From Oates's birth in Lockport, New York, to her present life in Princeton, New Jersey, Johnson skillfully interweaves the background, personality, character, lifestyle, and writings of the author. Through this fascinating and well-written biography, readers will feel that they know Oates almost as well as anyone can and may find themselves vacillating between great admiration Cited by: 10 Feb 14, · Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. For more than three decades, Joyce Carol Oates has been hailed as one of the most significant and enduring writers of the twentieth century. Brilliantly inventive and astonishingly prolific, she has captured the imaginations of millions of readers worldwide with her unflinching portraits of human nature set Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates: Johnson, Greg: blogger.com: blogger.com by: 10
Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates – Celestial Timepiece
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Invisible Writer by Greg Johnson. Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates by Greg Johnson.
Granted privileged access to Joyce Carol Oates's letters and journals, as well as extensive interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and Oates herself, biographer Greg Johnson examines the relationship between Oates's life and work in this fascinating exploration of a complex and gifted artist. Johnson reveals little-known facts about Oates's personal and family histor Granted privileged access to Joyce Carol Oates's letters and journals, as well as extensive interviews with family, friends, colleagues, and Oates herself, biographer Greg Johnson examines the relationship between Oates's life and work in this fascinating exploration of a complex and gifted artist.
Johnson reveals little-known facts about Oates's personal and family history and debunks many of the myths that have arisen about this brilliant, enigmatic woman. Johnson takes readers from Oates's impoverished childhood in upstate New York and the invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates of her autistic sister through Oates's studies at Syracuse University, where her talent was immediately recognized, invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates the full breadth of her astonishingly productive career.
His astute examination of Oates's novels, short stories, and plays demonstrates how her art has been informed by her life. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published April 1st by Plume first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions 1. All Editions Add a New Edition Combine. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
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Sort order. Start your review of Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates. May 25, Larry Bassett rated it really liked it · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who expect to read a lot of JCO. Shelves: biography. I am in the process of deciding how much I want to devote myself to reading more Joyce Carol Oates. Reading Invisible Writer has helped me tentatively decide that more JCO is in my future. I do have to find something for JCO post Ending in mid life of a prolific writer is the major disability of this book.
I am giving it four stars. I enjoyed reading it and think it will be a good reference as I cast into the JCO Novel and Short Story Pond for future reads. Joyce Carol Oates extensively I am in the process of deciding how much I want to devote myself to reading more Joyce Carol Oates. Joyce Carol Oates extensively uses her own life and her observations of the lives of others to construct her fiction.
What the book portrays as it moves through her life in tandem with her abundance of writing is that she does not alter characters to give some privacy to the specific people written about. JCO has no scruples about using real people and situations without any evident regard to any possible negative impact on a person.
You can see that by using her real-life experiences of the world, she can achieve psychological and sociological realism. While this is a skill, calling it art is questionable. She has taken some flack in her career for this invasion of privacy but never changed her ways.
Her books often found their genesis from a sensational newspaper headline. I was curious about this author who writes about strange people and violence so I thought I would look at a biography. Invisible Writer is the first biography Invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates found.
It is a friendly, invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates, authorized biography. While there are no damning revelations, there are some negative characteristics that are presented as what others think about JCO. While everyone has a right to their opinion, biographer Greg Johnson mostly tries to give you the facts rather than his opinions so you can draw your own conclusions.
Maybe it does not need to be said, but JCO is a very complex person. It does a good job winding together her life and how much of her work is autobiographical. We move with her from her young invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates as a bright student in a one-room rural school to her days as a financially well off and famous adult, a professor at Princeton University.
It tells about the events of her life and the books she wrote. It is possible that she has thrown away more manuscripts than many authors have published in their lifetimes. And all of this with a typewriter and not a computer. She did try word processing briefly but found it did not fit her style of writing so she went back to a typewriter. In her teaching Ms.
Oates typically use the name J. Smith, her married name. She has written books under several pseudonyms, invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates. She tried identifying herself as J. Oates as well as J. Oates Smith to disguise about her gender. Women writers faced discrimination in the literary world.
She found this was true in publishing and in academic studies throughout the period that this book covers. She comes to consider herself a feminist although, like most things about her and her work, there is some disagreement about that self identification. The most notable problem with this biography is that it was published in April, and JCO continues being a prolific writer. So the book, with its good coverage from tojust ends fairly unceremoniously.
You have to find another book for the years after I suppose that this is always a problem with biographies of living people: they just keep on having a life even after the publication date. JCO has probably written another books. Anyone got a recommendation for a post book or are we going to have to wait until she dies? JCO was a jogger and did not slow down or take a break from writing. That is probably a good word for a lot of things about JCO.
If you have read or plan to read a lot of JCO, you will find this biography interesting as well as instructive for your reading. We go through her writing almost book by book. The biography will give you some ideas about which books you might want to read.
You have a lot of choices and she does move through her social cause period and her mystical period and her realist period. You might pick a few books at random when you start as I did but you will very likely want to know about your choices before you get into the deep water. Actually, there may only be deep water, no shallows. It has significant notes, a bibliography and an index so it can be used as a reference book.
The book covers the first sixty years of the life of a prolific writer who has kept churning her words right up until this very moment. Whatever big events in writing or living that have happened since are not to be found here. In many ways, psychological, physiological and in work habits, Oates swung like the pendulum.
Think bipolar. For quite some time she never read newspapers and at other times she found her ideas for novels in the newspaper.
She would be outgoing and then shy, high energy then depressed. One thing that has been a constant in her writing career is her significant output of words, invisible write a biography of joyce carol oates. At one point she wrote a finished product start to finish with minimal revisions. At another point she laboriously revised and reworked as the major aspect of the completion of the novel. She once withdrew one novel at the publisher to replace it with another.
Interview with Joyce Carol Oates about the Reading Life (part 1)
, time: 29:44"Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates" by Greg Johnson
From Oates's birth in Lockport, New York, to her present life in Princeton, New Jersey, Johnson skillfully interweaves the background, personality, character, lifestyle, and writings of the author. Through this fascinating and well-written biography, readers will feel that they know Oates almost as well as anyone can and may find themselves vacillating between great admiration Cited by: 10 Commenting on her output of more than published stories, plus novels and other writings, a hostile critic called Oates an inexhaustible word As a "subject," Oates has challenged interviewers to present the "real" Joyce Carol Oates. She herself is quite taken with the many faces of JCO -- writer, /5(15)
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