![]() In virtually none of my prose fiction, with the possible exception of the novel I’ll Take You There, and in that novel only intermittently, do IĪllow myself to speak in my “own” voice, but in my non-fiction prose, it is always my “own” voice that speaks. For prose is a kind of music: music creates “mood.” What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, sub-textual urgency. In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent. Where Cynthia Ozick and John Updike, to name two writerfriends who have speculated on the subject, are inclined to rank their non-fiction prose somewhat lower than their fiction (“essays seem a deviation, a diversion: the region of the trivial,” says Cynthia Ozick in Art & Ardor “writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea,” says John Updike in Hugging the Shore), I’ve been inclined to feel that the “voice” of non-fiction, seemingly unmediated, un-invented, is an artful enough variant of fiction’s voice, or voices. Certainly these difficult-to-define forms require the obvious strategies of art: selection of detail, enhancement or emphasis, tone. Despite their evident objectivity, the most eloquently rendered aspire to a kind of curious lyricism. R e v i e w s, a n d u n c l assif ia bl e “prose pieces” have always seemed to me elliptical forms of storytelling. On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon MyselfĪbout the Author Also by Joyce Carol Oates Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher The Vampire’s Secret: (Re)viewing Tod Browning’s Dracula after Forty Years “Tragic Mulatta”: Clotel or, The President’s Daughter Memoirs of Crisis: Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty Ĭrazy for Love: Scott Spencer’s A Ship Made of PaperĪmateurs: Anne Tyler’s The Amateur Marriage “City of Light”: Robert Drewe’s The Shark NetĮvolutionary Fever: Andrea Barrett’s Servants of the Map Through these balanced and illuminating essays we see Oates at the top of her form, engaged with forebears and contemporaries, providing clues to her own creative process: "For prose is a kind of music: music creates 'mood.' What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, subtextual urgency."įo r B a r b a ra E p s t e i n C h e r i s h e d e d i t o r, f r i e n dĪn Artist of the Floating World: Kazuo Ishiguro In sections of "homages" and "revisits," Oates writes with enthusiasm and clarity of such cultural icons as Emily Bront?, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Robert Lowell, Balthus, and Muhammad Ali ("The Greatest") after a lapse of decades, she (re)considers the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Americana, Don DeLillo's first novel, as well as the morality of selling private letters and the nostalgic significance of making a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Connelly, Alice Sebold, Mary Karr, Anne Tyler, and Ann Patchett are examined. Under the heading "Not a Nice Person," such controversial figures as Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, and Muriel Spark are considered without sentimentality or hyperbole under "Our Contemporaries, Ourselves," such diversely talented figures as William Trevor, E. Oates states in her preface, "In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent," and indeed, the voice of these "conversations" echoes the voice of her fiction in its dramatic directness, ethical perspective, and willingness to engage the reader in making critical judgments. Her ninth book of nonfiction, it brings together thirty-eight diverse and provocative pieces from the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Times Book Review. ![]() We tried to write a stylebook that would be of general interest to Chinese everywhere, so the style presented here is intended to be universal for Greater China (Preface).Uncensored: Views & (Re)views is Joyce Carol Oates's most candid gathering of prose pieces since (Woman) Writer: Occasions & Opportunities. ![]() As a consequence, we decided to write our own. In Singapore and Hong Kong, we could not find a comprehensive style guide that addressed local issues - regionalisms, romanization systems, names of local institutions. The genesis of this book was a need for something like it. In other words, a stylebook suggests preferred alternatives to the varieties of ways you can write things. president, is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, not 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Similarly, the correct style for the address of the White House, home of the U.S. The way to write this address, home of the British prime minister, is 10 Downing Street. 10 Downing St., you would be grammatically correct in every case, but you would be stylistically incorrect in all. If, for example, you wrote Ten Downing Street, Ten Downing St., Number 10 Downing Street, or No. It is a stylebook - or, alternatively, a style guide. This book is neither a dictionary nor a grammar book.
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