Joyce Carol Oates

:00:15. > :00:22.attack -- shooting attack in the I am in New Jersey for this edition

:00:22. > :00:25.of talking books. My guest is Joyce Carol Oates, a novelist and a

:00:25. > :00:32.professor at nearby Princeton University. She is one of the most

:00:32. > :00:38.prolific American writers. In her 50th year as a published writer,

:00:38. > :00:48.she is continually drawn to examine how human beings cope with

:00:48. > :00:57.

:00:57. > :01:01.explosive violence in their lives. Welcome to talking books. Thank you.

:01:01. > :01:06.I want to ask about the longevity of your writing. You have been

:01:06. > :01:12.writing for many years, you are in your 50th year as a published

:01:12. > :01:17.writer. Does it excite you as it used to? Certainly. There is a

:01:17. > :01:22.romance of writing, not knowing what you will be writing on a given

:01:22. > :01:27.day. I am happiest when I am revising a manuscript that I have

:01:27. > :01:32.finished. Because I both know what it is - I know the ending and so

:01:32. > :01:38.forth - but also because I know how the sentences came about. Does it

:01:38. > :01:43.worry you that there is less of an interest because the demands on any

:01:43. > :01:47.given audience are that much greater? The demands on people's

:01:47. > :01:53.time of greeter. People are less interested in sitting down with a

:01:53. > :02:00.book. That might be... I am not really aware of an audience. I have

:02:00. > :02:06.not thought about those things too much. Going back to when you first

:02:06. > :02:11.started writing, tell me about new writing from a young age. Who was

:02:11. > :02:17.it who encouraged you? Before I could write, I was drawing and

:02:17. > :02:23.colouring in a little book. It is an intrinsic human desire to tell

:02:23. > :02:28.stories, to draw and to have a kind of mimicry of the world. Children

:02:28. > :02:33.do this without any sense of an audience. They just chatter away.

:02:33. > :02:38.And if they have an audience, the audience does not understand them.

:02:38. > :02:44.They are just being very creative in the most elemental sense. When I

:02:44. > :02:48.was a child, I was doing these things. When I was older, I was

:02:48. > :02:53.writing her and handing that into my teacher. It just evolved. I

:02:53. > :02:58.never thought of myself as a writer, I was just someone who liked to do

:02:58. > :03:03.this. I have read many times that it was your grandmother who

:03:03. > :03:09.encouraged you in particular. father's mother was Jewish. We have

:03:09. > :03:13.not known she was Jewish. She was a German Jew. And she had this

:03:13. > :03:19.amazing and wonderful love of books and so she gave meet books for

:03:19. > :03:24.every holiday, my birthday, Christmas. And so I had all these

:03:24. > :03:28.books I would not ordinarily have had because we lived on a farm and

:03:28. > :03:35.we had very little books. She definitely encouraged me. However,

:03:35. > :03:40.she had no idea I would be a writer. Nobody in my family even graduated

:03:40. > :03:45.from high school. There was no expectation that one would even be

:03:45. > :03:50.anything. To survive was the battle line. You have mentioned the

:03:50. > :03:55.process of writing and rewriting, and your eyes have lit up. You have

:03:55. > :04:01.been known to Whitehall novels and threw them away. What is it about

:04:01. > :04:08.the process of writing that you find so exciting? We all begin with

:04:08. > :04:12.a vision that is incur hate and a formalised and we tried to

:04:12. > :04:18.specialise it into something that is very specific. Pace-setting with

:04:18. > :04:21.characters and so forth. It is the taking of a vision, which is

:04:21. > :04:27.something that is abstract and interior and fashioning it into

:04:27. > :04:32.something like a work of art, you could say - a plate, music, the

:04:32. > :04:37.composition or a novel - that you can share with other people. And

:04:37. > :04:42.that is very exciting to take something abstract and make it

:04:42. > :04:47.specific. I find it exhilarating and it is a process that evokes a

:04:47. > :04:53.lot of anxiety every day. Working on any work of art is a matter of

:04:53. > :04:58.process. And the product comes at the end. We are all excited and

:04:58. > :05:03.happy that the product is as good as we can make it but that isn't as

:05:03. > :05:10.good as the exhilaration and almost the dread of daily writing. That is

:05:11. > :05:15.what you become addicted to. Does it become obsessive? I don't know

:05:15. > :05:21.if it is excessive -- obsessive and the more than dreaming. We all

:05:21. > :05:25.think that we like to sleep. Most people fall asleep and have dreams.

:05:26. > :05:35.Even when a dream is negative and disturbing, it is your dream,

:05:35. > :05:41.something specific. And so the dreaming... I don't know if it is

:05:41. > :05:47.obsessive necessarily. I find the fantasy aspect of writing very

:05:47. > :05:53.engaging. When you tell his story, there are so many ways of telling

:05:53. > :05:58.it. Literary ways, a way that is more vernacular or colloquial, a

:05:59. > :06:03.way that involves a fast plot, another way that has a sense of

:06:04. > :06:08.slimness and a rhythm... These are always that you shoes. And I find

:06:08. > :06:13.that interesting. Your parents grew up in the Depression. What kind of

:06:14. > :06:19.impact did that have one you? world I come from was never an

:06:19. > :06:23.affluent world at all. People were not necessarily poorer, but it was

:06:23. > :06:29.a relative situation. Everyone was more or less on the same level. By

:06:29. > :06:36.today's standards, it would seem that we were the so-called walking

:06:36. > :06:40.poor, but at the time, those terms did not exist. And as for the life

:06:40. > :06:46.your parents had, when you look back on it and you think about what

:06:46. > :06:50.their lives were like, how do you think on it looking back on it?

:06:51. > :06:55.find that my parents and grandparents extremely interesting,

:06:55. > :07:01.exemplary people with so much courage and inventiveness, so much

:07:01. > :07:06.stamina and energy. They were very optimistic. I come from that rural

:07:06. > :07:13.world where the family was important and work was important.

:07:13. > :07:19.But affluence in a sense the did not matter and having a very fancy

:07:19. > :07:24.car I really did not matter. I just don't come from that world. When

:07:24. > :07:28.did the idea of We Were The Mulvaneys come from? This is a

:07:28. > :07:33.novel that you are very well known for. It came out in the 1990s and

:07:33. > :07:39.had a rebirth when it was featured in the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and

:07:39. > :07:43.then it was made into a television series. It has had a long life in

:07:43. > :07:49.different guises. This was a story about the perfect American family

:07:49. > :07:55.in some ways. Where did that notion come from? We Were The Mulvaneys

:07:55. > :07:59.was basically about a certain kind of family that was not my family.

:07:59. > :08:05.We were the working poor, my mother did not work, she was a housewife

:08:05. > :08:11.and a mother. We lived with my friend Terence on a small farm. We

:08:11. > :08:17.Were The Mulvaneys is about a farm where the man who lives on the farm

:08:17. > :08:23.is a businessman. He has made a lot of money, he is a billionaire. And

:08:23. > :08:28.this farm is like an idyllic farm, like from a story book. He has all

:08:28. > :08:34.sorts of animals but it is not a working farm that I come from. It

:08:34. > :08:38.is a different kind of farm. We would call these people gentlemen

:08:38. > :08:43.farmers. Mr Mulvaney was not really a gentleman... He really liked to

:08:43. > :08:49.work with his hands and he really loved his animals. The novel comes

:08:49. > :08:55.with the experience that I had... There was a time in my father's

:08:55. > :09:00.life when he was getting older. Something like a king Lear Syndrome.

:09:00. > :09:06.Where he was unhappy with his physical diminishment. And he no

:09:06. > :09:10.longer had quite the last of all the personality that he had for his

:09:10. > :09:16.children and I felt such a keen sense of loss. Later on, he became

:09:16. > :09:19.more of himself again but I felt what it would be like to lose my

:09:19. > :09:26.father and so I wrote the novel We Were The Mulvaneys, which is

:09:26. > :09:33.essentially about a father who rejects his daughter, and as it

:09:33. > :09:38.turns out, it was not a reasonable fear of mind. I suppose I was just

:09:38. > :09:42.hypersensitive. The reason for the rejection is that the girl is raped

:09:42. > :09:49.and there is a shame involved in that at that time, which is the

:09:49. > :09:56.1970s, and that is what she's the family and completely implodes the

:09:56. > :10:00.family. -- ruptures the family. You have spoken about this as having a

:10:00. > :10:06.breathless quality. Lots of this was about remembering rather than

:10:06. > :10:11.inventing and imagining. Explain that, if you could? I want to

:10:11. > :10:17.create a sense of walking or of running. Instead of imagining that

:10:17. > :10:23.a movie in my head, I might be lying awake in bed at night, I am

:10:23. > :10:29.working on a story. A story that is evolving. And then when I come back

:10:29. > :10:33.from a walk or riding my bicycle, I quickly take notes and I go and

:10:33. > :10:39.write it. So it has a breathless quality of remembering because I

:10:39. > :10:43.have to remember quickly because I might forget. The portrayal of the

:10:43. > :10:47.family as the quintessential successful American family in a

:10:47. > :10:53.small town is very interesting because it is contrasted with the

:10:53. > :10:59.demise of that family, the dysfunction and the failure of it -

:10:59. > :11:04.- of it. I wonder what drew you to fight about the American dream of

:11:04. > :11:09.success and its delusion? I wanted to create an actual family that was

:11:09. > :11:15.very happy, full of wonderful and good people, and that is not so

:11:15. > :11:21.easy to do because to write about good people and genuine Christian

:11:21. > :11:26.people who really are Christians, it is actually very hard to do that.

:11:26. > :11:34.To depict people who live according to their ideals, who are not

:11:34. > :11:39.hypocrites, and who really love one another... I set them on and I

:11:39. > :11:42.learnt -- I'd really sort of set them on an island and there were

:11:42. > :11:47.these inclusions from the outside world, drug-taking, the

:11:47. > :11:52.consequences and the aftermath of the Vietnam War, many of these

:11:52. > :11:55.things started to erode American society. The family are like

:11:55. > :12:00.America. I wanted them to seem really healthy and good and full of

:12:00. > :12:06.love but very vulnerable for different reasons. And the girl, so

:12:06. > :12:10.naive, such a good girl. She was based on girls I knew in high

:12:10. > :12:14.school. She went bring charges against her rapist because she does

:12:14. > :12:19.not want to feel like a victim, she would prefer to forgive, and her

:12:19. > :12:25.father gets very angry with her. Because to bring charges against a

:12:25. > :12:32.rapist especially in a small town is a very big Act. More than 50% of

:12:32. > :12:36.women who were raped do not report it, they don't even talk about it.

:12:36. > :12:41.But many feel you should bring charges as part of your duty as a

:12:41. > :12:44.citizen. The novel examines the ethical obligations that you have.

:12:44. > :12:50.All feminists would say that you must bring charges but not all

:12:50. > :12:56.women are feminists and not all people want to cause more trouble.

:12:56. > :13:01.They will say, well, I was punished, and made a mistake, I will not

:13:01. > :13:08.continue. And because of that, the father got angry. Many of your

:13:09. > :13:14.books deal with events as a social and political backdrop. Black Water

:13:14. > :13:19.Ricoh refers to the incident with Ted Kennedy. The riots in Detroit,

:13:19. > :13:24.Vietnam War, the assassination of JFK... Is there an impulse he knew

:13:24. > :13:29.that you feel you need to write about America's history in your

:13:29. > :13:32.fiction? America has a vast history and not all of it is all that are

:13:32. > :13:38.relevant. There are things that happen in every country and all

:13:38. > :13:43.around the world that are emblematic. Of the 19,000 things

:13:43. > :13:47.that happen every year, they might be one that is allegorical or

:13:47. > :13:52.symbolic. The situation when Ted Kennedy left to this young girl,

:13:52. > :13:58.swam away, went to his lawyer and let her down, that was emblematic

:13:58. > :14:02.of how innocence and naivety are exploited by political leaders.

:14:02. > :14:09.Political leaders are in some way always exploiting their

:14:09. > :14:15.constituents. Also, it had a reference to the uses of power vis-

:14:15. > :14:19.a-vis the power. I was not writing about Ted Kennedy. I never write

:14:19. > :14:24.about him. There is no mention of Kennedy in the novel. People are

:14:24. > :14:29.the wrong ages, it is different. But I wanted to write about that

:14:29. > :14:35.situation. Then I have a novel about Marilyn Monroe and it is

:14:35. > :14:41.called Blonde. Taking the idea of the blondeness as a package, a

:14:41. > :14:46.consumer item. The girl Norma Jean Baker is the actual living person

:14:46. > :14:50.but the blonde creation is Marilyn Monroe. And so I am writing about

:14:50. > :15:00.the disparity between the girl and the consumer product and how they

:15:00. > :15:05.

:15:05. > :15:10.If the backdrop is the contentious involvement of America in Iraq. Do

:15:10. > :15:14.you think writing about this a historical, political, social

:15:14. > :15:21.issues of making a political brighter? Everyone is political in

:15:21. > :15:26.some way. Sometimes you are by resolutely pretending they arrive

:15:26. > :15:32.no politics which is a conservative position. I want to write about

:15:32. > :15:38.those moments in history, as a warm and, with such a sense of crisis.

:15:38. > :15:42.In Princeton, we could not believe we were going to go through the

:15:42. > :15:48.Iraqi war after the catastrophe of Vietnam. All the intellectuals were

:15:48. > :15:53.sang, it could not happen again. Could it? No, it could not happen

:15:53. > :16:00.again because we remember Vietnam. But it turns out it did happen

:16:00. > :16:04.again because of the extraordinary power that advertising, and using

:16:04. > :16:12.television, using the media to persuade people who should have

:16:12. > :16:19.known better to brainwash people. Today, many Americans think we went

:16:19. > :16:25.to war with Iraq because they caused 9/11. The Bush

:16:26. > :16:31.administration was deliberately misleading the media. The media

:16:31. > :16:38.then misled a lot of people. A one to ask you about the gothic quality

:16:38. > :16:45.of the violence you betray. One of your reviews in 1971 said that you

:16:45. > :16:50.like to splash but all eyes are ours. Would you say that about

:16:50. > :16:58.Shakespeare? He likes to splash blood. I think there is a stupid

:16:58. > :17:04.remark., Surrey. Tell us about the quality of the violence you betray

:17:04. > :17:13.and the tradition of Gothic novels in American literature? I am not

:17:13. > :17:16.necessarily writing Gothic novels. His Moby Dick and Gothic novel? It

:17:16. > :17:23.is saying idiosyncratic novel. Someone can pull a stamp on it and

:17:23. > :17:27.say it is a gothic novel but that grave

:17:27. > :17:32.grave diggers and daughter - To due feel you could only right that

:17:32. > :17:38.after an amount of time had passed for is something you learnt about

:17:38. > :17:43.and then sort this is a rich area I cannot write about? I learnt my

:17:43. > :17:47.grandmother had been a German Jew and her father had tried to kill

:17:47. > :17:53.her and tried to kill her mother and the killed himself with a

:17:53. > :18:00.shotgun. He was a grave digger. It was basically a horrible story that

:18:00. > :18:04.I learnt when I was much older, when I was not a child. I was 50

:18:04. > :18:09.years old when I heard about this. I just thought about my grandmother

:18:09. > :18:14.and she never had anyone in her life with whom she shared anything.

:18:14. > :18:21.They were Jews who were not Jews, they did not want any connection

:18:21. > :18:24.with other Jews. I think they were exhausted or terrified by the

:18:24. > :18:33.phenomenon of been Jewish and having survived Europe. They wanted

:18:33. > :18:40.to begin again. In a tragic way, in upstate New York, they were

:18:40. > :18:47.isolated, there were no Jews, as far as I can figure out, the father

:18:47. > :18:52.just kind of disintegrated. He was these grave digger. But my

:18:52. > :18:56.grandmother's life to me seemed like she was a wonderful person.

:18:56. > :19:01.She was a quintessential mother and grandmother. She loved you and you

:19:01. > :19:06.loved her. She did everything for her children and grandchildren.

:19:06. > :19:11.Later on, I realised that she had no life of her reign. She was

:19:11. > :19:16.always for other people so I wanted to write a novel commemorating that

:19:16. > :19:22.kind of person. It is not literally about my grandmother it is about

:19:22. > :19:27.the idea of this sort of person who had to invent herself as a

:19:27. > :19:31.different personality. She even cuts her hair and dyes her hair a

:19:31. > :19:35.little bit and makes herself into the very pretty American girl to be

:19:35. > :19:41.of service and make other people happy. I think she always felt that

:19:41. > :19:46.if she could not be happy herself, she could make other people happy.

:19:46. > :19:50.A widow's story, and memoir about the dramatic turn in your life when

:19:50. > :19:55.you first husband died quite suddenly. Was it difficult to make

:19:55. > :20:01.the decision to publish what were essentially the journal entries you

:20:01. > :20:06.had written in the immediate aftermath of Los -- loss and raw

:20:06. > :20:14.grief? That do not publish the journal immediately. Some time when

:20:14. > :20:20.my. By that time -- some time went by. By then I had transformed it

:20:20. > :20:25.some of it by structuring. Most of my work is a way of remembering and

:20:25. > :20:29.commemorating something for a person, usually, or a place,

:20:29. > :20:35.something like that. In these plans are wanted to commemorate the

:20:35. > :20:43.marriage and my husband who was gone. The memoir was a way of

:20:43. > :20:48.preserving that. I also discovered what friendship meant to a widow

:20:48. > :20:55.and perhaps which are also. It is extraordina extraordinartant is the

:20:55. > :21:01.bereft. I just felt that was quite a discovery. I was wandering how

:21:01. > :21:06.many other many other t know that. So I wrote about that.

:21:06. > :21:15.There was some minor controversy in the aftermath in the New York

:21:15. > :21:19.Review of Books with Julian Barnes reviewing the book. It was not make

:21:19. > :21:25.clear in the book you had remarried. Was that the difficult thing for

:21:25. > :21:34.you to confront. You responded to the

:21:34. > :21:36.three months after you lose a day you are stumbling. I was not

:21:36. > :21:41.writing a m writing a memoir in the sense of an

:21:41. > :21:47.autobiography about a whole period of two or three years. A wanted to

:21:47. > :21:54.write a brawl book about those early days, weeks and may be about

:21:54. > :21:58.three months. Two or three years later I am married, I live in a

:21:58. > :22:04.different house, I publish this book, that is not part of that

:22:04. > :22:09.experience. I personally do not think I would be alive in a year or

:22:09. > :22:15.so. It did not see how I could continue to leave. Life seemed a

:22:15. > :22:18.someone extremely close you quite quickly, it seems life is like

:22:18. > :22:23.these, you really think it is bizarre to wake up in the morning

:22:23. > :22:29.and thank you are still here. I do not have the sense of any longevity.

:22:29. > :22:34.I thought it was really... Many people thought it was mean-spirited

:22:34. > :22:39.and vicious of these people to feel that I should have stayed on that

:22:39. > :22:46.level or that if one has a loss you should stay on that level, you

:22:46. > :22:53.should never get over being a grief-stricken person, so too with

:22:53. > :22:58.somebody who had cancer, and you say you got over the cancer, I do

:22:58. > :23:02.not feel sorry for you? Up believe me, going through the experience of

:23:02. > :23:06.going through cancer and chemotherapy is no picnic. That

:23:06. > :23:10.fight is later you do not have cancer, does not negate the

:23:10. > :23:16.experience. People should now about the hellish experiences and if you

:23:16. > :23:22.do come out of it... Having come out of it, how has informed, if it

:23:22. > :23:27.has, your life as a writer differently? It is more OP about my

:23:27. > :23:34.own life. It is very perilous and precarious. After my first husband

:23:34. > :23:41.died, for a long time, and maybe even now, I just think that life is

:23:41. > :23:45.just so absurd. It seems like it has some so it -- ASA and coherence

:23:46. > :23:50.and permanence but people find that out some leak and they're very

:23:50. > :23:55.surprised. I do not think I can be surprised in the same way again. It

:23:55. > :24:00.will be a confirmation that life is not what you think it is. It is not

:24:00. > :24:06.orderly and coherent, somebody comes along and tears the fabric,

:24:06. > :24:10.the wall down, these giant hands comedown and a cold eternity comes

:24:10. > :24:14.rushing into the room. That is the experience people have and I