O
Oates, Joyce Carol
Identification American writer and scholar
Born June 16, 1938; Lockport, New York
As a prolific and diverse writer of novels, short stories, book
reviews, essays, poems, and plays, Oates became an estab-
lished presence in the literar y climate of the 1980’s.
The 1980’s marked an exploratory and experimen-
tal period in Joyce Carol Oates’s career. Her high
productivity as a writer and the various genres in
which she wrote earned her a place in the canon of
American literature and a distinguished teaching
position at Princeton University.
Oates’s best-selling novelBellefleur(1980) estab-
lished her reputation as a gothic writer and impressed
readers with its strange combination of realism and
fantasy. Less successful was her playDaisy(pb. 1980),
based on James Joyce’s relationship with his schizo-
phrenic daughter, Lucia. Though disappointed in
the play’s lack of critical success, Oates quickly recov-
ered and returned to the novels that she preferred to
write, such as Victorian-influenced romances and
thrillers, includingA Bloodsmoor Romance(1982) and
Mysteries of Winterthurn(1984). At this time, Oates was
also writing short stories that many critics considered
superior to her novels, such as “Funland,” “The Wit-
ness,” and “Last Days,” eventually collected in her
short-story collectionLast Days(1984).
In the late 1980’s, Oates returned to her realistic
style of writing in such novels asMar ya: A Life(1986)
andYou Must Remember This(1987). Both Marya
Knauer and Enid Stevick, the protagonists of the
novels, experience brutality but manage to tran-
scend it through achievement in academic or liter-
ary arenas, much like Oates herself. In doing re-
search forYou Must Remember This, whose main male
character is a former boxer, she became fascinated
with boxing; wrote an essay, “On Boxing,” which
eventually became a book by the same title (1987);
and was recognized as an authority on the subject,
meeting and befriending Norman Mailer, also a box-
ing fan, and even Muhammad Ali, an experience so
moving to her that she was reduced to tears. Oates
also spent seven hours interviewing Mike Tyson for a
Lifemagazine article.
Despite Oates’s newfound celebrity as a boxing
expert, she was not lured away from writing fiction
or her continuing interest in poetry, known for its
bearing witness to women’s experiences. Although
critics and contemporaries have stated preferences
for Oates’s fiction over her poetry, she has contin-
ued to write poems, with a book,Time Traveler(1989),
and some of the poems collected inInvisible Woman:
New and Selected Poems, 1970-1982(1982).Joyce Carol Oates.(© Norman Seeff)