Reception
Calling Oates "the poet laureate of schizophrenia, of blasted childhoods, of random acts of violence", novelist Erica Jong, writing in The New York Times , compared Oates favorably to literary figures Isaac Singer, O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant and Vladmir Nabokov. [6] [7]
Jong reserved special praise for the title story "Last Days", describing the characterization of protagonist Saul Morgenstern as "one of the most convincing, and therefore unpleasant, descriptions of schizophrenia I have ever read". Jong observed that the second group of stories, under the heading "Our Wall," all of which are set in Eastern Europe during the reemergence of Cold War hostilities, "is not far from the landscape of hysteria and violence that marks the first group of stories" presented under the heading "Last Days" and set in the United States. Jong concluded her review by declaring "Miss Oates one of our most audaciously talented writers." [8]
Theme
The 11 stories in the collection are presented in two sections. The five stories that comprise "Last Days" dramatize the acute suffering that accompanies personal violence and end in madness or suicide in America. [9] [10]
The six stories included under the "Our Wall" section deal with the Cold War social aspects of Eastern Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the oppressive and isolating intellectual environment suffered by intellectuals and artists in the last phase of Stalinist rule. [11]
Despite stories "that reveal personal and political barriers to wholeness, health [and] integrity" literary critic Greg Johnson offers this caveat regarding the collection’s theme: "The title Last Days should not be read as fatalistic but as hopeful...like all of Oates’s fiction, Last Days dramatizes a nightmarish present but suggests a positive resolution, a necessary path to the future." [12] [13]
Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
The Centaur is a novel by John Updike, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1963. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Portions of the novel first appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker.
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The story first appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch magazine. It was inspired by three Tucson, Arizona murders committed by Charles Schmid, which were profiled in Life magazine in an article written by Don Moser on March 4, 1966. Oates said that she dedicated the story to Bob Dylan because she was inspired to write it after listening to his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". The story was originally named "Death and the Maiden".
Raymond Joseph Smith was an American educator, author, and book editor. He was for more than 30 years the editor of Ontario Review, a literary magazine, and the Ontario Review Press, a literary book publisher. He was married to the American author Joyce Carol Oates.
The Wheel of Love and Other Stories is the third short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1970 by Vanguard Press.
Helen Frances Barolini was an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often wrote on issues of Italian-American identity. Among her notable works are Umbertina (1979), a novel which tells the story of four generations of women in one Italian-American family; and an anthology, The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (1985), which called attention to an emerging, and previously unnoticed, class of writers.
Olinger Stories: A Selection is a collection of 11 works of short fiction by John Updike published by Vintage Books in 1964.
Charles Thomas Cole was a playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for Smooth Talk.
Marriages and Infidelities (1972) is the fourth volume of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. In this collection, Oates explores the relationship between love and betrayal.
Mary U. Miller is an American fiction writer. She is the author of two collections of short stories entitled Big World and Always Happy Hour. Her debut novel entitled The Last Days of California was published by Liveright. It is the story of a fourteen-year-old girl on a family road trip from the South to California, led by her evangelical father. By January 2014, Big World had sold 3,000 copies and Last Days of California had an initial print run of 25,000.
List of the published work of Joyce Carol Oates, American writer.
Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1966 - three years after By the North Gate - by Vanguard Press.
The Goddess and Other Women is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published by Vanguard Press in 1974.
Son of the Morning is a 1978 novel by American author Joyce Carol Oates. The book was first published on August 1, 1978 through Vanguard Press.
Dear Husband is a collection of 14 fictional short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 2009.
A Book of American Martyrs is a 2017 novel by the American author, Joyce Carol Oates. The story chronicles two American families, the Voorheeses and the Dunphys, whose faith and convictions are vastly different. The story begins with the aftermath of the November 1999 murder of Dr. Gus Voorhees by Luther Amos Dunphy.
The Sacrifice is a 2015 novel by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in blighted urban New Jersey in the 1980s, it follows a young Black woman, Sybilla, who is discovered in a degraded condition in an abandoned factory after going missing. When she alleges that she was kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a group of white police officers, her cause is taken up by an ambitious and unscrupulous civil rights activist and his lawyer brother, despite evidence of deceit in her story. The events of the novel are based on the real-life Tawana Brawley case, and takes place in a part of New Jersey still suffering from the aftermath of post-war deindustrialization and the 1967 Newark riots.
"The Echo" is a short story by Paul Bowles written in 1946 and first published in the September 1946 issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine. It was later published in a collection of his short fiction, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories, published by Random House in 1950.
The Poisoned Kiss and Other Stories from the Portuguese is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1975 by Vanguard Press.
Museums and Women and Other Stories is a collection of 25 works of short fiction by John Updike, first appearing individually in literary journals. The stories were collected by Alfred A. Knopf in 1972.
