The Accursed

A major historical novel from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation)-an eerie, unforgettable story of possession, power, and loss in early-twentieth-century Princeton, a cultural crossroads of the powerful and the damned

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the twentieth century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton; their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man-a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil, and who spreads his curse upon a richly deserving community of white Anglo-Saxon privilege. And in the Pine Barrens that border the town, a lush and terrifying underworld opens up.

When the bride's brother sets out against all odds to find her, his path will cross those of Princeton's most formidable people, from Grover Cleveland, fresh out of his second term in the White House and retired to town for a quieter life, to soon-to-be commander in chief Woodrow Wilson, president of the university and a complex individual obsessed to the point of madness with his need to retain power; from the young Socialist idealist Upton Sinclair to his charismatic comrade Jack London, and the most famous writer of the era, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain-all plagued by "accursed" visions.

An utterly fresh work from Oates, The Accursed marks new territory for the masterful writer. Narrated with her unmistakable psychological insight, it combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling supernatural elements to stunning effect.

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The Accursed

A major historical novel from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation)-an eerie, unforgettable story of possession, power, and loss in early-twentieth-century Princeton, a cultural crossroads of the powerful and the damned

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the twentieth century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton; their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man-a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil, and who spreads his curse upon a richly deserving community of white Anglo-Saxon privilege. And in the Pine Barrens that border the town, a lush and terrifying underworld opens up.

When the bride's brother sets out against all odds to find her, his path will cross those of Princeton's most formidable people, from Grover Cleveland, fresh out of his second term in the White House and retired to town for a quieter life, to soon-to-be commander in chief Woodrow Wilson, president of the university and a complex individual obsessed to the point of madness with his need to retain power; from the young Socialist idealist Upton Sinclair to his charismatic comrade Jack London, and the most famous writer of the era, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain-all plagued by "accursed" visions.

An utterly fresh work from Oates, The Accursed marks new territory for the masterful writer. Narrated with her unmistakable psychological insight, it combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling supernatural elements to stunning effect.

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The Accursed

The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

Narrated by Grover Gardner

Unabridged — 22 hours, 54 minutes

The Accursed

The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

Narrated by Grover Gardner

Unabridged — 22 hours, 54 minutes

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Overview

A major historical novel from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation)-an eerie, unforgettable story of possession, power, and loss in early-twentieth-century Princeton, a cultural crossroads of the powerful and the damned

Princeton, New Jersey, at the turn of the twentieth century: a tranquil place to raise a family, a genteel town for genteel souls. But something dark and dangerous lurks at the edges of the town, corrupting and infecting its residents. Vampires and ghosts haunt the dreams of the innocent. A powerful curse besets the elite families of Princeton; their daughters begin disappearing. A young bride on the verge of the altar is seduced and abducted by a dangerously compelling man-a shape-shifting, vaguely European prince who might just be the devil, and who spreads his curse upon a richly deserving community of white Anglo-Saxon privilege. And in the Pine Barrens that border the town, a lush and terrifying underworld opens up.

When the bride's brother sets out against all odds to find her, his path will cross those of Princeton's most formidable people, from Grover Cleveland, fresh out of his second term in the White House and retired to town for a quieter life, to soon-to-be commander in chief Woodrow Wilson, president of the university and a complex individual obsessed to the point of madness with his need to retain power; from the young Socialist idealist Upton Sinclair to his charismatic comrade Jack London, and the most famous writer of the era, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain-all plagued by "accursed" visions.

An utterly fresh work from Oates, The Accursed marks new territory for the masterful writer. Narrated with her unmistakable psychological insight, it combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling supernatural elements to stunning effect.


Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2013 - AudioFile

Set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Princeton, Oates’s mystery features famous real-life people including Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Samuel Clemens. Dabbling in the occult, avoiding prejudice, and searching for the truth are three of the themes of this historical work. Grover Gardner narrates the story in crisp, practiced tones. He flawlessly weaves narrative with essential details that flesh out the facts or elucidate minutiae. Is there one story or many in this mixture of history and fiction? Gardner takes all the jarring asides in stride, using droll tones to portray the upper crust and their infatuations. Listeners are challenged to follow the complex plot, or rather plots, which take many hours to merge and reveal themselves. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Stephen King

Some novels are almost impossible to review, either because they're deeply ambiguous or because they contain big surprises the reviewer doesn't wish to give away. In the case of The Accursed, both strictures apply. What I wish I could say is simply this: "Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world's first postmodern Gothic novel: E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime set in Dracula's castle. It's dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix and full of crazy people. You should read it. I wish I could tell you more."

The Washington Post - Ron Charles

The Accursed is…spectacular—a coalescence of history, horror and social satire that whirls around for almost 700 mesmerizing pages…The delights of this macabre novel gather thick as ghouls at midnight in the cemetery. I've never been so aware of Oates's weird comedy…With its vast scope, its mingling of comic and tragic tones, its omnivorous gorging on American literature, and especially its complex reflection on the major themes of our history, The Accursed is the kind of outrageous masterpiece only Joyce Carol Oates could create.

Publishers Weekly

Oates has published more than enough books to take risks, and her newest is exactly that: first drafted in the early 1980s, then set aside, the novel is, in addition to being a thrilling tale in the best gothic tradition, a lesson in master craftsmanship. Distilled, the plot is about a 14-month curse manifesting in Princeton, N.J., from 1905 to 1906, affecting the town's elite, including the prominent Slades of Crosswicks and Woodrow Wilson, the president of Princeton University. After Annabel Slade is strangely drawn out of the church during her wedding, an escalating series of violence and madness based in secrets and hypocrisy is unleashed in the community. This story has vampires, demons, angels, murder, lynching, beatings, rape, sex, parallel worlds,, Antarctic voyages, socialism, sexism, racism, paranoia, gossip, spiritualism, and escalating insanity. Oates uses the Homeric ring structure, and her mysterious narrator takes frequent tangents, offering backstories, side stories, footnotes, and a hilarious, subtly satirical chapter on the different-colored diaries and lacquered boxes providing his "sources." The story sprawls, reaches, demands, tears, and shrieks in homage to the traditional gothic, yet with fresh, surprising twists and turns. Oates weaves historical figures throughout, grounding the narrative in a quasi-familiar reality without losing a "through the looking-glass" surrealism. The cause of the curse is not much of a surprise, but the way it's broken is both traditionally mythic and satisfying. Oates has given us a brilliantly crafted work that refreshes the overworked tradition. The author's rage at social injustices and the horrific "cures" for invalids boil beneath the surface; she's skilled enough to let them fuel the fury without erupting into fire. Take on this 700-page behemoth with an open mind, and hang on for the ride. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins and Assoc. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s finest postmodern Gothic novel: E.L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’ set in Dracula’s castle. It’s dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix and full of crazy people. You should read it... Oates’s hypnotic prose has never been better displayed.” — Stephen King, New York Times Book Review (Cover Review)

“Spectacular. . . With its vast scope, its mingling of comic and tragic tones, its omnivorous gorging on American literature, and especially its complex reflection on the major themes of our history, The Accursed is the kind of outrageous masterpiece only Joyce Carol Oates could create.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post

“A brilliant Gothic mystery that has the punch of historical fiction. Currents of race, class and academic intrigue swirl under the surface, but it’s the demonic curse that propels the action... Oates casts a powerful spell. You’ll close The Accursed and want to start it all over again.” — People (4 Stars)

The Accursed is a unique, vast multilayered narrative; a genre bending beast of a book, utterly startling from start to finish, compulsive and engaging, the writing crackling with energy and wit. This is an elaborately conceived work.” — New York Review of Books

“[The Accursed] is in addition to being a thrilling tale in the best gothic tradition, a lesson in master craftsmanship...The story sprawls, reaches, demands, tears, and shrieks in homage to the traditional gothic, yet with fresh, surprising twists and turns... Oates has given us a brilliantly crafted work .” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Carefully and densely plotted, chockablock with twists and turns and fleeting characters, her novel offers a satisfying modern rejoinder to the best of M.R. James—and perhaps even Henry James.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Oates’ atmospheric prose beautifully captures the flavor of gothic fiction . . . In Oates’ hands, this supernatural tale becomes a meditation on the perils of parochial thinking. It demands we think - with monsters - about our failure to face the darkest truths about ourselves and the choices we’ve made.” — NPR

“A lush, arch, and blistering fusion of historical fact, supernatural mystery, and devilish social commentary... A diabolically enthralling and subversive literary mash-up. ” — Booklist (starred review)

“A smart and relentlessly absorbing read.” — Library Journal

“Joyce Carol Oates is at her gothic best… an astonishing fever dream of a novel.” — Los Angeles Times

“For those who enjoy total immersion in this kind of historical fiction, The Accursed is good fun, as mesmerizing as a demon and as addictive as a patent cure.” — Boston Globe

“A fascinating novel in which historical truth and imagination collide to create an unsettling vision of America as it entered the 20th century.” — Columbus Dispatch

The Accursed blends history, horror, fantasy and black comedy into a trippy literary brew. For fans of Oates’ gothic works, this is a heady draught indeed.” — Dallas Morning News

“Regular readers of Oates will be familiar with the game. . . after [new readers make] their way through The Accursed, no one will find it easy to forget.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Joyce Carol Oates is at the top of her game in her glorious new novel, THE ACCURSED - a long, lush account of perhaps-preternatural happenings in Princeton, N.J., a century ago.” — Buffalo News

“This latest effort looks like a belated candidate for the Great Oates Novel . . . The Accursed is a big, mad, colourful romp, respectful of the literary traditions in which it participates, leavened with a piquant humour.” — Financial Times

The Accursed is very much in the American gothic tradition of Charles Brockden Brown, Hawthorne, Poe, and Faulkner.” — New York Review of Books

“In this new novel Oates has achieved a nearly flawless combination of postmodernism, gothic horror, “traditional” narrative, politically engaged literature, historical novel, and popular bestseller—a heady and enjoyable mix.” — Harvard Review Online

NPR

Oates’ atmospheric prose beautifully captures the flavor of gothic fiction . . . In Oates’ hands, this supernatural tale becomes a meditation on the perils of parochial thinking. It demands we think - with monsters - about our failure to face the darkest truths about ourselves and the choices we’ve made.

People (4 Stars)

A brilliant Gothic mystery that has the punch of historical fiction. Currents of race, class and academic intrigue swirl under the surface, but it’s the demonic curse that propels the action... Oates casts a powerful spell. You’ll close The Accursed and want to start it all over again.

Booklist (starred review)

A lush, arch, and blistering fusion of historical fact, supernatural mystery, and devilish social commentary... A diabolically enthralling and subversive literary mash-up.

|Los Angeles Times

Joyce Carol Oates is at her gothic best… an astonishing fever dream of a novel.

Ron Charles

Spectacular. . . With its vast scope, its mingling of comic and tragic tones, its omnivorous gorging on American literature, and especially its complex reflection on the major themes of our history, The Accursed is the kind of outrageous masterpiece only Joyce Carol Oates could create.

Stephen King

Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s finest postmodern Gothic novel: E.L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’ set in Dracula’s castle. It’s dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix and full of crazy people. You should read it... Oates’s hypnotic prose has never been better displayed.

New York Review of Books

The Accursed is a unique, vast multilayered narrative; a genre bending beast of a book, utterly startling from start to finish, compulsive and engaging, the writing crackling with energy and wit. This is an elaborately conceived work.

Boston Globe

For those who enjoy total immersion in this kind of historical fiction, The Accursed is good fun, as mesmerizing as a demon and as addictive as a patent cure.

Columbus Dispatch

A fascinating novel in which historical truth and imagination collide to create an unsettling vision of America as it entered the 20th century.

Dallas Morning News

The Accursed blends history, horror, fantasy and black comedy into a trippy literary brew. For fans of Oates’ gothic works, this is a heady draught indeed.

Financial Times

This latest effort looks like a belated candidate for the Great Oates Novel . . . The Accursed is a big, mad, colourful romp, respectful of the literary traditions in which it participates, leavened with a piquant humour.

Harvard Review Online

In this new novel Oates has achieved a nearly flawless combination of postmodernism, gothic horror, “traditional” narrative, politically engaged literature, historical novel, and popular bestseller—a heady and enjoyable mix.

Buffalo News

Joyce Carol Oates is at the top of her game in her glorious new novel, THE ACCURSED - a long, lush account of perhaps-preternatural happenings in Princeton, N.J., a century ago.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Regular readers of Oates will be familiar with the game. . . after [new readers make] their way through The Accursed, no one will find it easy to forget.

Financial Times

This latest effort looks like a belated candidate for the Great Oates Novel . . . The Accursed is a big, mad, colourful romp, respectful of the literary traditions in which it participates, leavened with a piquant humour.

Los Angeles Times

Joyce Carol Oates is at her gothic best… an astonishing fever dream of a novel.

Booklist

"A lush, arch, and blistering fusion of historical fact, supernatural mystery, and devilish social commentary... A diabolically enthralling and subversive literary mash-up. "

(4 Stars) - People Magazine

"A brilliant Gothic mystery that has the punch of historical fiction. Currents of race, class and academic intrigue swirl under the surface, but it’s the demonic curse that propels the action... Oates casts a powerful spell. You’ll close The Accursed and want to start it all over again."

Library Journal

Historical fiction with a spooky Oatesian twist: at the turn of the 20th century, strange things start happening in peaceful, polished Princeton, NJ. Folks dream about vampires, the daughters of the town's classiest families start vanishing, and a bride-to-be runs away with a vaguely menacing European, presumably a prince and possibly the Devil. As her brother gives chase, he encounters characters from former President Grover Cleveland and future President Woodrow Wilson to authors like Upton Sinclair, all cursed with dark visions. Do these visions hint at personal or collective anguish? With a 100,000-copy first printing.

JUNE 2013 - AudioFile

Set in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Princeton, Oates’s mystery features famous real-life people including Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Samuel Clemens. Dabbling in the occult, avoiding prejudice, and searching for the truth are three of the themes of this historical work. Grover Gardner narrates the story in crisp, practiced tones. He flawlessly weaves narrative with essential details that flesh out the facts or elucidate minutiae. Is there one story or many in this mixture of history and fiction? Gardner takes all the jarring asides in stride, using droll tones to portray the upper crust and their infatuations. Listeners are challenged to follow the complex plot, or rather plots, which take many hours to merge and reveal themselves. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Oates (Sourland, 2010, etc.) finishes up a big novel begun years before--and it's a keeper. If the devil were to come for a visit, à la The Master and Margarita, where would he turn up first? You might not guess Princeton, N.J., long Oates' domicile, but there "the Curse" shows up, first in the spring of 1905, then in June, on "the disastrous morning of Annabel Slade's wedding." No slashing ensues, no pea-green vomiting; instead, the good citizens of Princeton steadily turn inward and against each other, the veneer of civilization swiftly flaking off on the edge of the wilderness within us and, for that matter, just outside Princeton. Woodrow Wilson might have said it differently when he reflected on his native Virginia: "The defeat of the Confederacy was the defeat of--a way of civilization that was superior to its conqueror's." It just could be that the devil's civilization is superior to that of America in the days of the Great White Fleet and Jim Crow, for Wilson--a central figure in the novel and then-president of Princeton University--is no friend to the little people. But then, none of Oates' male characters--some of them writers such as Mark Twain and Jack London, others politicos such as Grover Cleveland, still others academics plotting against the upstart Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its "devilish business"--are quite good guys: Representatives of the patriarchy, they bear its original sin. The Curse is the one of past crimes meeting the future, perhaps; it is as much psychological as real, though Oates takes pains to invest plenty of reality in it. Carefully and densely plotted, chockablock with twists and turns and fleeting characters, her novel offers a satisfying modern rejoinder to the best of M.R. James--and perhaps even Henry James. Though it requires some work and has a wintry feel to it, it's oddly entertaining, as a good supernatural yarn should be.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940170382620
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 03/05/2013
Edition description: Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The Accursed


By Joyce Carol Oates

HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Joyce Carol Oates
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-223170-3


Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

ASH WEDNESDAY EVE, 1905


Fellow historians will be shocked, dismayed, and perhaps incredulous — I am daring to suggest that the Curse did not first manifest itself on June 4, 1905, which was the disastrous morning of Annabel Slade's wedding, and generally acknowledged to be the initial public manifestation of the Curse, but rather earlier, in the late winter of the year, on the eve of Ash Wednesday in early March.

This was the evening of Woodrow Wilson's (clandestine) visit to his longtime mentor Winslow Slade, but also the evening of the day when Woodrow Wilson experienced a considerable shock to his sense of family, indeed racial identity.

Innocently it began: at Nassau Hall, in the president's office, with a visit from a young seminarian named Yaeger Washington Ruggles who had also been employed as Latin preceptor at the university, to assist in the instruction of undergraduates. (Intent upon reforming the quality of education at Princeton, with its reputation as a Southern-biased, largely Presbyterian boys' school set beside which its rival Harvard University was a paradigm of academic excellence, Woodrow Wilson had initiated a new pedagogy in which bright young men were hired to assist older professors in their lecture courses; Yaeger Ruggles was one of these young preceptors, popular in the better homes of Princeton as at the university, as eligible bachelors are likely to be in a university town.) Yaeger Ruggles, was a slender, slight, soft-spoken fellow Virginian, a distant cousin of Wilson's who had introduced himself to the university president after he'd enrolled in his first year at the Princeton Theological Seminary; Wilson had personally hired him to be a preceptor, impressed with his courtesy, bearing, and intelligence. At their first meeting, Yaeger Ruggles had brought with him a letter from an elderly aunt, living in Roanoke, herself a cousin of Wilson's father's aunt. This web of intricate connections was very Southern; despite the fact that Woodrow Wilson's branch of the family was clearly more affluent, and more socially prominent than Yaeger Ruggles's family, who dwelt largely in the mountainous area west of Roanoke, Woodrow Wilson had made an effort to befriend the young man, inviting him to the larger receptions and soirees at his home, and introducing him to the sons and daughters of his well-to-do Princeton associates and neighbors. Though older than Ruggles by more than twenty years, Woodrow Wilson saw in his young kinsman something of himself, at an earlier age when he'd been a law student in Virginia with an abiding interest in theology. (Woodrow Wilson was the son of a preeminent Presbyterian minister who'd been a chaplain for the Confederate Army; his maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister in Rome, Georgia, also a staunch religious and political conservative.) At the time of Yaeger Ruggles's visit to President Wilson, in his office in Nassau Hall, the two had been acquainted for more than two years. Woodrow Wilson had not seen so much of his young relative as he'd wished, for his Prince ton social life had to be spent in cultivating the rich and influential. "A private college requires donors. Tuition alone is inadequate"— so Woodrow Wilson said often, in speeches as in private conversations. He did regret not seeing more of Yaeger, for he had but three daughters and no son; and now, with his wife's chronic ill health, that had become a sort of malaise of the spirit, as well as her advancing age, it was not likely that Woodrow would ever have a son. Yaeger's warm dark intelligent eyes invariably moved Woodrow to an indefinable emotion, with the intensity of memory. His hair was very dark, as Woodrow's had once been, but thick and springy, where Woodrow's was rather thin, combed flat against his head. And there was something thrilling about the young man's softly modulated baritone voice also, that seemed to remind Wilson of a beloved voice or voices of his childhood in Virginia and Georgia. It had been a wild impulse of Woodrow's — (since childhood in his rigid Presbyterian household, Woodrow had been prone to near-irresistible urges and impulses of every kind, to which he'd rarely given in) — to begin singing in Yaeger's presence, that the younger man might join him; for Woodrow had loved his college glee clubs, and liked to think that he had a passably fair tenor voice, if untrained and, in recent years, unused.

But it would be a Protestant hymn Woodrow would sing with Yaeger, something melancholy, mournful, yearning, and deliciously submissive — Rock of Ages, cleft for me! Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the water and the blood, that thy wounded side did flow ...

Woodrow had not yet heard Yaeger speak in public, but he'd predicted, in Princeton circles, and to the very dean of the seminary himself, that his young "Virginian cousin" would one day be an excellent minister — at which time, Woodrow wryly thought, Yaeger too would understand the value of cultivating the wealthy at the expense of one's own predilections.

But this afternoon, Yaeger Washington Ruggles was not so composed as he usually was. He appeared to be short of breath, as if he'd bounded up the stone steps of Nassau Hall; he did not smile so readily and so sympathetically as he usually did. Nor was his hurried handshake so firm, or so warm. Woodrow saw with a pang of displeasure — (for it pained him, to feel even an inward rebuke of anyone whom he liked) — that the seminarian's shirt collar was open at his throat, as if, in an effort to breathe, he'd unconsciously tugged at it; he had not shaved fastidiously and his skin, ordinarily of a more healthy tone than Woodrow's own, seemed darkened as by a shadow.

"Woodrow! I must speak with you."

"But of course, Yaeger — we are speaking."

Woodrow half-rose from his chair, behind his massive desk; then remained seated, in his rather formal posture. The office of the president was book lined, floor to ceiling; windows opened out onto the cultivated green of Nassau Hall's large and picturesque front lawn, that swept to Nassau Street and the wrought iron gates of the university; and, to the rear, another grassy knoll, that led to Clio and Whig Halls, stately Greek temples of startling if somewhat incongruous Attic beauty amid the darker, Gothic university architecture. Behind Woodrow on the wall was a bewigged portrait of Aaron Burr, Sr., Princeton University's first president to take office in Nassau Hall.

"Yaeger, what is it? You seem troubled."

"You have heard, Woodrow? The terrible thing that happened yesterday in Camden?"

"Why, I think that I — I have not 'heard' ... What is it?"

Woodrow smiled, puzzled. His polished eyeglasses winked.

In fact, Woodrow had been hearing, or half-hearing, of something very ugly through the day, at the Nassau Club where he had had lunch with several trustees and near the front steps of Nassau Hall where he'd overheard several preceptors talking together in lowered voices. (It was a disadvantage of the presidency, as it had not been when Woodrow was a popular professor at the university, that, sighting him, the younger faculty in particular seemed to freeze, and to smile at him with expressions of forced courtesy and affability.) And it seemed to him too, that morning at breakfast, in his home at Prospect, that their Negro servant, Clytie, had been unusually silent, and had barely responded when Woodrow greeted her with his customary warm bright smile — "Good morning, Clytie! What have you prepared for us today?" (For Clytie, though born in Newark, New Jersey, had Southern forebears and could prepare breakfasts of the sort Woodrow had had as a boy in Augusta, Georgia, and elsewhere in the South; she was wonderfully talented, and often prepared a surprise treat for the Wilson family — butternut corn bread, sausage gravy and biscuits, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, creamy cheese grits and ham-scrambled eggs of which Woodrow, with his sensitive stomach, could eat only a sampling, but which was very pleasing to him as a way of beginning what would likely be one of his complicated, exhausting, and even hazardous days in Nassau Hall.)

Though Woodrow invited Yaeger Ruggles to sit down, the young seminarian seemed scarcely to hear and remained standing; in fact, nervously pacing about in a way that grated on his elder kinsman's nerves, as Yaeger spoke in a rambling and incoherent manner of — (the term was so vulgar, Woodrow held himself stiff as if in opposition to the very sound) — an incident that had occurred the previous night in Camden, New Jersey— lynching.

And another ugly term which made Woodrow very uneasy, as parents and his Virginian and Georgian relatives were not unsympathetic to the Protestant organization's goals if not its specific methods — Klu Klux Klan.

"There were two victims, Woodrow! Ordinarily, there is just one — a helpless man — a helpless black man— but last night, in Camden, in that hellish place, which is a center of 'white supremacy'— there was a male victim, and a female. A nineteen-year-old boy and his twenty-three-year-old sister, who was pregnant. You won't find their names in the newspapers — the Trenton paper hasn't reported the lynching at all, and the Newark paper placed a brief article on an inside page. The Klan led a mob of people — not just men but women, and young children — ho were looking for a young black man who'd allegedly insulted a white man on the street — whoever the young black man was, no one was sure — but they came across another young man named Pryde who was returning home from work, attacked him and beat him and dragged him to be hanged, and his sister tried to stop them, tried to attack some of them and was arrested by the sheriff of Camden County and handcuffed, then turned over to the mob. By this time —"

"Yaeger, please! Don't talk so loudly, my office staff will hear. And please — if you can — stop your nervous pacing." Woodrow removed a handkerchief from his pocket, and dabbed at his warm forehead. How faint-headed he was feeling! This ugly story was not something Woodrow had expected to hear, amid a succession of afternoon appointments in the president's office in Nassau Hall. And Woodrow was seriously concerned that his office staff, his secretary Matilde and her assistants, might overhear the seminarian's raised voice and something of his words, which could not fail to appall them. Yaeger protested, "But, Woodrow — the Klan murdered two innocent people last night, hardly more than fifty miles from Princeton — from this very office! That they are 'Negroes' does not make their suffering and their deaths any less horrible. Our students are talking of it — some of them, Southerners, are joking of it — your faculty colleagues are talking of it — every Negro in Princeton knows of it, or something of it — the most hideous part being, after the Klan leaders hanged the young man, and doused his body with gasoline and lighted it, his sister was brought to the same site, to be murdered beside him. And the sheriff of Camden County did nothing to prevent the murders and made no attempt to arrest or even question anyone afterward. There were said to have been more than seven hundred people gathered at the outskirts of Camden, to witness the lynchings. Some were said to have crossed the bridge from Philadelphia — the lynching must have been planned beforehand. The bodies burned for some time — some of the mob was taking pictures. What a nightmare! In our Christian nation, forty years after the Civil War! It makes me ill — sick to death ... These lynchings are common in the South, and the murderers never brought to justice, and now they have increased in New Jersey, there was a lynching in Zarephath only a year ago — here the 'white supremacists' have their own church — the Pillar of Fire — and in the Pine Barrens, and in Cape May ..."

"These are terrible events, Yaeger, but — why are you telling me about them, at such a time? I am upset too, of course — as a Christian, I cannot countenance murder — or any sort of mob violence — we must have a 'rule of law'— not passion — but — if law enforcement officers refuse to arrest the guilty, and local sentiment makes a criminal indictment and a trial unlikely — what are we, here in Princeton, to do? There are barbarous places in this country, as in the world — at times, a spirit of infamy — evil ..."

Woodrow was speaking rapidly. By now he was on his feet, agitated. It was not good for him, his physician had warned him, to become excited, upset, or even emotional — since childhood, Woodrow had been an over-sensitive child, and had suffered ill health well into his teens; he could not bear it, if anyone spoke loudly or emotionally in his presence, his heart beat rapidly and erratically bearing an insufficient amount of blood to his brain, that began to "faint" — and so now Woodrow found himself leaning forward, resting the palms of his hands on his desk blotter, his eyesight blotched and a ringing in his ears; his physician had warned him, too, of high blood pressure, which was shared by many in his father's family, that might lead to a stroke; even as his inconsiderate young kinsman dared to interrupt him with more of the lurid story, more ugly and unfairly accusatory words — "You, Woodrow, with the authority of your office, can speak out against these atrocities. You might join with other Princeton leaders — Winslow Slade, for instance — you are a good friend of Reverend Slade's, he would listen to you — and others in Princeton, among your influential friends. The horror of lynching is that no one stops it; among influential Christians like yourself, no one speaks against it."

Woodrow objected, this was not true: "Many have spoken against — that terrible mob violence — 'lynchings.' I have spoken against— 'lynchings.' I hope that my example as a Christian has been — is — a model of — Christian belief— 'Love thy neighbor as thyself '— it is the lynchpin of our religion ..." (Damn! — he had not meant to say lynchpin: a kind of demon had tripped his tongue, as Yaeger stared at him blankly.)
(Continues...)


Excerpted from The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. Copyright © 2013 by Joyce Carol Oates. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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