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When My Brother Called To Inform Me, On The Morning Of May 22, 2003, That Our Mother Caroline Oates Had Died Suddenly Of A Stroke, It Was A Shock From Which, In A Way, I Have Yet To Recover.

-Joyce Carol Oates

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When My Brother Called

Joyce Carol Oates

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When My Brother Called To Inform Me, On The Morning Of May 22, 2003, That Our Mother Caroline Oates Had Died Suddenly Of A Stroke, It Was A Shock From Which, In A Way, I Have Yet To Recover.

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You Can't Deny Eros. Eros Wills Trike, Like Lightning. Our Human Defenses Are Frail, Ludicrous. Like Plasterboard Houses In A Hurricane. Your Triumph Is In Perfect Submission. And The God Of Eros Will Flow Through You, As Lawrence Says, In The 'perfect Obliteration Of Blood Consciousness.

I'm Nobody's Daughter Now. I'm Through With That.

The Suicide Does Not Play The Game, Does Not Observe The Rules. He Leaves The Party Too Soon, And Leaves The Other Guests Painfully Uncomfortable.

Nothing Comes Of So Many Things, If You Have Patience.

Having Patience

When You Give Up Struggle, There's A Kind Of Love.

I've Always Been So Interested In Personal History. I'm Very Fascinated By My Parents' And My Grandparents' Generations. I Seem To Think That They Had A Resilience And An Integrity That May Be Somewhat Deficient In My Own Generation, And In Subsequent Generations As Well, Because America Has Been Rather Easy To Live In Since The Depression.

That Is The Mystery: Reading Henry James Can Yield Prose That Is Contrary To James, Yet Inspired By Him. Who Can Understand This?

The - The Sort Of Thing That I Want To Do Is To Strike A Resonant Chord Of Universality In Other People, Which Is Best Done By Fiction.

This Was Before Voice Mail, Recorded Phone Messages You Can't Escape. Life Was Easier Then. You Just Didn't Pick Up The Phone.

I Love Insult, It's Always Honest.

The Greatest Realities Are Physical And Economic, All The Subtleties Of Life Come Afterward.

I Don't Think That Any 'ism' Is Higher Than Literature Or Art. So I'm A Formalist. I Greatly Honor And Respect The Form Of A Work.

Honor And Respect

I See The World In Ways That Might Be Considered Somewhat Harsh And Darwinistic. At The Same Time Mediated, As In Darwin, By A Real Idealism And An Excitement About The Possibilities Of The Intellect And Imagination To Deal With This Somewhat Brutal World.

I'm Very American In The Sense Of Being An Explorer. America Is Filled With People Who Are Interested In Exploring Landscapes, Either External Or Internal. A Westward Nation Of Explorers.

There Is An Hour When You Realize: Here Is What You Have Been Given. More Than This, You Won't Receive. And What This Is, What Your Life Has Come To, Will Be Taken From You. In Time.

Even If I Seemed To Remember, I Could Not Know. For Just To Remember Something Is Not To Know If It Really Happened. That Is A Primary Fact Of The Inner Life, The Most Difficult Fact With Which We Must Live.

Remember Something

Henry James's Later Works Would Have Been Better Had He Resisted That Curious Sort Of Self-indulgence, Dictating To A Secretary. The Roaming Garrulousness Of Ordinary Speech Is Usually Corrected When It's Transcribed Into Written Prose.

The Worst Thing: To Give Yourself Away In Exchange For Not Enough Love.

Unrequited Love

My Nature Is Orderly And Observant And Scrupulous And Deeply Introverted.

Writing Is A Consequence Of Having Been 'haunted' By Material. Why This Is, No One Knows.

Writing Allows For Fictitious Voices - The Voices Of Persons Unlike Myself - That Might Otherwise Be Muted.

Only When Men Are Connected To Large, Universal Goals Are They Really Happy-and One Result Of Their Happiness Is A Rush Of Creative Activity.

I Don't Know What Marriages Are Like In General, But There Are Many Things Which I Don't Talk About With My Husband. We Discuss Practical Problems, But I Wouldn't Sit Down With Him And Talk About The Distant Past. It's Somewhat In Contrast To Other Americans, Who Feel That They Have To Confess Things, But I'm Really Not Like That.

Long Ago I'd Said That I Am "fascinated By The Phantasmagoria Of Human Personality" - This Is Perhaps Even Truer Now Than Years Ago.

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Rachel Blanchard

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