Joyce Carol Oates Overview

If only she weren't so prolific, the thinking goes, that Nobel would be hers.  And Joyce Carol Oates – with the aid of her pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelley – is nothing if not prolific, having written well over fifty books in her lifetime.  But this is not for lack of anything else: writing a lot does not necessarily entail not writing thoughtfully, and Oates is proof of this.  Even her forgettable mystery novels bear the trace of enough considerable thought to merit their publication; and the "real" Oates works – that is, those that may be defined by the styles and interests that mark much of her most refined work: acute and often piercingly precise prose detailing the psychic effects of, among other notable concerns, violence, society, and sex – have been so subsumed into American literary culture that many are likely more aware of works that have been variously influenced – not uncommonly influenced to the point of being derivative – by Oates than by her works themselves.  But them, Wonderland, Black Water, and Blonde, among others – some may include We Were the Mulvaneys, the most recent of her literary triumphs, among her best; some may consider this Oates lite – have been pivotal in creating the American literary landscape, imbuing it with a considered, almost traditionalist approach to many of the most confounding and upsetting parts of life.