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Joyce Carol Oates (born 16 June 1938) is a prominent American writer, the winner of the National Book Award for her 1969 novel them and the author of 57 other novels, as well as numerous short stories and plays.
She has declared herself to be a longtime fan of H. P. Lovecraft:
| “ | When I was eleven or twelve years old, I discovered H. P. Lovecraft in the Lockport Public Library, in upstate New York—the collection of Lovecraft stories was large and unwieldy with a distinctive font, which I can “see” vividly if I shut my eyes. The stories that riveted me immediately were “The Rats in the Walls” and “The Dunwich Horror.” At once I fell under the Lovecraftian spell.[1] | „ |
She later observed: "Lovecraft is a compulsive, obsessive, hallucinatory & non-paraphrasable prose stylist, a sort of crazed Henry James. [Y]ou read for the bizarre music, not for the bizarre plot."[2]
Her review of S. T. Joshi's H. P. Lovecraft: A Life in The New York Review of Books[3] helped solidify Lovecraft's literary reputation as a "serious" writer. She later edited a collection of Lovecraft's stories, Tales of H. P. Lovecraft (1997), and has included Lovecraft's work in the literary anthologies American Gothic Tales (1996), Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers (1998), and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 2nd Ed. (2013). " "I have reprinted Lovecraft tales in anthologies of 'literary' stories in the hope of breaking down the artificial barriers and unfortunate prejudices between genres," Oates has written.[1]
"Oates put Lovecraft among the great voices of American fiction," the blogger greyirish wrote.[4]
Some of Oates' short stories have been included in anthologies of Lovecraftian fiction, including "Commencement" in Lovecraft Unbound, and "Shadows of the Evening" in Dreams From the Witch House. She wrote a novella, Night-Gaunts (2017), about a weird fiction writer, a fictionalized version of Lovecraft named Horace Phineas Love, Jr.[5]
External Links[]
- "The King of Weird" in The New York Review of Books
- "Editor Spotlight: Joyce Carol Oates" in Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Joyce Carol Oates in Lovecraft Unbound; quoted in "Editor Spotlight: Joyce Carol Oates" in Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, February 20, 2019.
- ↑ Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter, August 20, 2020.
- ↑ New York Review of Books, "The King of Weird", Joyce Carol Oates, October 31, 1996.
- ↑ Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, "Editor Spotlight: Joyce Carol Oates", greyirish, February 20, 2019.
- ↑ Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, "Night-Gaunts (2017) by Joyce Carol Oates", Bobby Derie, February 19, 2022.