Self-Interview: Joyce Carol Oates Vs. Joyce Carol Oates (Part 3)
In which I take on my toughest and most unrelenting interrogator.
Edited and arranged by Robert Friedman
Q. Is it true that you researched The Accursed in 1983-1984, and wrote a complete draft at the time, but didn’t revise the novel until 2011? Why?
A. Yes, I had finished an early draft of this long, complicated novel, which is basically a critique of white, Christian culture in its prevailing refusal to confront the more virulent manifestations of racism, in 1984. The original title of the novel was The Crosswicks Horror (in homage to H.P. Lovecraft, author of the luridly overwrought, The Dunwich Horror). But I needed to revise the novel, with a new, more contemporary voice, and this “voice” did not come to me, strange as it sounds, until winter 2011.
Q. Sounds like a frustrating experience! As if, almost, you hadn’t known what you were doing…
A. From 1984 to 2011, very frustrating. Like driving a car without knowing my destination. In a kind of haze of hopefulness I would take up the manuscript, begin earnestly to rewrite, then give up after forty pages… But once I understood the “voice,” and had a more definable direction for the novel in the aftermath of Obama’s election, it was exhilarating to write, and I wrote it fairly quickly in several months—every word altered, yet the original story and characters intact.
Q. After Obama was elected President? Why was that?
A. Because the election of Obama to the American Presidency was a repudiation, in a most dramatic way, of the old curse of slavery and racism in America—the conviction that African-Americans were enslaved because they were, in some “biological” way, fit for slavery; while the “white” race was exempt. African-Americans were burdened with the notion that they were somehow fated to be enslaved, as well as with the burden of slavery itself, which is an outrageous sort of tautology. I was much moved by David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles, Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, published in 1829. I’d thought, if Walker could have foreseen Obama’s election… If the white Christian racists of Woodrow Wilson’s time, including Wilson himself, the principal characters of The Accursed, could have foreseen the Obamas in the White House…
Q. And you once rewrote virtually all of an early novel, A Garden of Earthly Delights, originally published in 1967. Why?
A. Why? Because it was originally published in 1967, a long time ago, my second novel. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to almost totally revise A Garden of Earthly Delights—line by line, word by word. But without changing any of the characters, or the plot, or the very beginning, or the very ending.
Q. Such self-indulgence! Like time-traveling, going back to a long-ago self, looking over her shoulder and correcting her. Are you tempted to do this again, with another novel?
A. No! Time-traveling in itself is—too tempting…
Q. In fact, you’ve written a novel titled Hazards of Time Travel. Why?
A. No idea, frankly. For years I’d planned to write a novel titled Vicissitudes of Time Travel—the title captivated me.
Q. But why did you change the title, then?
A. Why did I substitute “hazards” for “vicissitudes” in the title? Why would you think?
Q. Marketing people objected that no one would know what “vicissitudes” meant?
A. Something like that.
Q. And you capitulated?—just like that?
A. “Vicissitudes” may have been just too long a word for a book jacket cover. In designing books, there are aesthetic elements to consider, as well.
Q. But since your novel is about time travel, do you mean to say that you “believe” in time travel?
A. I—I don’t “believe” in time travel. Except as a metaphor…
Q. You’ve stated clearly that time travel is “impossible”; yet, you have written a novel in which “time travel” occurs. How is that possible?
A. …a novel is a thought experiment in which an idea can be postulated, & its consequences explored; the ontological basis of a novel is the subjunctive, not the “actual.” That is, the realistic consequences of a hypothetical can be explored in a work of serious fiction, & these consequences can be considered as “real” & plausible as if the hypothetical were actual, & not imagined.
Q. That sounds like sophistry, in the vocabulary of a novelist!
A. Novelists are “sophists”—fiction is a sleight-of-hand in which the magical components are words, not objects. But time travel appeals because it mimics memory, if the time travel is into the past; & prophecy, if the time travel is into the so-called future.
Q. “Time travel” is another of those literary concoctions, like “ghosts” & “haunted castles”—
A. In fact, H.G. Wells’s “The Time Machine: An Invention” (1895) is the first work of fiction to explore “time travel” as we think of it today—there are no real predecessors for Wells’ Time Traveler.
Q. Hmm! Don’t you have a book of poems titled—
A. “The Time Traveler” (1989). Memory as a means of “time travel.”
Q. Hmm! Have you ever dreamt of a title in a dream, and then felt compelled to write the novel?
A. Just once: Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon. Again, the title—captivated me…
Q. One of your pseudonymous novels. Obsessed with twins. But we won’t go into that.
A. Thank you!
Q. And you once wrote a novel, an entire, lengthy, deeply introspective novel, because a fictitious character appeared to you in a dream?
A. (somewhat embarrassed) Yes. Mudwoman.
Q. Can you explain that?
A. I woke with a jolt in the morning, in a bed and breakfast in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the heroine of Mudwoman was still vivid in my mind… Well, no.
Q. You can’t explain that, can you?
A. N-No.
Q. Any cheerful advice for (young/ emerging) writers?
A. Frankly, no.
Q. No? You’re the first writer asked such a question who hasn’t had a favorite platitudinous answer.
A. “I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything, to the purpose—” as Henry David Thoreau said in Walden.
Q. True! But if you were pressed for a plausible answer?
A. “Don’t give up”—“keep trying”—“don’t be discouraged”—“don’t pay attention to detractors.” Keep in mind Cocteau: “What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.”
Q. Is that what you did?
A. Not exactly. I think that we write what is inside us, that yearns to be written. I think that it might be as distinctive as our fingerprints, or our handwriting… It’s us.
Q. Why are you a writer, and what is it all about?
A. My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives.
Q. Dreams are essential to our lives? Really?
A. We can’t live without dreaming—as we can’t live without sleep. We are “conscious” beings for only a limited period of time, then we sink back into sleep—the “unconscious.” It is nourishing, in ways we can’t fully understand. Even a bad dream is nourishing, somehow—it’s your own creation.
Q. Dreams spring out of sleep, and sleep springs out of—?
A. The human brain. My conviction is that literature is to society as the part of the brain called the hippocampus is to memory. The hippocampus is a small, seahorse-shaped part of the brain necessary for long-term storage of factual and experiential memory, though it isn’t evidently the site of such storage. Short-term memory is transient—long-term memory can prevail for many decades. If the hippocampus is injured or atrophied, there is no storage of memory in the brain—there is no memory
Q. Ah, back to The Man Without a Shadow again—your only novel to have been vetted by a neuroscientist, and so presumably more reliable than it would have been otherwise… Is this some sort of closure we are moving toward, like water circling a drain?
A. (earnestly) I’ve come to think that art is the commemoration of life in its variety—an unfathomable variety. All novels are “historic” in their evocation of specific places and times, and their suggestion that there is meaning to our actions.
Q. There is meaning?—or only the suggestion?
A. Art creates the meaning. Or discovers it. It’s our shared culture—our collective memory.
Q. How can memory be “collective”—isn’t it lodged in individual, isolated brains?
A. Art is produced by individuals—individual imaginations. Without the stillness and depths of art, and without the continual moral deliberation of art, we wouldn’t have a civilization. That’s why some people feel overwhelmed by social media, and so much mental time spent online—it’s a continuous present tense, with no depth. The stillness and depths of more permanent art feels threatened.
Q. In a time of war and social upheaval, art is a frail vessel to bear the weight of civilization—yes?
A. Are you asking me? Or—quoting me? I think I might have said that…
Q. In any case, it sounds like speechifying. The “vatic” voice. No chance of going viral, so forget it.
A. Wait! I do want to say—“in a time of war and social upheaval, art is a frail vessel to bear the weight of civilization which is why it is so precious—and must be preserved…”
Q. Very clever, Miss Oates!
A. W-Why—“clever?”
Q. You have deliberately teased your audience, such as it is, through almost an entire interview, without once mentioning your therapy animals Zanche and Lilith.
A. It didn’t seem appropriate. In fact, it seems a little—silly…
Q. Therapy animals are silly? What?
A. No, not the animals! (guardedly, with the look of one terrified at the prospect of being quoted out of context) I mean—the notion of animals as “therapy…”
Q. This gets worse, Miss Oates! What exactly is silly about the fact that there are reputedly over 500,000 “service animals” in the United States at the present time, of which 50,000 are highly trained dogs? Which suggests that a very high number are cats.
A. No, I mean—my own reference to “my” therapy animals. It may be true to a degree but, not, you know—literally. Originally it was a kind of joke, at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, to suggest that my cats were “therapeutic…”
Q. In fact, you have tried to deflect blame for random tweets that annoyed people, claiming that, in the night, while you were innocently asleep, Zanche took over your Twitter account and wreaked havoc under your name.
A. (weakly) It is well known that, during the very early morning hours, Twitter is largely commandeered by cats… Unfortunately, the sense of humor of your typical cat is not likely to be “correct”...more in the mode of R. Crumb or Ambrose Bierce.
Q. R. Crumb! Let’s bet that no one knows what you and R. Crumb have in common.
A. We don’t need to go into that…
Q. You have already publicly stated more than once that Mad Magazine was an early influence in your life, so—bringing in R. Crumb isn’t much of a stretch.
A. Well—I suppose you are alluding to the fact that R. Crumb once received the annual award given at Ja! Bilbao International Festival of Literature and Art with Humor—which was awarded to me also, a few years later.
Q. An odd choice for Ja!—not R. Crumb, but J. C. Oates.
A. John Cleese was honored, also. It’s really a sort of dark, mordant, ironic humor in which they are interested…
Q. Well! Fascinating as this has been, Miss Oates, we need to wrap up, so let’s end with a disarming anecdote that involves, in some clever way, mentioning the intriguing title of your next novel, to be published by your new publisher, Knopf, in August.
A. The writer has the last word in the interview? Really?
Q. Of course!
Good fun! And it’s made me want to hunt down a copy of The Barrens…
So apt a title, what a tough interviewer you are, cruel at times even; and yet such a cooperative and willing interviewee. how kind you are as well. haha, one more paradox within JCO revealed. also ... loved your being revealing (yet still coy) about writing in a semi-trance. i find an interesting parallel in film editing. to my surprise often late at night, or when slightly under the weather thru fatigue or health, i nonetheless find myself doing some of my best work... a semi-trance state = less ego & more creative? Perhaps with the ego out of the way, easier for the work itself to rise to the top and the work itself tells me what to do.