confessions gravedigger environmental transgression

books:

23 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Modern Library, 2006

The only kind of fiction that is real
As writer Joyce Carol Oates states in the introduction of her "them", this book is `the only kind of fiction that is real'. The gimmick in this book is that she tells the story as if it were reality. According to her early note, the narrative is based on some letters she received from a former student. This so-called student wasn't a good writer, but she thought her story worthy telling therefore ...

Blonde: A Novel

174 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Perennial, 2001

Ambivalent
Ambivalent because that's how the book left me. Maybe confused, certainly affected. I had not read Joyce Carol Oates before and have always been curious what attracted her fans. "Blonde" has a certain 21st century Virginia Woolf style. But, whereas Virginia Woolf was more poetic in her prose, and wrote in a dreamier, drawn-out style, Joyce Carol Oates tends to shout when she writes, seeming ...

The Best American Essays of the Century (The Best American Series)

12 reviews

Houghton Mifflin, 2001

Authority and beauty
I don't think I'm alone in viewing essays as members of a somewhat lower caste than novels and non-fiction books. Maybe it's because I associate the essay with newspapers, and people like George Will who pretend to know more than their readers. I think the editors of this essay collection understood that popular conception, and tried very hard to fight it. In line with that fight, one of the ...

The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel (P.S.)

50 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Perennial, 2008

Hard to put down
I've read a lot of Oates' books and this is one of my favorites. It's pretty dark, but the plot is intricate and for the most part it keeps moving. Like some others have said the end gets a little bogged down and slow, but I did have a hard time putting it down. Others have summarized the plot, so I won't do that, but the descriptions of small-town life and upstate New York are very vivid. It ...

Zombie

53 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Plume, 1996

A deceptively simple novel that tackles a tough subject
The protagonist of Joyce Carol Oates's Zombie is thirty-something problem child Quentin P. The son of an accomplished professor, Quentin is on probation for a sexual molestation charge and currently working as a caretaker for his grandmother's boarding property. He struggles daily with his desires for a sexual zombie of his own, a creature who will be a companion without passing judgment or ...

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

64 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Plume, 1994

LEGS
Legs Sadovsky is one of the greatest characters that I've ever encountered. She is absolutely larger than life. I only wish she could have been "heroic" while still being entirely female. Her androgeny is mentioned several times. I understand she is a tomboy with no mother figure, but why can't a girly girly be a tough leader who holds her group together? I highly recommend this book to ...

Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway

10 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Ecco, 2008

Joyce Carol Oates' Tour De Force
In a recent phone conversation I had with a friend, she informed me that she had just finished Joyce Carol Oates' latest book. I replied that I had heard her read from it at an event in Atlanta not long ago. She asked: "What short story did she read from?" I find out then that THE GRAVEDIGGER'S DAUGHTER is not Ms. Oates' latest and have learned since then that WILD NIGHTS will be followed by a ...

Faithless: Tales of Transgression

11 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Perennial, 2002

one of the greatest living writers
while i'm no longer an advocate reader with my busy schedule, i do like to read short stories or novellas from time to time. in fact, i think i tend to suffer from acute laziness when reading anything that doesn't pertain to my work or junk mail which are receive tons of all the time in my p.o. box. after years of reading a short story here or there, i'd never read a book of short stories all the ...

My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

20 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Ecco, 2008

Disjointed narrative worth working through
Skyler Rampike, surviving child of the tabloid disaster that is his family, narrates this story. His 6-year-old sister, a prodigy figure skater under the pushy care of their stage mother, is murdered and found in the family's furnace room, with a scribbled and barely readable note left behind and a basement window left ajar. It should sound quite like the JonBenet Ramsey murder, because it is ...

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

6 reviews
Stephen B. Oates

Harper Perennial, 1990

Learning the truth about the legend
Nat Turner led the largest slave rebellion in American history. That is an indisputable fact. Unfortunately, not much else is known about the life of this legendary figure. Why did he do what he did? How was he able to do it? What was it about the man that made people follow him into insurrection? In his book, "The Fires Of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion", author Stephen B. Oates ...

On Boxing (P.S.)

15 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006

A Boxing Book Unparalleled
Where the most eloquent writers display their best prose is through passion. And the seeds of passion thrive in sex, exploitation, and violence. The human condition, written about by every writer but only successfully by a minority, is dissected and shaved away and exposed layer by layer until one gets to the core of what the soul is, of what separates us from our basest instincts. To that ...

The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Policy

RFF Press, 2006

The second edition of the popular RFF Reader brings together much of the best work published by researchers at Resources for the Future. Many articles in the Reader were originally published in RFF's quarterly magazine, Resources. Wally Oates has supplemented that with material drawn from other RFF works, including issue briefs and special reports. The readings provide concise, insightful background and perspectives on a broad range of ...

Portrait of America: Volume 1: To 1877

3 reviews
Stephen Oates, Charles J. Errico

Wadsworth Publishing, 2006

Fantastic supplement
A secondary source reader is a hugely valuable resource for teaching American History. Portrait of America is a fantastic supplement to any US History Survey. Each essay, written by a prominent historian, provides a sophisticated analysis of certain events and personalities in American History, in more depth and detail than any survey text provides. The variety of viewpoints taken by the ...

Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

11 reviews
Stephen B. Oates

Harper Perennial, 1994

Masterful balanced biography
Stephen Oates writes a masterful biography of one of the pivotal figures of the twentieth century. Today we view Martin Luther King Jr. as a saint, and a model of what the human spirit can achieve. In his day, he was viewed by many in the South with fear, hatred and loathing. It is easy to view this situation in hindsight, and assume that everyone was just ignorant. Oates writes of the ...

Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (Plume)

23 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Plume, 1991

Still Waters...
The time is the decade between the mid-1950's and the mid-1960's, and the place is Oates's familiar setting, her native upstate New York. In some ways this never loud but hard-hitting book continues many of the threads common in a multitude of Oates' previous works (a young girl, bookish, intelligent, much like Oates herself was as a teen, from a crumbling home where alcoholism and gambling are ...

Babylon

2 reviews
Joan Oates

Thames & Hudson, 1986

Babylon Ancient Peoples and Places
The book by Joan Oates, Babylon (Ancient Peoples and Places), is very informative for any who wish to learn about Babylonia, whether student or expert. The book is very detailed with great photos, drawings and maps. There is also a "Mesopotamian Chronology" so you can look up rulers, dynasties and dates. The book covers the history behind monuments, cities and people is very good. I would ...

Portrait of America: From the European Discovery of America to the End of Reconstruction

2 reviews
Stephen Oates, Charles J. Errico

Wadsworth Publishing, 2002

Fascinating History Book
Describes history from Christopher Columbus all the way to the 14th Amendment in a fascinating account. An interesting read for anyone interested in the history of America to the year 1877.

Middle Age: A Romance

36 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Perennial, 2002

John Gardner: "Joyce Carol Oates is one of the great writers of our time"
I spent a whole month driving to work and back home listening in my car to Joyce Carol Oates's darkly comic yet compelling and even warm novel "Middle Age: A Romance" as read by Mary Peiffer on 19 CDs. I'd spent 21 hours in the fictional Salthill-on-Hudson, half an hour outside Manhattan, New York, which is a small peaceful community of educated, attractive, and wealthy people, mostly couple ...

You Must Remember This

14 reviews
Joyce Carol Oates

Plume, 1998

The 1950's Is The Real Main Character
Oates, my favorite writer, refuses to give in to those who would have us think the 1950's were a placid, contented decade of plenty for everyone. In truth they were fraught with perils, economic and social, and under the surface of post-war calm, the decade boiled with tensions that underlay the fears of the American psyche. In these pages, behind the tale of an incestuous love story of a ...

Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers

4 reviews

W. W. Norton & Company, 1998

An excellent anthology for creative writers and readers.
Joyce Carol Oates combines the best of classic literature by Kafka and Faulkner with contemporary works by Garcia Marquez and King. Each story and poem exemplifies a writing technique or strategy. An example being the two versions of James Joyce's short story "Sister;" the first his original draft and the second a revision. "Telling Stories" is a wonderful anthology for anyone wishing to ...

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