Perhaps nothing makes for better, more honestly unrehearsed autobiography than a person’s private, daily journal. As author Joyce Carol Oates writes early on in hers: “…the skeptic might object that the writer may be deliberately creating a journal-self…such a pose can’t sustained for very long, and certainly not for years…the person one is, is evident in every line.”
Joyce Carol Oates' Journal a Writer’s Reference
Published in 2007, a quarter-century after its last entry, The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982 does feel like both an unintentional autobiography of Oates’ early years as an author and a writer’s reference book.
Joyce Carol Oates is the award-winning author of 39 novels (including Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys) nearly as many short story collections, as well as several collections of essays and even poetry. The word most often (nearly always) used to describe her is “prolific.”
The fact that Oates’ incredible output often overshadows the high, literary quality of her work is sometimes a sore point for the author, who says she simply works hard, and always has more to say, “more, certainly, than the literary world allows for a ‘serious’ writer.”
Yet Joyce Carol Oates work is nearly always serious, often delving into the psychological ramifications of rape, abuse, violence of all sorts. This seriousness is reflected in her journals, written during the second decade of her career, as public acclaim was taking hold.
Oates' Journal Closely Examine the Everyday
Whether she is reflecting upon her day of teaching (Oates was a professor at the University of Windsor at the time), lunch with a colleague, or something as common as the weather, it is something to be carefully considered, examined from several sides, questioned.
On a sunny November day in 1974, after commenting about the birds feeding on her terrace and the placid, blue quality of the river, Oates continues: “unless one makes a conscious effort—almost, an effort of the muscles, the muscular cords that control the eyes—very little of the physical world is allowed into one’s written recording of a life.”
It is this type of close examination of daily life that impresses upon the reader why Joyce Carol Oates is the exceptionally adept psychological writer she is. For those readers that are also writers, her journal entries become instructional in both their content and the diligence of the author's approach.
For other readers, perhaps those looking for deeper insight into specific characters or plotlines (from this period of novels), there may be some disappointment. Oates generally doesn’t work out her work in her journal.
While there is the occasional mention of one or another, more often she addresses how she works, what she is working on, and problems she may be having in the process. At times, this includes how the external world affects (or influences) the inner world and often the work. It is an intriguing peek behind the curtain of literature.
Oates, Joyce Carol. The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates 1973-1982, 2007, Harper Collins.
Dale Van Every - Dale Van Every is a freelance and fiction writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his Masters Degree in English Literature from ...
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