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BOOK REVIEW

‘The Corn Maiden And Other Nightmares’ by Joyce Carol Oates

In taut tales, the prolific Oates renders a world terrifying and utterly familiar

Since 1970, Joyce Carol Oates has been writing an average of two books a year. Michel Spingler/Associated Press/File/Associated Press

At last count, Joyce Carol Oates has written 50-some novels, 30-some story collections, one memoir, and an uncalculated number of novellas, plays, children’s books, articles, essays, and reviews. Since winning the National Book Award for her novel “Them’’ in 1970, Oates has published an average of two books each year - a feat for which she has been perennially punished by the persistent questions, provoked, no doubt, by equal parts envy and literary curiosity: Does Oates’ productivity hurt her writing somehow? Would she be a better writer if she slowed down?

I solicit your readerly opinion. Have you ever read a bad book that took its author years or decades to write? Have you ever read a great book that was written in a fevered dash?

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My point exactly. So let’s lay those particular grumblings to rest, and stop disparaging Oates for her superhuman work ethic, shall we? Because Oates is not only a prolific writer but a fine one - entertaining, skillful, always writing with one finger on the cultural pulse, often brilliantly so.

Admittedly, reviewing Oates presents the reviewer with a challenge. In 2007, The New York Review of Books addressed that challenge, asking, “How does one judge a new book by Oates when one is not familiar with most of the backlist? Where does one start?’’

At the beginning, perhaps. Joyce Carol Oates’ background is as unexpected as many of her stories’ endings. Born in 1938 in Lockport, N.Y., she attended the same one-room schoolhouse her mother once did. Joyce’s matron of the arts was her grandmother, Blanche, who gave her “the great treasure of my childhood,’’ a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.’’ Later, Blanche provided a typewriter, with which Joyce wrote her first novel at age 14. She was the first in her family to graduate high school. At 19 she won a Mademoiselle magazine short-story contest. She published her first short-story collection at age 25 and her first novel at 26.

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Let’s fast-forward to Oates’ newest book - quickly, before it’s replaced by the next. “The Corn Maiden And Other Nightmares’’ is a collection of seven stories, each tautly terrifying, each demonstrating Oates’ seemingly endless enthusiasm for experimentation with genre, form, setting, and characters. Whether you like to read short stories, or psychological thrillers, or sly cultural critiques, or an author who writes more books than you or I ever could, I strongly suggest you give this collection a try.

The title story escorts us into the head of Leah, a single mother who comes home from a date one night and finds Marissa, her 11-year-old, special-needs daughter, MIA. By making Leah appear more worried about the consequences of her own culpability than she is about her daughter, Oates critiques not only her protagonist but our sensationalism-struck society. “They would accuse her,’’ Leah thinks. “In the tabloids they would crucify her. Dial 911 and your life is public fodder. Dial 911 and your life is not yours. Dial 911 and your life is forever changed. Suburban Single Mom. Latchkey Daughter.’’

Oates’ gift for characterization is so profound, her protagonists so believably rendered, the reader is made to wonder whether the author herself has changed gender, class, age, and life experience to better breathe life into them. Brad Shiftke, the narrator of “Beersheba,’’ is a perfect, and perfectly awful, example. An alcoholic pedophile, Brad is lured to meet his long-abandoned stepdaughter, who turns his addictions against him in order to extract her revenge. The phone call from stepdaughter to stepfather in which she sets up their meeting, all the while refusing to identify herself, is nearly too creepy to read.

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“[T]his woman - girl - definitely he knew her. The teasing way she was speaking like ghost-fingers stroking his hair, the nape of his neck which no woman had touched in a long time . . .

“ ‘Seems like you don’t have a clue who I am, Brad.’

“ ‘Well - your voice is familiar. It’s a voice - I know . . .’

“ ‘Your voice is a voice I know, Brad. Your voice is a voice in my dreams, I would not likely forget.’ ’’ Just 14 pages long, “Beersheba’’ makes perfect use of the short story form: twisty, turny, psychologically incisive, and complete.

“A Hole in the Head’’ also helps explain why the much-maligned short story has outlived rumors of its death. Could any reader stop turning the pages of a story that begins, “Strange! - though Dr. Brede wore latex gloves when treating patients and never came into direct contact with their skin, when he peeled off the thin rubber gloves . . . his hands were faintly stained with rust-red streaks - blood?’’

Unsurprisingly, I’ve enjoyed some of Oates’ books more than others. Her 2010 memoir, “A Widow’s Story’’ and the novels “We Were The Mulvaneys’’ and “The Falls’’ are among my favorites, but I’ve never regretted reading a single one. Given Oates’ talent and propensity for variety, that seems unlikely to be a problem in the future.

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So bring it on, Joyce Carol Oates. The world eagerly awaits your next surprising, engrossing, intriguing book, and the next one after that.


Meredith Maran is the author, most recently, of “My Lie.’’ Her novel, “A Theory of Small Earthquakes,’’ is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in February. She can be reached at meredith@meredithmaran.com or on Twitter: @meredithmaran