Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories

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Lovely, Dark, Deep
Lovely, Dark, Deep Stories.jpg
First edition
Author Joyce Carol Oates
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Ecco/HarperCollins
Publication date
2014
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages432
ISBN 978-0-06-235694-9

Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories is collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2014 by Ecco/HarperCollins. The volume comprises twelve short stories and a novella, "Patricide".

Contents

The titular story "Love, Dark, Deep" provoked controversy for its negative depiction of American poet Robert Frost. [1] [2]

Stories

I

II

III

IV

Reception

Literary critic Charles Finch at the New York Times describes the collection as "a fatally slack enterprise, a makeshift heap of first drafts, blighted by shallow emotion. I winced again and again as I read it." Finch adds: "Wallace Stegner liked to say hard writing makes for easy reading; this feels like easy writing, and it makes for hard reading." [3]

Remarking on the scope of Oates's fiction, Alan Cheuse at NPR radio compares her to the 19th century novelist Honoré de Balzac: "Where Balzac wanted to give his readers Paris in its entirety, Joyce Carol Oates has dared to give her readers an entire country — our own." [4]

Kirkus Reviews writes: "As unsympathetic as many of Oates' mordant and quasi-anonymous characters may appear at first, en masse their fears and anxieties in the face of death and decline epitomize universal recognition of hard facts: We're all in this together, and nobody gets out alive." [5]

Robert Frost controversy

The title of the titular story of the collection "Lovely, Dark, Deep" is based on a verse from the famous poem by Robert Frost (1874–1963) entitled "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1922). The final stanza reads:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

In Oates's story, a fictional female journalist, Evangeline Fife, goes to interview Frost in the summer of 1951, then at the height of his prestige. Oates depicts the former Vermont poet laureate as a sexist and a racist, according to Liz Bury at The Guardian . [6] [7]

Bury notes: "Frost's wife, Elinor, his sister, Jeanie, and his children Irma, Lesley, Marjorie, and Carol all feature in the fiction, with Oates making no attempt to disguise the identity of her subjects." [8] Kirkus Reviews writes: "The collection's titular story delivers a skewering of Robert Frost in its unsympathetic riff on the facts of the poet's life as well as a testimonial to the role of the poet's craft as a hedge against mortality."

Oates provided a caveat in a footnote to opening page of the story which reads: "This is a work of fiction, though based on (selected) historical research," adding "See Robert Frost: A Biography (1996) by Jeffrey Meyers." [9] [10]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Bury, 2013
  2. ↑ Cheuse, 2014: "[T]he title story, infamous since its magazine publication last year, about an attractive female poet who interviews Robert Frost at his Vermont country hideaway with disturbing results."
  3. ↑ Finch, 2014
  4. ↑ Cheuse, 2014: "Oates is a giant among us...thoroughly wonderful and important."
  5. ↑ "Lovely, Dark, Deep: Bookself". Kirkus Reviews. September 9, 2014. Retrieved March 3, 2025.
  6. ↑ Bury, 2013
  7. ↑ Cheuse, 2014:"[T]he title story, infamous since its magazine publication last year about an attractive female poet who interviews Robert Frost at his Vermont country hideaway with disturbing results."
  8. ↑ Bury, 2013
  9. ↑ Oates, 2014 p. 297
  10. ↑ Bury, 2013

Sources

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