Joyce Carroll Oates is one of the most prolific contemporary American writers covering the widest range of literature, and a representative writer of "psychological realism". 52 novels, 29 short story collections, 8 poetry collections, 8 drama collections, 7 story collections and 11 literary theories. Her works have won the National Book Award, O. Henry Short Story Award, Pulitzer Prize, Malamud PEN Lifetime Literary Achievement Award, etc. She has been a favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature in recent years.
Oates was born into a Catholic family in Lockport, New York, to a working father and a housewife mother. She grew up on her grandfather's rural farm and went to school in Erie County, which had only one classroom. Later, it became the setting for many of her stories, though she changed Erie County to Eden County. Oates liked to tell stories from picture books when he could not write. She said her childhood was "boring and uninteresting".
Oates loved literature in high school and read a lot of literature, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights by the Brontë sisters, as well as works by Dickens, Hardy, Balzac, Tolstoy and others . At the age of 14, her grandmother gave her a typewriter, and on this typewriter she began to try writing. At the age of 15 in 1953, she wrote her first novel, but it was not published because the publisher felt that the novel's subject of drug use was too depressing for young readers.
Oates entered Syracuse University in New York State in 1956, majoring in English literature. During college, she was fascinated by the works of Joyce, Kafka, Faulkner, etc., and was interested in psychology and philosophy, and systematically read the works of Freud and Nietzsche. The extensive reading had an immeasurable impact on her later writing. He graduated from college in 1960 and received a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin in 1961, where he met and married English educator Raymond Joseph Smith. She then began her PhD in English when she stumbled across one of her own writings in "Best American Short Stories," edited by Margaret Foley. This discovery greatly enhanced her self-confidence in writing as a career, and she gave up her doctoral studies and started a creative career. In 1963, her first collection of short stories, "Beside the North Gate", was published. From 1961 to 1967, he taught English and American literature at the University of Detroit. In 1967, she and her husband moved to Canada to teach at the University of Windsor, where they co-founded The Ontario Review of Books. After leaving the University of Windsor and returning to the United States in 1977, he has been a writer-in-residence at Princeton University.
Oates writes in a wide range of genres, including fiction, poetry, essays, plays and literary criticism. Her most outstanding achievements in novel writing have also established her status in the American literary world.
Oates advocated that literature should reflect social life, dedicated to showing the "complexity of the world", revealing the injustice and evil in life, and showing sympathy for the weak. Her novels often express strong homesickness and nostalgia, and the places and events that happened in her childhood often appear in her works. The early works depict the social changes in the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s. Through the description of some typical characters and environments, they exposed the ugliness and sins of American society under a highly materialized civilization, and revealed the anxiety, turmoil, and anger of Americans in that era. Depressed and confused.
Oates' first novel, "Falling Down" (1964), was the beginning of her focus on crime and violence. The novel tells the tragic romance of a teenage girl and a 30-year-old truck driver. Oates' early novels are best known, and bring her fame, to a trilogy that explores American urban, suburban, and rural worlds. Critics argue that the naturalistic tendencies in these novels were influenced by 20th century writers such as Faulkner, Dreiser and Farrell. Paradise on Earth (1967), the first of the trilogy, is the daughter of an immigrant worker in rural Eden County who marries a wealthy farmer in order to raise her illegitimate child. However, her son killed his stepfather and committed suicide because of his emptiness, and the idyllic life that the protagonist yearned for was finally destroyed. The second is "The Rich" (1967), the novel describes the life of suburban people, and criticizes the lack of spiritual world by showing the pursuit of material enjoyment of suburban people. The third, "Them" (1969)), which won the National Book Award, is a self-perceived work about people of different identities in American society. Through the depiction of the violence and depravity experienced by three generations of an urban family in Detroit, it shows the emptiness of people's spiritual life and the shattering of hope. The novel focuses more on the dark side of urban life, such as murder, prostitution, and fighting. It is a true portrayal of American modern urban life, especially the life of the lower classes. It shows the various confusions young men and women have endured in social life, and their life experiences and experiences. different paths. "Them" is Oates' representative novel and her most influential work.
In the early stage of creation, Oates' works reproduced objective reality, and the expression method was basically realistic. However, the author also uses modern writing techniques such as stream of consciousness to reveal the inner activities and spiritual world of the characters. This writing method combining realistic description and stream of consciousness techniques has laid the foundation for her to gain the reputation of "Master of Psychological Realism" foundation.
The publication of the novel "Wonderland" (1971) is a dividing line in the writer's creative style, which serves as a link between the previous and the next. "Wonderland" tells the story of an excellent surgeon. Originally an orphan, he had a successful career and a decent family through personal struggle. However, social pressure and mental distress made him lose the ability to maintain a happy family and the desire to enjoy life. The final result was to alienate his wife and children, stay away from society, harm his family, and destroy himself. The novel has vivid descriptions in revealing the empty spiritual life and complex inner world of the characters, and the methods are also more diverse. In the subsequent works, the display of the inner world of the characters and the use of stream-of-consciousness techniques are more prominent. Imagination, fantasy, absurdity, violence, and Gothic techniques frequently appear. The stories are intertwined with many crimes and tragedies. The protagonist of the story Often with different identities, they serve in various social institutions in the United States. The protagonist of "I'm at Your mercy" (1973) is a young lawyer who is lauded by his peers for his career in freedom. The Assassins (1975) is a psychological novel that dramatizes the impact of a Conservative politician's alleged murder on his wife and two brothers. The novel begins with the infant's inner monologue to describe his own feelings in the mother's womb. In Joelwood (1976), known as an experimental poetic novel, there are more irrational descriptions of the unconscious, which, in the author's own words, "merge together the structures of two different genres, one based on A poetic structure centered on imagination, another structure of character relationships centered on narrative and depiction.” The story of Unholy Love (1979) revolves around the lives of several teachers at a small college in New York , revealing the complicated inner world and fantasy world of the characters after suffering various setbacks, and showing the psychological reality of contemporary people, especially women. The novel is considered the least emotionally tangled of Oates' novels, and has been praised for its indirect humor and gentle satire. The novel is about a 38-year-old female professor who has failed in her life and career after her divorce. In order to fill her spiritual emptiness and to stand out, she is willing to be the mistress of a famous old British poet who was invited by a university. It's a pity that the poet is old and useless, speaks out of order, has no interest in flirting, and finally burns himself to death due to drunkenness and smoking, and also makes the female professor a waste of time. Oates, through his personal experience in higher education institutions and from the unique aesthetic perspective of women, exposes the ugly state of intellectuals in higher education institutions competing for fame and fortune, intrigues and infatuation, and profoundly expresses the spiritual emptiness and mentality variation of intellectual women. .
In the later stage of creation, Oates continued to explore the existential plight and survival psychology of contemporary people, especially women, and adopted the inner monologue, free association, multi-perspective, three-dimensional cross structure and other modernist techniques of stream of consciousness. Some creative concepts and creative methods of modernism have carried out bold experiments in many aspects, the subject matter is more extensive, the methods are more diverse, and more symbols, metaphors, mysteries, weirdness, nightmares, bad omens, deformities, perversions, Magic, absurd, horror, brutality, etc. She uses a unique aesthetic perspective to express the alienated society, and uses surreal artistic techniques to describe realistically, which further reflects the characteristics of psychological realism in her novels.
In the early 1980s, Oates published several novels parodies of 19th-century authors including Alcott, Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Bronte and Amy. Sister Leigh Bronte. "The Belfleur Family" (1980) follows the basic model of Gothic literature and uses supernatural events to trace the history of an American family. In this work, Oates has overtly violent depictions, such as a man deliberately crashing his plane into the Belfleur apartment, killing himself and his family. The Bretzmore Saga (1982) is the story of five teenage girls living in rural Pennsylvania in the late 19th century, and presents Gothic legends such as mysterious kidnappings and psychic phenomena. Using magical realism and grotesque Gothic techniques, the two works, through family history and legendary stories, use the past to satirize the present and borrow the past to describe the present, revealing the dangers brought by modern civilization to people's spiritual life. The former takes the life experience of a family as the main line, and uses the intersection of time and space, symbols and other techniques to describe the nearly 200-year history of the six generations of the Belfleur family. It is a microcosm of American history and is called "a modern myth depicting American society" . The latter, through the legendary story of the five sisters in the Brezmore Valley 100 years ago, uses the irony approach of black humor and the style of imitating the Victorian female writers, through the life experiences of the five sisters, and exposes the various customs of the 19th century to women. shackles, and its impact on women today.
In The Secret of Winterthern (1984), Oates explores the creative tradition of 19th-century mystery novels, borrowing elements from Poe's work. The protagonist of the story is a very talented young detective who always tries his best to imitate Sherlock Holmes in the process of solving a case. The novel features eerie, terrifying, and miserable Gothic family novels, including strange women with veils and ghosts haunting the swampy wasteland. Some critics thought the novels were too bizarre, but others loved Oates' brilliant depiction of sin, which they considered to be of considerable literary achievement.
As a female writer, Oates pays special attention to the fate and status of women. Her works are full of descriptions of women's humiliating situation and repressed psychology, often expressing women's awakening of self-consciousness and the value of independent existence with a unique vision. For example, the author's "Maria's Life" (1986), which is based on personal experience, tells the story of a weak woman who is bullied, who is not afraid of adversity and strives to become a famous writer.
Many other types of literature written by Oates also expose some dark sides of human beings. Most critics believe that Oates' short stories are best suited to the emotional expression of her literary themes. Some of her collections, such as "Beside the North Gate," "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (1974) and "Crow's Wings" (1986) contain violence and sexually promiscuous stories. The novel "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" is considered a modern short story classic and was adapted into a film. The novel tells the story of a girl's puberty and sexual awakening. One Sunday, Connie, a beautiful 15-year-old female middle school student, was listening to music alone at home, bored, when two strange men suddenly came and claimed to take her out for a "ride". Connie, terrified, had to obey.
Oates believes that in real life, in addition to all kinds of discrimination from society and the burden of housework, women also have to bear sexual threats. Oates attempts to explain that the uneasy and fearful psychology of women under heavy pressure is caused by society.
In May 2007, Oates, who was nearly seventy years old, released a new work - "The Gravedigger's Daughter", which is her thirty-sixth novel. The novel's writing is smooth and sharp, following her consistent style of dark realism, exposing the discrimination against Jews in American society since World War II, and exploring themes such as cultural identity, loneliness and freedom often faced by American immigrants. The content is profound and thought-provoking. . The novel takes the life experience of Jewish refugee Rebecca Schwart as the main line, and describes the experience of a German Jewish immigrant family in the United States in a heavy and sad tone.
Oates' works focus on the spiritual problems of contemporary American society, the relationship between the sexes and the distress of some intellectuals, revealing the dark side of human nature, and violence and family are the most common themes. There are often rape, incest, murder, child abuse and suicide full of tragic and violent storylines in the works. The lowly social status and weak character of the protagonists often make them victims. She is good at reflecting the complex contemporary American society and the living conditions of the Americans through a variety of expression techniques, especially good at combining realism themes with various techniques of modernism and postmodernism. In-depth exploration and description of survival dilemma and survival psychology. While inheriting the tradition of criticizing realism from writers such as Mark Twain, Dreiser, and Steinbeck, she also used modernist expression techniques such as psychoanalysis, inner monologue, stream of consciousness, symbolism, and mysticism in some works. Critics generally believe that Oates's creative tone is mainly realism.
Oates is famous for being prolific and versatile in the literary world. Her works can already be compared with the two prolific writers of the 19th century, Dickens and Balzac, and have the potential to surpass them. While some critics have accused Oates' approach of deviating from contemporary literature's pursuit of "less and better", many have applauded her tireless efforts in literature, saying that her work may ultimately frame a whole fiction world. Oates is a controversial writer in the feminist literary tradition. But it has been found that the female characters in her works are not born feminists, they are always dependent on others, acting passively, always compromising sexual and emotional entanglements, rather than explicitly articulating their needs and dilemmas. Discrimination and abuse of women - sexual, physical and emotional - is a recurring theme in Oates' work. Feminist critics have dismissed the female characters in her novels as masochistic, noting that there are no self-reliant female characters in her work. Although most people do not consider Oates a feminist writer, many critics believe that there is a hidden feminist consciousness in Oates' novels. Her later novels focus on women's solidarity and self-discovery.
The famous American writer John Updike once commented on Oates: "If there is one outstanding female writer in our country, it is Joyce Carroll Oates."
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