Where I've Been, and where I'm Going: Essays, Reviews, and Prose

Front Cover
Plume, 1999 - 386 pages
This compilation of nearly 50 recent essays and reviews by one of America's leading literary figures demonstrates Joyce Carol Oates's passionate and wide-ranging interests. Fairytales ancient and modern, the literature of serial killers, surrealist art. boxing -- these are but a few of the subjects to which Oates turns her formidable intelligence. From studies of literary and art history, to examinations of the creative process and the role Of the artist in society. Oates's eloquent and thought-provoking commentaries remind us of the pleasures of the essay form. Included here are significant studies of such literary personalities as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Raymond Chandler. Sylvia Plath and Paul Bowles. among others. Where I've Been, and Where I'm Going also features Oates's writings about her own work, including essays on Expensive People. Wonderland, and Foxfire. Like her 1988 collection. (Woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities, these fascinating essays are a privileged glimpse into one of the most fascinating minds of our era.

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Contents

Where Is an Author?
3
In Olden Times When Wishing Was Having
9
The Aesthetics of Fear
26
Copyright

32 other sections not shown

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About the author (1999)

Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Syracuse University and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of numerous novels and collections of short stories. Her works include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Bellefleur, You Must Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, Marya : A Life, and Give Me Your Heart. She has received numerous awards including the National Book Award for Them, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. She was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her title Lovely, Dark, Deep. She also wrote a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. In 2015, her novel The Accursed became listed as a bestseller on the iBooks chart. She worked as a professor of English at the University of Windsor, before becoming the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She and her late husband Raymond J. Smith operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review.

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