Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates's work (there was a time in my life when I thought her early short stories were fantastic, but her later work never impressed me), but I found this biography extremely satisfying. Johnson writes about Oates as an admiring friend (almost like Boswell to his Johnson), relating all the stages of her life and career: her childhood in Niagara County, NY; her college days; her marriage; teaching in Detroit; her move to Princeton. He writes about Oates's work, of course, but never in an analytical way - it's not a literary biography, but a biography about a writer. He is a most appealing writer in this regard, and he makes us interested in his subject as a person/teacher/writer in a most compelling fashion. Johnson is a very impelling writer; I found the book a real joy to read - and informative, too.

This biography exhaustively plumbs the life and career of Joyce Carol Oates. Although not a biography I would normally seek out, since I've read only a few of her books, "Invisible Writer" was named a "Best Academic Book of the Year" by the American Library Association and received glowing reviews, so I was curious about its content. I was immediately taken in by this sweeping, thoughtful, and superbly written account of a consummate writer's writer. Although Johnson does not shrink from criticizing his subject--her controlling behavior, her tendency to depict "friends" in her fiction in unflattering ways, even an occasional veiled threat of revenge to an unfriendly reviewer--he presents on the whole a fair, balanced portrait of a writer for whom art is almost her entire life. This should be read by anyone interested in writing or writers.

I read this book over the weekend and I couldn't put it down. During my college class in English literature, I first discovered Joyce Carol Oates and her special style of writing. Her talent overpowers and this biography explains her passion for writing. The candid photographs in the center of the book show how her drive consumes her bodily as well as spiritually. Greg Johnson explores her novels and tells how they come from her personal experiences of life and her family. Even though her own parents seemed rather doting and conventional, her grandparents certainly led a bizarre and violent life. Joyce takes childhood memories of her school life in a one room environment and expands the events into another painful experience of growing up and early adolescence. Joyce expresses that eating to her is not important; she feels that writing sustains her enough. But she complicates her life with eating because it is necessary. Her life is filled with another tortuous phy! ! sical problem caused by her own arrhythmic heart. It seems like she constantly battles against her own body and sometimes loses in the encounters. I enjoyed the personal information, explaining her works and today I went to my local library to search for "Wonderland." But they have 58 of her works and no "Wonderland." The author details the main character in this novel, "Jesse Vogel." So since my maiden name is Vogel, I was determined to find out more about this character with my family name. The author explains most of her novels and writings in this biography and reading about them makes you want to discover the many talents that Joyce Carol Oates brings to us through her devoted passion to writing and her immense talent. The Invisible Writer shows us how one person can bring so many characters alive through her works and yet want to remain as much as possible in the background. She speaks in her writings and her writings show us the wor! ! ld as no one else can.

Since I am referred to in Invisible Writer, I have more stake in it than most, I suppose. I found it very interesting--read it obsessively--and found it mostly accurate. The fact that some of us are still living, including the main subject, causes some of the less flattering (yet even more provocative) aspects of their lives to be skirted. Time will reveal even more, if Time cares. Who can say? Dan Brown (Daniel Curzon)

Greg Johnson has digested an unbelievable amount of information in compiling this authoritative biography of Oates, who is portrayed as a sometimes difficult woman who is nonetheless dedicated to her art. Anyone interested in contemporary American literature and in a fine example of literary biography should have a look at this book.