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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Informative. Well researched. Simple, 11 Feb 1999
By A Customer
This biography by Greg Johnson is good. I don't know if something more detailed can or has been written about J.C.O., because I have never come across any other biographies which to compare it with; it is informative, but it is simplistic. I read past reviews where readers felt that J.C.O. was looming over the author's shoulder telling him what and how to write. I agree with that observation, because there is a tone or quality of restraint that I felt upon reading it out loud. As J.C.O. fans, I think we were expecting something more -- something that goes beyond the dark fiction that has made her such a unique literary figure. I think we were expecting her to literally have lived the lives of the characters that she has created. But she is not Hemmingwaylike or Iask Diensonlike in that she writes in a fictionalized autobiographical way, as these two did. I believe she uses some personal experiences -- as most writers do, but she is firmly grounded in the turmoil of our country. She hasn't lived the lives of her characters in the truest sense of the word, but she writes about the possibilities of the lives she could have lived. Hemmingway wrote about soldiers and fishermen, etc..., because he was all of them. Isak Dienson was an aristocrat and a farm owner. She wrote about that and beyond. J.C.O. has led an academic life, and in her free time, has thought and thought and thought about socioeconomic conditions that shape human actions and behavior. I don't feel that she is a writer who writes from experience, but a writer who writes through the attainment of knowledge from books and the people around her. I think it is a very honest biography -- true to the work ethic that has made J.C.O. one of my all time favorite writers. To reiterate, this is not an exciting biography -- quite bland, really. But it sheds some light on the Oates mystique.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe all that we need to know about Oates--or maybe not., 7 Jul 1998
By A Customer
Recommended to Oates readers. The author has done a thorough job detailing the life and work of an enigmatic woman whose work is now perhaps better known by reputation (violent, Gothic, incredibly voluminous) than by content. That this should be the case is not surprising, since it is necessary to sift through a mass of writing of uneven quality if one wants to know what Oates is getting at, and in this sense "Invisible Writer" performs a necessary service by providing us with capsule summaries of each of the novels and many of the short stories and backtracking to the reception they received at the time, with Oates' own opinions on many of them. Space does not permit for any but the barest critical assessments, and this lack of a perspective on the work (other than the consequences for Oates' career as a whole) is the book's major weakness. It does a better job on bringing Oates herself to life, often through her own correspondence and notebooks. Perhaps its greatest contribution to future Oates scholarship lies in the revelation of a mystical experience Oates underwent at a turning point in her career, leading her from her formerly pessimistic, rather Romantic perspective to a disavowal of romanticism in favor of "collective consciousness"; her work since then has been less realistic, more postmodern, and, for many, of decreasing interest. Oates herself appears to have changed from a frightened and intense young woman to a happier person who is also a curious mix of selflessness and off-putting narcissism. Still, she comes off as a mostly (if not completely) sympathetic figure. On the whole, this book makes the best of a challenging job.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE DOUBLE LIFE OF JOYCE CAROL OATES, 6 Jul 1998
By A Customer
Engrossing treatment of fascinating woman. Johnson treats her gently, but manages to create a well-rounded picture of a woman who has sparked off so much admiration, awe, contempt, envy and even hatred within the literary community alone; and who has been forced to mentally distance herself from her own public persona in order, it appears, to keep herself sane. Johnson uses as his central image the invisible woman -- invisibility the shield Oates attempts to retreat behind to live her rather placid, work-obsessed private life as Joyce Smith. While this division between public and private identities -- and the struggle to navigate the space between -- is hardly original,it did strike me as an effective and moving angle from which to view Oates. Oates has, in her career, fearlessly cut against the myth of woman writer (as someone who should concern herself with domestic life) and serious/great writer (someone who should produce one book every five or ten years). Johnson reveals a vicious underside of critics and writers who can't seem to deal with the phenomenon that is Oates without attacking/ belittling her on a personal level. Love her, hate her, or merely (god forbid) like her, Joyce Carol Oates appears to be a richly compelling presence in each of her two lives; and Invisible Writer is a rich, compelling read.
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