Burning Oak, November
Joyce Carol Oates
One of the most prolific American writers of the 20th Century, Joyce-Carol Oates makes work of remarkable duality. A novelist, essayist, historical biographer, and poet, she writes from the gutter looking at the stars. Unflinchingly honest and occasional brutal in its realism, her work also has moments of unadulterated magic, of gothic romanticism and pure fantasy run amok. She writes of America, the nation as she sees it across time. It is, for her, an idea that permeates its landscape and people, the flaws and beauty of the country present in its occupants. While less known for her poems, they are able to distills the grand ideas that exist across her writing into potent moments of violent beauty. “I try to write books that can be read in one way by a literal-minded reader” says Oates, “and in quite another way by a reader alert to symbolic abbreviation and parodistic elements.”