THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES 1973-1982
Joyce Carol Oates
edited by Greg Johnson
Ecco
Memoir
ISBN: 9780061227981

People write journals for different reasons, which are usually not created for public consumption --- at least not while the writer is still alive. Nevertheless, this phenomenon has been known to happen, and THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES 1973-1982 is one such book. Oates is considered the most prolific American writer to come out of the 20th century and move seamlessly into the 21st. If nothing else, this journal humanizes her, offering readers further understanding of the woman, the writer, her love of teaching and her body of work.

In “A Note on the Text,” editor Greg Johnson explains why the 10 years between 1973 and 1982 make up the entries chosen to create THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES: the magnitude of Oates’s “4,000 single-spaced typewritten pages” is too much of a project for an editor to complete in a timely fashion. With this in mind, he chose one year of “the uniformly high quality…the journal entries…[which he] intended to provide an accurate view of Oates’s primary concerns” at that time in her writing career. These pieces “focus on her work, her writing process, and philosophical concerns.” However, some of her very personal experiences and interactions with family, friends, colleagues and students have made their way into this truncated version of her journal.

In her Introduction, Oates tells readers that she actually began to keep a journal in 1971 when she was in London and feeling somewhat homesick. “…This journal seemed to me at the start a haphazard and temporary comfort of sorts, that would not last beyond [that particular time] yet, astonishingly…the journal has endured, and is now thousands of pages housed in the Syracuse University Library Special Collections. My understanding with myself [was] that the journal would remain haphazard and spontaneous…never revised or rethought; it would be a place for stray impressions and thoughts that shift through our heads constantly; [it] would be a repository…for experiences and notes for writing.”

The Introduction goes on to explain how Oates rationalized, ruminated upon, questioned and analyzed the entire process of journaling. She wonders if she will be too exposed if her journal is published. Will the public read it and somehow sense a blurring of her fiction and these entries? If a journal is considered a private place, it is transformed into something else when others read it…one of “the risks of journal-keeping.”

She continues her comments: “What I have seen of this edited/abridged journal, so capably presented by Greg Johnson, affects me too emotionally to make its perusal rewarding: revisiting the past is like biting into a sandwich in which you’ve been assured, there are only a few, really a very few, bits of ground glass.” She goes on to opine upon the reasons why she feels this way: “Does the uncensored journal reveal too much of me? Does the journal of the 1970s/1980s return me to a time in which…my parents were alive?” What? Oates has not read the published version of her journal…or at least she has not read all of it. When she talks about a “glass sandwich,” readers will have a visceral reaction that will provoke them into thinking about having themselves outed in what they had begun as private writing.

Every journal, regardless of its author, will be a collage of memories, dreams, desires, self-regard, internal turmoil, petty arguments, warm reconciliation, satisfaction and a whole host of personal experiences seemingly of import only to the author. However, journals cannot help but offer readers a window into the writer’s personality, a critique on her/his work so far, questions about her/his status in society: as a person, as a professional, as a careerist and, in this case, as a writer and teacher. Reputation alone is not enough to sustain the ego of talented people, and this drives them to keep working. Their fans often desire more; they want to understand a body of work produced by the recipient of their ardor, offered in a way different from formal biography or autobiography.

THE JOURNAL OF JOYCE CAROL OATES 1973-1982 is rich in personal and happy reminiscences about her husband, her parents, her joy in gardening, her passion for entertaining, her respect and great regard for fellow writers, and other luminaries she has known and/or continues to see. She is generous and humble. In assessing her life in 1981, about eight months after completing ANGEL OF LIGHT and A BLOODSMOOR ROMANCE, she writes: “How gracefully things are taking shape, financial, professional, otherwise… In all, a lovely day. Amen.”

But not every entry is as bright as this one. An intruder invaded her office and “thrust something at me, a tiny package. A razor blade in it, I’m led to believe.” Another encounter with violence occurs in the form of a tongue-lashing: “You’re very anti-man, aren’t you?” (“must be confusing me with the feminists.”) Oates writes in her journal: “The pointlessness of violence… Not simply for the criminal, but for the victim. I don’t think I will, or could, learn anything from the experience. Or could I?”

Perhaps she did. Oates speaks in a very American voice and imbues her writing with myths, history, family, ideas and ideals associated with the suburban, urban, academic, political and street images of the landscape of the United States. Some of her books are overtly violent, while others use violence as a device to make a larger statement about the culture we inhabit. Yet she never preaches nor does she knock the reader over the head with potentially vile ideas.

As a matter of fact, when she talks about writing, the process of writing, the formation of characters, the flow of dialogue, the choice of setting, the pace of the plot and in what century or universe the book resides, she concludes: “If I wonder where my personality really exists, in what form it best expresses itself, the answer is obvious: in the books. Between hard covers. Hard covers. The rest is Life.”

   --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

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