Dark Eyes on America: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates

by Gavin Cologne-Brookes

Overview

Joyce Carol Oates is America’s most extraordinary and prolific woman of letters. In Dark Eyes on America, Gavin Cologne-Brookes illuminates the vision of this remarkable master of her craft, finding evidence in her novels of an evolving consciousness that ultimately forgoes abstract introspection in favor of a more practical approach to art as a tool for understanding both personal and social challenges. With her clear-eyed perception of human behavior, Oates has for decades offered unhesitating explorations of genre, topic, and style—making her an inevitable if somewhat elusive subject for critical assessment. Cologne-Brookes’s conversations and correspondence with Oates, his close textual study of her novels, and abundant references to her essays, stories, poetry, and plays result in a work that critically synthesizes the layers of her writing. This comprehensive yet accessible study offers an essential analysis of one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807135303
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2009
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Gavin Cologne-Brookes is the author of The Novels of William Styron: From Harmony to History and coeditor of Writing and America. Educated in his native Britain and in the United States, he is an associate professor of English and creative studies at Bath Spa University in England.

Editorial Reviews

A thoughtful, thorough study which . . . encourages readers to re-examine Oates’s novels within a philosophical context.

Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas

A sound and engaging book that creates a balanced overview of Oates’s career while tackling the question of her role in the wider community.

Modern Fiction Studies

Joyce Carol Oates's unhesitating and prodigious exploration of genre, topic, and style has made her an inevitable but elusive subject for critics and scholars. Though Oates's national reputation has fluctuated since her first work appeared in the 1960s, one thing can be agreed: Oates is not just America's most extraordinary woman of letters but as significant an American writer as any of her contemporaries. In this comprehensive and accessible study, Gavin Cologne-Brookes traces in Oates's novels evidence of an evolving consciousness that ultimately forgoes abstract introspection and the philosophical pursuit of certainty in favor of a more practical approach to art as a tool for understanding personal and social problems and possibilities.

Drawing on the intellectual tradition of American Pragmatism, Cologne-Brookes emphasizes the social value of Oates's later work in particular. He shows how Oates's willingness to enter the minds of a vast array of protagonists points to her belief in the possibility of understanding diverse American realities. At the same time, her work recognizes an often mutually incomprehensible diversity as the actual state of affairs in American society.

Cologne-Brookes undertook extensive research for his study, including interviewing and corresponding with Oates. His close textual study of her novels and abundant references to her essays, stories, poetry, plays and letters result in a book that emphasizes Oates's clear-eyed analysis of human behavior, underscores her remarkable mastery of her craft, and reveals her uniquely dark vision to be finally melioristic and affirmative. Dark Eyes on America will be of enormous value for understanding this protean author who cannot be reduced to a rigid thesis.

From the Publisher