Soul at the white heat : inspiration, obsession, and the writing life / Joyce Carol Oates.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- author.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938-.

Authorship.

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.).

American literature--Criticism and interpretation.

American literature.

English literature--Criticism and interpretation.

English literature.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938---Authorship.

Oates, Joyce Carol.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

x, 390 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HsrperCollinsPublishers, [2016]

Summary:

A new collection of critical and personal essays on writing, obsession, and inspiration from National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates. "Why do we write?" With this question, Joyce Carol Oates begins an imaginative exploration of the writing life, and all its attendant anxieties, joys, and futilities, in this collection of seminal essays and criticism. Leading her quest is a desire to understand the source of the writer's inspiration--do subjects haunt those that might bring them back to life until the writer submits? Or does something "happen" to us, a sudden ignition of a burning flame? Can the appearance of a muse-like Other bring about a writer's best work?--Publisher's description.

Contents:

I. The writing life. Is the uninspired life worth living? ; This I believe : five motives for writing ; Anatomy of a story ; The writing room

II. Classics. My life in Middlemarch : Rebecca Mead ; Charles Dickens : a life : Claire Tomalin ; "The King of Weird" : H.P. Lovecraft ; My faraway one : selected letters of Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz ; Simenons ; Two American prose masters : Ellison, Updike ; A visit with Doris Lessing (1973)

III. Contemporaries. The childhood of Jesus : J.M. Coetzee ; The detective as visionary : Derek Raymond ; "Catastrophe in art" : Julian Barnes ; "When the legend becomes fact" : Larry McMurtry ; Paper losses : Lorrie Moore ; Emotions of man and animals : Karen Joy Fowler ; Wiindigoo justice : Louise Erdrich ; In other worlds : Margaret Atwood ; The storyteller of the "shattered personality" : Patrick McGrath ; Why be happy when you could be normal? : Jeanette Winterson ; Diminished things : Anne Tyler ; Smiling woman : Margaret Drabble ; The inventions of Jerome Charyn ; "After Auschwitz" : Martin Amis ; London NW : Zadie Smith ; Joan Didion : risk and triumph ; Unflinching about women : the short stories of Lucia Berlin ; Edna O'Brien : The little red chairs ; "Disputed truth" : Mike Tyson ; The fighter : a film by David O. Russell ; The mystery of Muhammad Ali

IV. Real life. A visit to San Quentin (2011).

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Miller Fund bookplate.

Contains:

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- Is the uninspired life worth living?

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- This I believe.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- Anatomy of a story.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- Writing room.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- My life in Middlemarch.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- Charles Dickens.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- King of weird.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- My faraway one.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- Simenons.

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938- Two American prose masters.

ISBN:

9780062564504

0062564501