 First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | E. P. Dutton |
Publication date | 1994 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 624 |
| ISBN | 978-0525938361 |
What I Lived For is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates published in 1994 by E. P. Dutton . The work is a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 and a 1995 finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction .
 | This section needs a plot summary.(April 2025) |
Kirkus Reviews deems What I Lived For “a dazzling novel, brilliant both stylistically and in its depiction of a man running desperately for his life.” [2]
“My process as a writer is to “build” a character simply by inhabiting him or her obsessively; during the course of writing a novel, I am immersed in my protagonists’ souls virtually all my waking life. (And perhaps much of my dream life as well.) I see my own world, which I move through as myself, through 'fictitious' eyes, and note what my characters would think, do, in similar situations.—Joyce Carol Oates, 1996 interview with biographer Greg Johnson [3]
New York Times literary critic James Carroll provides this thematic compendium:
In What I Lived For, Joyce Carol Oates has written a vivid and continuous nightmare: a savage dissection of our national myths of manhood and success, a bitter portrait of our futile effort to flee the weight of the past, a cold-eyed look at our loss of community and family, a shriek at the monsters men and women have become to each other and a revelation of our desolate inner lives. What I Lived For is an American "Inferno." [4]