Joyce Carol Oates Kicks Interview Butt

From the pulpit of a downtown church during the recent Boston Book Festival, keynote presenter Joyce Carol Oates read a soft, complex story of loneliness and violence. In contrast, the interview that followed was comedic and farcical. The audience gasped and laughed and nearly booed as the interviewer asked one ridiculous question after another. Oates gracefully sidestepped the too-personal ones and boldly confronted the too-simple ones.

Even though she wasn’t the greatest reader, the piece Oates read from her recent book, Sourland, was gorgeous and chilling in its emotional subtlety. Especially compared to her interviewer, who seemed to have been selected as a foil to Oates’ intelligent and nuanced speech, she presented compassionate, transcendent perceptions of the human condition. What follows are selected quotes and summaries based on notes.

Your stories have a lot of violence in them. Why do you write so much about violence?

“Writers don’t write about violence. Writers write about people.” A work of art has its own trajectory, Oates said, its own inevitable ending. She added that writers don’t think in terms of happy endings but in terms of the integrity of the piece of writing.

Have you experienced violence in your own life?

“Why is there this tendency to ask women writers this question? … It’s not like I invented violence.”

Do you believe in God?

“Do you?”

Are you a Catholic? An atheist?

“I don’t call myself anything … Calling oneself an atheist would be too aggressive … Most people have a sense of religion that honors their family and community, and they just follow that … It’s not fruitful to discuss whether I believe in God.”

Do you know when you sit down to write if you’re working on a short story or a novel?

“Of course! I wouldn’t be a good writer if I didn’t.”

You'll Know You're Famous When Your Words are Carved in Stone

Every so often I like to take my country self into the city - Boston, that is - and tool around with my urban poet friends. On my last visit, as I walked into the Stony Brook stop on the orange line, I stopped to read words that I saw carved into a triangular granite pillar. I'd recently returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest, and I was still in tourist mode - stopping to look at and read everything.



I was expecting something historical, something mainstream and maintaining the status quo - such are the words I've often seen carved into rock. But these words were more lively: two poems, by Martin Espada and Rosario Morales told an alternate history of immigrants, injustice, and working class heritage.



Apparently there is literature carved into such stones all over Boston. Like this author, my friend and guide through Jamaica Plain had walked by these solid monuments to literature on a daily basis before noticing them. It always helps to see your own city through the eyes of a tourist.



Thanks to KL Pereira for the photos.