 First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Vanguard Press |
Publication date | 1977 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 370 |
| ISBN | 9780814907931 |
Night-Side: Eighteen Tales is a collection of 18 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Vanguard Press in 1977. [1] [2]
Those stories first appearing in literary journals are indicated. [4]
Literary critic Greg Johnson notes that these stories are designated as “tales” [6] in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe: “Night-Side inhabits a realm of storytelling with its own distinct conventions. Unlike the realistic, carefully plotted short story, the tale allows the narrative freedom of brisk pacing, improbable events, and idiosyncratic characters and settings.” [7]
Literary critic John Romano, writing in The New York Times , also emphasizes that Oates registers these stories as “tales,” evoking the Gothic works of Hawthorne and Poe, as well “lurid mass market paperbacks” found in contemporary pulp fiction. [8] Romano praises Oates for her “handy competence” in depicting “borderline insanity” and creating “a gallery of people haunted, spooked, driven mad or victimized in general by invasions from outside the sane, rational borders of consciousness.” [9]
Romano contrasts the work in Night-Side with Oates’s earlier short fiction that deals with human suffering:
If there's a difference between the strange mental worlds in this volume and those Miss Oates has taken us to before, it is that the pain pervading the new book is peculiarly lonely and private...In Night-Side's nearly 400 pages, there's hardly an instance of two people understanding one another… [10]
The stories are unified by interrelated themes which she names in the collection's epigraph, Walt Whitman's poem "A Clear Midnight:"
This is thy hour O soul,
thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art,
the day erased, the lesson done
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best:
Night, sleep, death and the stars. [11]
In fact the stories are less concerned with everyday reality than with the "night-side" of the human mind, the area psychologists usually refer a to as "the unconscious," and its effects on a character's life. [12]
"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".
By the North Gate is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. It was the author's first book, first published by Vanguard Press in 1963.
The Wheel of Love is contains 20 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Vanguard Press in 1970. The volume brought Oates "abundant national acclaim" including this assessment from librarian and critic John Alfred Avant: "Quite simply, one of the finest collections of short stories ever written by an American."
American gothic fiction is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality versus the irrational, puritanism, guilt, the uncanny, ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.
Marriages and Infidelities is a collection of 25 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Vanguard Press in 1972.
Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1966 by Vanguard Press.
The Goddess and Other Women is a collection comprising 25 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates and published by Vanguard Press in 1974.
Crossing the Border: Fifteen Tales is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates written while the author was residing in Canada. Published simultaneously by Vanguard Press in the United States and by Cage Publishing Company, Agincourt, Canada in 1976. The stories had appeared previously in different US and Canadian magazines, often in different versions. Seven of the stories, "Crossing the Border", "Hello Fine Day Isn’t It", "Natural Boundaries", "Customs", "The Scream", "An Incident in The Park", and "River Rising" depict conjugal life of an American couple, Reneé and Evan Maynard, in Canada. The characters in "The Transformation of Vincent Scoville" and "The Liberation of Jake Hanley" are instructors at the same Canadian college. The rest of the stories are not connected to each other.
All the Good People I’ve Left Behind is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1979 by Black Sparrow Press.
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.
Last Days: Stories is a collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by E. P. Dutton in 1984. The stories in this volume were originally published individually in literary journals
Raven's Wing is a collection of short fiction 18 works by Joyce Carol Oates published by E. P. Dutton in 1986.
Heat and Other Stories is a collection of 25 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by E. P. Dutton in 1991.
Where Is Here? is a collection containing 34 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates originally published in paperback by Harper & Row in 1989 and in hardback by Ecco Press in 1992.
The Seduction and Other Stories is a collection containing 16 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Black Sparrow Press in 1975.
A Sentimental Education is a collection of 5 short stories and a novella by Joyce Carol Oates published in 1980 by E. P. Dutton.
Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque is a collection of 16 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published in 1994 by E. P. Dutton. The volume includes an afterword by Oates.
The Assignation is a collection of 44 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Ecco Press in 1988.
“The Fine White Mist of Winter” is a work of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates, originally published in the Literary Review in 1962. The story was first collected in By the North Gate (1963) by Vanguard Press. The story was selected for publication in the 1963 anthology The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award.
"The Metamorphosis" is a work of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates originally published in The New American Review, and first collected in Marriages and Infidelities (1972) by Vanguard Press.