinctive American storyteller have been collected in a single volume by National Book Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates.

Customer Reviews (13)

Get It For Ye Introduction
This is actually a good (not great) sampling of H. P. Lovecraft's weird tales, but the one reason to buy this edition is for the Joyce Carol Oates introduction, which was a review of S. T. Joshi's H. P. LOVECRAFT: A LIFE.The introduction explains aspects of Lovecraft biography, his history of publication, and the evocative power of Lovecraft's finest narratives.I was amused by her disdain for one of my favourite tales by Lovecraft, "Pickman's Model," which she dismisses as "trashy."The tales included are "The Outsider" (long thought to be semi-autobiographical in its emotions, but this is highly debatable), "The Music of Erich Zann" (a fabulous fable set in Paris, which evokes a supernatural/cosmic terror that I found extremely suggestive and chilling), "The Rats in the Walls," "The Shunned House," "The Call of Cthulhu" (possible his most influential tale), "The Colour Out of Space" (a classic that shews exactly the nature of what is a "Lovecraftian" story), "The Dunwich Horror," "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and what has long been considered as Lovecraft's greatest masterpiece, "The Shadow Out of Time."I only wish that a book edited by so distinguished a person had had a cover worthy of her reputation -- the cover here is not so good.For me, the finest cover for a Lovecraft book is an image of H. P. Lovecraft himself -- he had such a remarkable face, and looks every inch the weird fantasist!

Losing interest
The stories are somewhat interesting and fairly unique.I am only halfway done with the book and have lost most of my interest though.Lovecraft doesn't seem to develope any of his characters at all and his writing formula is very apparent and strictly adhered to.This makes it a bit boring, but the premises of each story are interesting enough to carry the reader along.When comparing Lovecraft to his peer, R.E. Howard - I must say that Howard outshines Lovecraft in raw power, horrific, uniqueness of stories, interesting characters, and over all style.
I'd suggest this book only for people interested in researching the sci-fi genre, but it lacks much for entertainment for the educated reader.

Gothic Mythology
A big thank you to Joyce Carol Oates for compiling these wonderful stories.If you have never read H.P. Lovecraft before, this collection is a great introduction.

H.P. Lovecraft, once an obscure early twentieth century writer of science fiction, mythology, and horror works, is now the inspiration for all great modern horror and suspense writers (like Stephen King).

Often compared to Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft was a prolific writer who was largely unpublished until after his death.Highly intelligent, he developed his own mythology and created a series of stories surrounding these myths.He also explored, what could be called today, "genetic evil;" where people inherit a primitive evil that passes along the generational bloodline.

His stories run the gamut of horror and suspense in this collection.Oates seems to have arranged them as if to pick up steam.The next story is a little longer and more involved than the last.More exciting than scary, these stories do take a long to build up and then end as if in an explosion.These stories are not for everyone, but everyone should give them a try.

My personal favorites are: The Rats in the Walls, The Call of Cthulhu, The Outsider, and The Shunned House.

Best way to get into Lovecraft
If you're just getting into Lovecraft, this is, without a doubt, the best way to get started with your favorite old god, Cthulhu. It contains a perfect list of Lovecraft standards: The Outsider; The Music of Erich Zann; The Rats in the Walls; The Shunned House; The Call of Cthulhu; The Colour out of Space; The Dunwich Horror; At the Mountains of Madness; The Shadow over Innsmouth; and The Shadow Out of Time. You'll love every one, and crave more.

If you're torn between this and the Penguin editions, I'd recommend you start with this. The three Penguin volumes are complete, but each is a mixed bag of great stories with...not so great. Go for those after you read through this.

The Shadow over Lovecraft
On the front cover of this book there is a quote from Stephen King - `H.P.Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.' I had read other praise for HP Lovecraft before and could not wait to get started on my first collection of tales from what I expected was one of the greatest horror writers ever to grace the earth. As I read the introduction I was even more intrigued and also because of the tragic circumstances of his life even more predisposed to like him. However, as I started to read the first tale I found myself being slightly disappointed. His work did not seem original to me - this is probably a by product of Lovecraft himself being heavily influenced by Edgar Allen Poe and every modern horror writer being influenced by both Lovecraft and Poe. I read on hoping that each story would be a little bit better than the last and still was disappointed.

Most of his stories are written in the first person, most our written as eyewitness accounts of the strange events that they themselves - the writers - have witnessed. This does give the reader a sense of realism but at times I believe Lovecraft goes too far in describing these events. Every creature, every nightmare vision is described down to the most intricate of details leaving nothing to the reader's imagination. (Is it just me or should a pre-requisite for a horror writer not be to leave something to the imagination of the reader? As our imaginations can conjure up more enduring and sinister visions that a writer could not possible describe on paper.)

I feel I have been quite harsh towards Mr Lovecraft, although I do believe my criticisms are warranted, however, I am going to offer him some praise. The Call of Cthulhu gives life to the dreaded creature, Cthulhu a sleeping creature who sleeps the sleep of the dead in his nightmarish domain. He is the High Priest of the `Great Old Ones' a race of people that inhabited this earth before we humans evolved. We are warned in this story and in many of Lovecraft's other stories that `The Great Ones' will return and displace mankind forever. This story shows excellent promise and would have been the basis of a great novel had Lovecraft gained the respect of his peers during his lifetime maybe he would have delighted even me, a Lovecraft sceptic, with more tales of Cthulhu.
... Read more