“To write a novel is to embark on a
quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to
execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange
dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The
Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream; he never saw it.” – Joyce
Carol Oates
Born in upstate New York on this date
in 1938, Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published 58
novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories,
poetry, and nonfiction.
Her 1960s series of 4 novels – “The
Wonderland Quartet” – were all finalists for the National Book Award with the
third one, Them, winning. The
other three are A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expensive People,
and Wonderland. Her book The Gravediggers Daughter won
a National Book Critics Circle Award, and she earned O. Henry Awards for
her short stories “In The Region of Ice” and “The Dead.” Five of her books have been finalists for a
Pulitzer, and she’s considered a “short lister” for the Nobel.
Despite her remarkable and prolific
output, she says she never rushes the completion process. “My
reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly
in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly
should be, an art in itself,” she said.
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