Oates has a truly enormous body of work – more than 30 novels, several novellas, many books of essays and poetry, and dozens of collections of short stories that High Lonesome draws from. Several of the stories here are among Oates' best known – "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" for instance – and the stories were selected to avoid work from recent, still in-print collections. While not every story is a gem, many of them linger on hauntingly in the memory.
Oates moves easily from suburban angst to rural tragedy, capable of rendering tales in a down-home first-person candor or with a polished, omniscient sheen. She seems capable of taking on any genre she pleases – "*BD* 11 1 87" is a subtle science-fiction story with a powerful twist, for instance.
Several of the stories are bittersweet romances, with nary a murder in sight, while others lull you into thinking the tale is one thing and then shift and bend with dizzying skill. Her protagonists range from assassins ("Last Days") to victims ("The Gathering Squall") to the desperate and hopeful ("The Lost Brother"). Loneliness is a recurring theme, as well as vengeance, and the terror of sudden violence.
"…Each story is an opening into the infinite, abruptly terminated and sealed in language," Oates writes in her afterword. With her versatility and keen eye for the hope and heartache to be found in life, Joyce Carol Oates' High Lonesome makes the endless possibilities of the written word infinitely enjoyable.
Article comments
1 - Sister Ray
I will look for this book at the library. I like her writing. I don't remember the name of it, but I especially liked her short story about the doctor's daughter who walks on the wild side in downtown Detroit. It was in our American Lit anthology in college.
2 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!