is publishing several,\u00a0 from 1995, below.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
January 25, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
I\u2019m enclosing the London Review<\/em> since they\u2019ve sent me several extra copies, and I thought you might find the publication attractive. It\u2019s a junior version of New York Review<\/em>\u2014each review much shorter, but approximately the same quality. Elaine [Showalter] often publishes here.<\/p>\nYes, I did ask [my publicist] to send You Can\u2019t Catch Me<\/em>. (Do you recognize Tristram?) Thanks for your comments! It was a fascinating puzzle, to me, to write; the appropriation of a \u201cself\u201d by another \u201cself\u201d continues to haunt . . .<\/p>\n. . . The Bienens are in Evanston, IL, very busy, of course, but we continue to hear from them and will see them fairly soon, back in Princeton for opening night of Emily\u2019s new play (an adaptation of the Delaney sisters\u2019 memoir) [Emily was Emily Mann \u2014GJ] . An opening night of my own is Feb. 1. (But I must attend two previews beforehand, one followed by a \u201cpanel\u201d of Deborah Tannen and me. My play The Truth-Teller<\/em> is about a sociolinguist\u2014not<\/em> Deborah!)<\/p>\nWe had a lovely dinner and theater evening with Betsey Hansell and her husband Cliff Ridley (drama critic, Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>) on Sunday, before attending an excellent performance of The Cherry Orchard<\/em> . . . Betsey said that she enjoyed her conversation with you very <\/em>much, and asked about you. Of course, we were delighted to boast a bit about your OR book and other outstanding accomplishments. (I wonder if you know what Betsey looks like? Probably you wouldn\u2019t remember, from our photo album. She and I were extremely good friends in my Detroit\/Windsor years. I feel a real sisterly affection for her, and we are both very interested in art.)<\/p>\nSpeaking of which: I\u2019ve had a truly wonderful, absorbing and fascinating few weeks, writing a monograph, George Bellows: American Artist<\/em>, for the Ecco \u201cwriters-on-artists\u201d series. I\u2019d never done anything quite like this, and now I really envy art historians. Bellows\u2019s work is remarkably varied, and frequently brilliant. He\u2019d become famous immediately for his boxing paintings, but they\u2019re a small fraction of his output; I\u2019m most taken by his seascapes and landscapes, and some of his odd, provocative portraits.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
. . . I\u2019ve been asked to review, of all unlikely subjects, Jack Kerouac\u2014Reader, Selected Letters<\/em>\u2014for The New Yorker<\/em>. I have to confess I\u2019d never read Kerouac, must simply have skimmed through On the Road<\/em>. I hadn\u2019t known he was so self-consciously\/doggedly \u201cliterary\u201d\u2014very much like Thomas Wolfe, upon whom he modeled himself as a young, word-infatuated writer. But what a sad end . . . dead of alcoholism, burnt out, at forty-seven. While his fellow Beats Allen Ginsberg and sinister William Burroughs are still going strong.<\/p>\n. . . Did I mention that Foxfire<\/em> is (supposedly) going to be made into a film? Production begins in March, in Portland, Oregon. I have not had anything to do with the screenplay, though I\u2019d met the producer, or one of the producers, a literary-minded woman, a year or so ago in Los Angeles. I have the idea that not just the setting has been changed, but the era . . . which means that the very atmosphere will be different. The director is a woman of whom I\u2019ve never heard\u2014Annette Heywood Parker.<\/p>\nAre plans moving forward for Pagan Babies<\/em>, and Julia Roberts? If you\u2019re invited to do the screenplay, it might be an \u201cinteresting and novel experience,\u201d as they say.<\/p>\nI too received the Jay Parini Steinbeck<\/em>, and have been asked to review it (for New Yorker<\/em>)\u2014but declined, since I simply don\u2019t have the time. It would require rereading much of Steinbeck, which might not be a bad idea; but not right now. At the classy and expensive ($21,000 annual tuition!) Pomfret School, where I spent 2.5 hyperventilated days, every other question was about \u201cWhere Are You Going . . .\u201d Help!<\/p>\nMuch affection from all,<\/p>\n
Joyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Valentine\u2019s Day, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
. . . I hope, as my biographer, you won\u2019t be disappointed: I declined an offer from our friend Lanny Jones, People<\/em> editor, to write an O.J. essay for them, based upon a few days at the trial. And I\u2019m afraid I have backed off from the Tyson piece, suggesting in my stead Thom Jones, who not only knows about boxing, but has been a boxer . . .<\/p>\nI\u2019m afraid I also declined reviewing Bill Gass\u2019s The Tunnel<\/em> for the New Yorker<\/em>, on the grounds that Bill is a friend of mine. (That might be news to Bill.)<\/p>\nPagan Babies<\/em>, the script, will be so radically unlike the novel, I\u2019m sure, that, if it is filmed (as we hope it will be!), you\u2019ll probably be in awe of such imagination. (I still haven\u2019t seen Lies of the Twins<\/em> beyond the first ten minutes.)<\/p>\nThe Truth-Teller<\/em> received a decidedly \u201cmixed\u201d (and rather baffled) review in the Times<\/em>, but has been having sell-out performances and seems to be doing very well with audiences. A gay subscribers\u2019 group had an evening, and, evidently, they loved the play. (\u201cThey are the most wonderful, sympathetic audiences you can have,\u201d the theater manager said.) Since the play is about gender-switching, among other things, this makes sense. The reviewer managed not to notice any theme of gender, nor did he speak of linguistics, which is the play\u2019s main subject. But this is more or less expected, I guess, in the theater, where one is never reviewed by a fellow playwright or writer, as in the literary world.<\/p>\nRay is fine, my mother seems in good spirits, but my father is not very well, I\u2019m afraid. Many ailments, not the least of which is his macular degeneration (gradual blindness). They weren\u2019t able to come to Truth-Teller<\/em>, and I doubt they\u2019ll be visiting anytime soon. [Are there] \u201cstars\u201d in Foxfire<\/em>? It\u2019s such a low-budget film, \u201casteroids\u201d might be more appropriate. I have not heard a word. [Actually, the very young Angelina Jolie played a major role in the film, though she was not yet a \u201cstar.\u201d \u2014GJ] . . .<\/p>\nLove,<\/p>\n
Joyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
March 8, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
What an astonishment\u2014to open your packet and discover those letters! [The letters were to and from Carol North, a college friend. \u2014GJ] I\u2019ve been quite stunned. I read them in a virtual haze, and reread\u2014having to see, yes, it is<\/em> my voice, a juvenile version, embarrassingly so!\u2014(but I suppose I was \u201cyoung\u201d\u2014still in my teens at the time of the earliest letters). (I haven\u2019t been able to force myself, actually, to read the putatively funny [Southern] \u201cdialect\u201d letters\u2014and who \u201cBethlehem J. Hollis\u201d was, I don\u2019t know. A character in my fiction, I suppose.<\/p>\nYou can\u2019t imagine how disorienting it is to confront these buried, lost \u201cselves\u201d; at least there is nothing scandalous or deeply upsetting involved. In fact, I\u2019m touched that Carol North should have saved these letters for\u2014can it be almost forty years? Incredible. You\u2019d think they would have been tossed away long ago, or allowed to molder quietly. (I haven\u2019t seen a letter of Carol\u2019s for decades. I doubt that I\u2019d saved them even back in the fifties.) It\u2019s true, I was wrong about my parents\u2019 memory of Robin and me playing chess. [Joyce had insisted to me that she and her brother Robin (a childhood nickname for Fred, Jr.) would never have played such a sophisticated game as chess; \u201cmaybe Parcheesi,\u201d she joked. Fred and Carolina had told me that Joyce, losing, would sweep all the chess pieces off the board in a fit of pique. As it happened, in a letter to Carol North, Joyce admitted that she and Robin did indeed play chess, and that Robin would usually win. \u2014GJ] I do remember Robin\u2019s and my camaraderie (mostly during the summers); obviously we were quite fond of each other, and got along in sister\/brother sitcom\/bantering ways I\u2019ve never experienced with anyone else. Robin was lots of fun! (Now he has matured into a soft-spoken, intelligent, and somewhat bemused \u201cFred Oates, Jr.\u201d in whom \u201cRobin\u201d still lurks, if dimly. I think we regard each other warily now as adults, each hoping the other won\u2019t reveal our utterly silly child\/teenager selves in the presence of adults!)<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t it odd that these early letters, in their gawky unself-conscious \u201chumor,\u201d including even strained dialect, are so like Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s letters?\u2014well, I mean some of her letters, if I remember correctly. Yet I would not have read these letters of O\u2019Connor\u2019s for decades. And, evidently, I hadn\u2019t read O\u2019Connor\u2019s fiction at this time; it seems to have been Carol North who introduced me to it.<\/p>\n
. . . One prevailing theme of the letters, as of my life generally, is my lamenting the passage of time; my own wasting of time (which is considerable\u2014why people imagine me \u201cprolific,\u201d I can\u2019t guess, a morning flies by and I\u2019ve accomplished virtually nothing or have in fact undone something imagined accomplished the day before) . . .<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t imagine what Allen Tate meant by speaking of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et al., as \u201csteeped in the tradition of mediocrity.\u201d (Non-slaveholding universities?)<\/p>\n
. . . Early sightings of John Updike! Somehow, Bob [Phillips] inveigled John to give him a poem for the [Syracuse<\/em>] Review<\/em>. Amazing.<\/p>\n. . . The Times<\/em> received much mail regarding my essay on so-called \u201cvictim art\u201d (Feb. 19, Arts & Leisure); a good deal of it was said to be angry, even \u201cvicious\u201d . . . extremely negative. The subject has been politicized, like so much these days . . .<\/p>\nMuch is going on here: primarily Here She Is!\u2014<\/em>the first preview is this evening, and a gang of us are going including Emily, Dan Halpern, Sallie Goodman. I hope it will be fun. (Sorry you can\u2019t come. Some of the plays\u2019 themes might be of interest to you. But they are available in The Perfectionist<\/em> & Other Plays<\/em>, due out soon from Ecco, with a lovely striking cover.)<\/p>\n. . . My favorite play of mine Bad Girls<\/em> will be performed by a theater at, of all places, the U. of Georgia! So you\u2019ll have little excuse not to attend. The run will be brief, May 3\u201313, and the artistic director is someone named August Staube . . .<\/p>\nAgain, Camille Paglia! [I had written Paglia to see if she wished to comment on Oates\u2019s work for my biography. \u2014GJ] I read your quote from her to Elaine on the phone, and we laughed heartily at the notion that Princeton is a \u201chotbed\u201d of \u201cfeminist p.c.\u201d Apart from Elaine and a few others, the English Department is quite solidly mainstream. Why anyone would \u201cseethe\u201d and be \u201cdriven crazy\u201d by others\u2019 careers is a mystery to us. Camille P. obviously values the Ivy League more than its inhabitants . . .<\/p>\n
Yes, do send my father a large-print book. His eighty-first birthday is March 30. I think it would cheer him, a bit. He has been\u2014well, humbled by recent health problems. He\u2019d had to give up\u2014his exact words, \u201cgive up\u201d\u2014attending classes at Buffalo, though they\u2019ve meant so much to him. (With his ailments, and his failing eyesight, he\u2019d been waiting in freezing wind for the Greyhound bus, and just couldn\u2019t take it any longer. I feel so sorry for him! But he doesn\u2019t want sympathy, understandably.) Any note at all from you, or card, or photo of Lucy (seriously!) and you\u2014would be appreciated. (But no suggestion of health concerns, please!)<\/p>\n
(Ray is pioneering with a new Macintosh, and the mysteries of e-mail. Are you \u201con-line\u201d? I seem to be, at least in theory . . .)<\/p>\n
Much affection, and many<\/em> thanks!<\/p>\nJoyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
March 25, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
. . . I hope that by May 3, 4, or 5 (ideally this date) you\u2019ll be free to come to Athens, for my play [Bad Girls<\/em>]; I must be there for a few rehearsals, and for a few performances. It\u2019s my favorite play of my own . . . I\u2019m curious, and excited, over the prospect of seeing it, transplanted from upstate New York (\u201cYewville\u201d) to Georgia accents (!). Ray will also be joining me for a day or two, we hope . . .<\/p>\nYour new house sounds very spacious. Are you going to plant flowers, etc.? Ray is itching to get outside though the nighttime temperatures are around freezing; he isn\u2019t happy until he has planted his first crop of lettuce. We\u2019ve been going out running\/hiking in the very gusty winds, usually in the Hopewell area . . .<\/p>\n
Ken Kesey!\u2014he\u2019s very much of the sixties, still. White-haired, a bit overweight; describes himself as a \u201cwarrior\u201d; is campaigning to have marijuana legalized in his state; a benign paternal presence onstage, though I don\u2019t think he was especially tuned into the discussion. He spoke often of the need for us all to love one another. (He dresses oddly, but only mildly oddly . . . not a disruptive \u201ccharacter.\u201d He carries a rubber salmon (?) under his arm, a sort of tote bag, quite realistic-looking and a conversation piece. He was friendly enough to me, if a trifle vague; I doubt he\u2019d ever heard of me, but wasn\u2019t at all confrontational.) Tulane U. is quite attractive, and New Orleans reminded me of both Miami and Los Angeles (with the high crime rate, too) . . .<\/p>\n
Actually, you would love e-mail. It\u2019s probably better for you that you don\u2019t explore it; you might become addicted (like Elaine, among others of my acquaintance). I certainly could be, but stay away from the computer, preferring to type out letters, as I type out prose fiction. E-mail is a sort of delicious post-literate means of communication somewhere between a letter and a telegram; or between voice mail and fax . . .<\/p>\n
Thanks for your nice comments on my Antaeus<\/em> story [\u201cMark of Satan\u201d]. It\u2019s one of my favorites of my own, and will conclude Will You Always Love Me?<\/em> (which as you know is dedicated to you) . . .<\/p>\nMy father said on the phone this morning that he\u2019s feeling better, and he sounded upbeat. So I\u2019ll take him at his word. My mother is in good spirits, too. Now they\u2019re hesitant about flying\u2014navigating airports, mainly\u2014we won\u2019t see them until late this spring, when I give a talk at Rochester in May. I hope you sent them a photo of you with Lucy; I know they\u2019d love it . . .<\/p>\n
My Mulvaneys<\/em> [We Were the Mulvaneys<\/em>] proceeds slowly, yet richly; too<\/em> richly\u2014I\u2019m already at p. 112 and have only covered about 1\/10 of the story. Yet I\u2019m not going to let the novel writing weigh so heavily upon me as Corky <\/em>[Corky’s Price\u00a0<\/i>was a working title for her novel\u00a0What I Lived For. \u2014<\/i>GJ] did, I swear . . .<\/p>\nMuch affection from the gang at 9 Honey Brook . . .<\/p>\n
Joyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
April 17, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
We too were shocked and saddened by Diane\u2019s death. [Diane Cleaver, my agent, died suddenly in her Greenwich Village apartment at age fifty-three. \u2014GJ] . . . It\u2019s a terrible thing, the only good aspect of which, she didn\u2019t suffer, and might not even have known what was happening.<\/p>\n
. . . Thanks for the lovely snapshots! The house is most impressive.<\/p>\n
. . . I\u2019m not absolutely against a \u201cselected journal\u201d\u2014only hesitant, or modest (?) about its possibilities. (Actually, Tina Brown asked me about it, and I murmured an ambiguous reply.)<\/p>\n
My parents appreciate your recent kindnesses, and mention it each time we speak on the phone . . .<\/p>\n
My e-mail is very, very minimal, and rare. As I\u2019d said, I don\u2019t really care for that sort of correspondence . . .<\/p>\n
Much affection,<\/p>\n
Joyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
April 24, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
. . . We\u2019ll see you on Friday (for dinner first? then the play?). I haven\u2019t heard anything from August Staube for a while, and have no idea how rehearsals are progressing. In Bad Girls<\/em>, casting is essential . . . I\u2019ll know within minutes if it\u2019s going to be a disaster, as soon as I see the actresses. (In theater, casting is 90 percent of the effort. If you make a mistake at casting, there\u2019s virtually nothing you can do to rectify it, no matter how brilliantly people might work.)<\/p>\n. . . Yes, my father is just delighted with the books. Simply to be remembered is very nice for him. He\u2019s making an effort to keep involved at U Buffalo though he doesn\u2019t take courses; he\u2019s going to a literary festival this weekend that includes, along with Allen Ginsberg, your friend Camille Paglia. (I hope she won\u2019t \u201cgo crazy\u201d and denounce me on my home turf . . .)<\/p>\n
. . . So sad: not only did the PEN\/Faulkner go to another novelist (a \u201cfirst novelist\u201d), but the Pulitzer, another time. (Did I mention I\u2019d been nominated, with four other titles, for the PEN\/Faulkner? Maybe if my novel had another author\u2019s name on it, it might have fared better.) I\u2019m looking forward to next week, though with some trepidation. (I do want to see your house, certainly\u2014and Lucy [Lucy was my pet dachshund.\u00a0 \u2014GJ].)<\/p>\n
Much affection,<\/p>\n
Joyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
May 20, 1995<\/strong><\/p>\nDear Greg,<\/p>\n
I certainly didn\u2019t expect The New Yorker<\/em> to be interested in excerpts from my journal, and will be curious to see what they choose. Thanks so much for selecting and organizing. You must have a magic touch. Not only don\u2019t I reread the journal, I draw back from even thinking about it; not modesty, but a sense of, To what purpose<\/em>? I suppose it is a good idea to have a repository of memory, though. Since most things are doomed to a double oblivion\u2014natural transience, and then being forgotten . . .<\/p>\nYes, I thought the Georgia Rep did an excellent production of Bad Girls<\/em>. I liked all the actors, and August Staube\u2014so energetic, imaginative, and funny. Too bad the Rep does only \u201cnew\u201d plays, which limits my connection with them, considerably. (The lengthy, large-cast Thoreau would not be appropriate there.) Where Bad Girls<\/em> might go next, I\u2019m unsure.<\/p>\nThe Guthrie Theatre just called with the unexpected, good news that they will be performing Tone Clusters<\/em>, on a bill with Albee\u2019s Zoo Story<\/em>, July 14\u2013Sept. 9. But I doubt we can get to Minneapolis in our already-crowded summer. I may have mentioned\u2014I have a new play, The Woman Who Laughed,<\/em> opening at the Sharon Stage, Conn., in August.<\/p>\nThis Monday I\u2019ll be reading from You Can\u2019t Catch Me<\/em> in Rochester, and we\u2019ll stay with the Heyens, and take them and my parents out to dinner. My father is in considerably better spirits than he was, fortunately. Next day, we\u2019re having lunch with Toby Wolff and some of his writer friends in Syracuse, and will spend the night in Ithaca, lovely college town.<\/p>\nOne of the characters in my new novel [We Were the Mulvaneys<\/em>], coincidentally, is in Ithaca at the moment, which is convenient.<\/p>\nMy next-performed play will be a revised version of Homesick<\/em>, at the McCarter One-Act Play Festival next month. Would you like to come up and visit? There are many more journal pages accumulated in my closet . . . I\u2019m trying to encourage my parents to come, too. I don\u2019t have the precise schedule, but the festival runs from approximately June 9 to June 18 and there are excellent, \u201creal\u201d playwrights (Jane Anderson, Wendy Wasserstein) involved . . .<\/p>\nGood luck with choosing an agent! Ray says hello & warm regards.<\/p>\n
As always,<\/p>\n
Joyce<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From <\/em>Joyce<\/span> Carol<\/span> Oates<\/span>:\u00a0Letters to a Biographer<\/a> by Joyce<\/span> Carol<\/span> Oates, ed<\/span>ited by Greg Johnson and forthcoming from Akashic Books in March.<\/em><\/p>\nJoyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and a recipient of the National Book Award, the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. <\/em>A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers\u00a0is her latest work.<\/em><\/p>\nGreg Johnson has a Ph.D. in English from Emory University and has published three novels and five collections of short stories\u00a0in addition to five books of nonfiction, including\u00a0<\/em>Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction and<\/em>\u00a0Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI declined an offer from our friend Lanny Jones, People editor, to write an O.J. essay for them, based upon a few days at the trial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68530],"tags":[199,2015,182],"class_list":["post-166461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","tag-biography","tag-joyce-carol-oates","tag-letters"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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