Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

I am not doing well, I think. Or maybe just O.K. I know they are writing reports. But I am not allowed to see. If one of these was a woman I would do better, I feel. They believe you, they are not always watching you. Eye contact has always been my downfall.

This book is not your typical Joyce Carol Oates. Zombie follows Quinton, a psychopath interested in building his own zombie that can function as his personal slave. He aims to make this zombie by lobotomizing a human, thereby leaving an empty shell of a man that Quinton and do with as he likes. According to Quinton, his zombie will enjoy anything his "master" will do to him, simply because he is the master. Echos of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the real-life serial killer Jeffery Dahmer are found throughout the plot. The novella is told in a first-person narrative to bring the reader into the mind of this functioning sociopath. Don't let the petite, soft-spoken image of Joyce Carol Oates fool you; she can get down and dirty. I had no idea she has this in her. We are talking anal raping and ice picks to the face. Needless to say I wasn't able to read this book while eating lunch.

However, the novella isn't sick for the sake of being sick. Rather, it reveals the inner workings of the mind of a sociopath. It explores the way he interacts with others through manipulation, how he depersonalizes his victims, and how his understanding of the outside world is so different from that of a sane human. Oates also seems to be critiquing American medicine and some of its older, cruel practices of drugging and prodding at its mentally unstable patients, creating a form of zombies themselves.

A true ZOMBIE would be mine forever. He would obey every command & whim. Saying "Yes, Master" & "No, Master." He would kneel before me lifting his eyes to me saying, "I love you, Master. There is no one but you, Master." & so it would come to pass, & so it would be. For a true ZOMBIE could not say a thing that was not, only a thing thatwas. His eyes would be open & clear but there would be nothing inside them seeing. & nothing behind themthinking. Nothing passing judgment.

While I did enjoy the book, I have to say I don't prefer it to the other works of hers I've read. Because our narrator was a crazy nut, the prose felt jagged, crude and rushed. Much of the book read as the passage above and while it was fitting to the story as a whole,  I did miss the eloquent, rich writing of which Oates is a master. However, I am now more aware of her diverse talents as an author and appreciate her that much more. If I were to put this next to another first-person psychopath killer novel, I'd chose The Killer Inside Me. It's disturbing and bizarre, but above all, memorable.

I read this for the Smooth Criminals reading challenge, hosted by Ben at Dead End Follies.

Publisher: Dutton Books, 1995

them by Joyce Carol Oates

"But, honey, aren't you one of them yourself?"

I read my first work by Joyce Carol Oates earlier this year and really enjoyed it. I started with Black Water, which is a novella that tells a fictionalized account of the Chappaquiddick incident, when a young girl was found inside of a sunken car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy. After reading Black Water I knew I wanted to read more JCO and I knew I wanted something larger. Enter them; winner of the 1970 National Book Award, nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, and book three of the Wonderland Quartet series.

In the introduction of the novel Oates describes that them is "a work of history in fictional form" and goes on to tell of a set of letters she received from an old student of hers when she taught at the University of Detroit. The girl expressed her restlessness in life and and overall feelings of resentment. Her "various problems and complexities overwhelmed" Oates and it was these letters that prompted Oates to write them. Parts of the letters appear half-way through the narrative. (I should mention the title is purposefully labeled with a lower-case "t," and details a specific "them".)

them follows two generations of the Wendall family and explores the forces that keep them in poverty and struggling to achieve happiness. The novel spans forty years, takes place in inner-city Detroit and ends during the race riots of 1967. Among other things, them explores the struggles of working class America, generational poverty, and obsessions of love, money and violence. If we focus on Maureen, the novel is a sort of bildungsroman, as we watch her grow from a small child into a woman. But the novel is more than Maureen's story. It is the story of a desperate family who desires a better life and struggles to understand those who are different from themselves.

I dream of a world where you can go in and out of bodies, changing your soul, everything changing and no fixed forever, becoming men and women, daughters, children again, even old people, feeling how it is to be them and then not hating them, out on the street. I don't want to hate.

This is a tough one to review because anything I say about this book will not do it justice. It's like trying to review Middlemarch; where do you start? Like one of my very favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, the works Joyce Carol Oates permeate with feminist themes and explore larger social issues that are still relevant in modern America. With a focus of the female characters Loretta Wendall and her daughter Maureen, Oates highlights the plight of working class women:

Oh, we women know things you don't know, you teachers, you readers and writers of books, we are the ones who wait around libraries when it's time to leave, or sit drinking coffee alone in the kitchen; we make crazy plans for marriage but have no man, we dream of stealing men, we are the ones who look slowly around when we get off a bus and can't even find what we are looking for, can't quite remember how we got there, we are always wondering what will come next, what terrible thing will come next. We are the ones who leaf through magazines with colored pictures and spend long heavy hours sunk in our bodies, thinking, remembering, dreaming, waiting for something to come to us and give a shape to so much pain.

The novel is beautifully written. Joyce Carol Oates certainly has a way with words; her prose it both eloquent and confident. The characters she imagines are sharp and memorable. I should say it's a bit of a downer; moments of happiness are few and far between. But don't let that deter you. It is absolutely worth the read.

Publisher: Modern Library Classics, 1969

Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates

Wow. Joyce Carol Oates knows how to write a novella. I enjoyed every page of Black Water and didn't want it to end - partly because it was so good and partly because Oates reveals the inevitable in the first chapter - our protagonist Kelley is involved in a horrible accident and will die. After meeting a handsome senator at a 4th of July party, Kelley leaves with him to go to his hotel, only to end up at the bottom of a river. The book then teeters between her past and her present - outlining where she came from and what brought her to where she is now. The accident mirrors that of the Chappaquiddick incident - when a young girl was found dead inside of a sunken car driven by Senator Edward Kennedy. In Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates gives Mary Jo Kopechne a voice that utterly heartbreaking and impossible to forget.

Black Water is a powerful book - revealing the human truths of a 26-year-old idealistic young woman and a powerful, untrustworthy older man. The entire novella permeates with a sense of urgency - mostly because it is told in prolepsis - making it (for me) unputdownable.

How crucial for us to rehearse the future, in words. Never to doubt that you will live to utter them.

Black Water was nominated for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize. It highlights themes of fate, vulnerability and the mutability of life. This book is both fascinating and terrifying. I am eager to discover more titles from Joyce Carol Oates.

Black Water was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1993.

Publisher: Penguin, 1992