A Favorite Writer

Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific writer. I don't know how she does it. She writes a book per year while teaching at Princeton University. My favorite is When We Were the Mulvaneys. I've met Joyce Carol Oates at PEN events. She's a bit on the shy side. 

I just read Mudwoman, written this year. It's the story of a child whose mother tries to murder her when she's 3. Mudgirl is saved by the King of the Crows, who leads a backwoods simpleton to the creek she's stuck in face-down. He brings her to a foster family, one step up from her crazy murderous mother. Mudgirl is lucky. She's adopted by a loving, intelligent family who cherishes her and makes sure she's educated.

She becomes Meridith Ruth or Merry. She's the valedictorian of her class and applies to Cornell where she receives a full scholarship. Then it's on to Harvard, a doctorate in Philosophy, and a job offer at the University, aka Princeton. At Princeton, she's a star. Now known as M.R., she's a liberal woman in a mostly male world. Not every one accepts the fact that she's a woman. Within a few years, she is appointed President. Shortly after, her life spins out of control.

I must tell you that Oates loves the Gothic. M.R. is pulled into the past where she confronts the fact that her mother tried to kill her, that she feels she doesn't understand what loving another human being means. She has a nervous breakdown, filled with odd imagery from her battered imagination fed by the past. At one point she kills her arch-conservative nemesis at the University. Cuts off his arms, legs and hands and feet, as well as his head, stuffs the parts into garbage bags and hauls them to her car, all of course in the middle of the night. Then she drives each parcel to a different garbage bin and assumes they'll be sent to the landfill . She rushes home to clean up the mess. In the morning, a staff person breaks into her room to find M.R. unconscious in her bed, with all kinds of cuts and wounds that she's suffered over the last few months. She's hospitalized and is given a leave of absence for the summer. Her dreams continue to be bizarre and extremely dark.

M.R. fights her demons and comes to an understanding about her life. This book is a great read, well-written and typically Oatesian. She's not everybody's cup of tea, but I admire and respect her immensely.