 First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Ecco Press |
Publication date | 1988 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| ISBN | 978-0-88001-200-3 |
The Assignation is a collection of 44 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Ecco Press in 1988. [1]
Literary critic James Atlas in The New York Times reports that these stories—simply “narratives” according to Oates—possess “the peculiar virtues and defects of her distinctive voice.” [2]
Noting that few of the pieces exceed a “seven of eight pages,” Atlas registers this critique: “Too many of these stories seem like exercises or false starts. Some are so fragmentary that it's hard to get your bearings; the story's over before it's begun.” [3]
Kirkus Reviews also points to the brevity of the stories - “no more than two of three pages” [4] - which amount to mere “sketches” dealing almost exclusively with death and decay. The reviewer judges the collection “Vintage Oates—always interesting, though not always pleasant.” [5]
Publishers Weekly offered a mixed appraisal to the collection, observing that the fiction “offers brilliant bursts of energy that are both dazzling and disappointing for their ephemeral nature” but adding that the stories “reveal a master of the form writing at her efficient, full-tilt best.” The reviewer also pointed out the shortest of these narrative “ranging in length from a simple paragraph of five sentences to a dozen pages at most…” [6]
“In The Assignation, one of Oates’s two collections of ‘miniature narratives,’ such tales as “Blue-Bearded Lover” and “The Others" recall nineteenth-century Gothic literature, while others convey the kind of hothouse psychological intensity, the precarious balance between sanity and madness, traditionally associated with the genre.” [7]
Johnson adds that “With their brief, truncated scenes and their poetic intensity, they have a brutal, sometimes horrific impact, lying bare with deft economy and unflinching directness the anxieties, longings, and obsessions lying just beneath the surface of ‘ordinary’ life.” [8]
Though “sinister strangers,” appear in a number of these works, literary critic Gretchen Elizabeth Schultz cautions “that many of the stories in The Assignation...involve figures thoroughly familiar to the protagonists, family members for instance. In “Heartland,” a daughter visiting parents” whom she hasn’t seen in a very long time” is left wondering if she has ever really seen them at all (and if they have ever really seen her.” In “Bad Habits,” it is a wife who has trouble recognizing the husband “who squinted up at her without seeming to recognize her.” [9] Schultz traces the stories in The Assignation to Oates’s earliest literary efforts:
Readers of the rest of Oates’s work will not be surprised that many of the characters in [this] collection lose the selves they may or may not find again…other selves as have haunted Oates’s work and menaced the lives and psyches of her characters from the very start. [10]
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).
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."
High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories, 1966–2006 is a collection of short stories by author Joyce Carol Oates. First published by Ecco in 2006, it is the author's largest collection of short stories.
I Am No One You Know: Stories is a short story collection by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 2004 by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. There are 19 stories in this collection.
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.
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.
Night-Side: Eighteen Tales is a collection of 18 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Vanguard Press in 1977.
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.