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The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art

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Joyce Carol Oates is a prodigious talent, both in volume and quality. One is in awe of the numerous titles from various genres - novel, poetry, play, essay and novella - for which she has published and received critical acclaim within the past forty years. Who is more qualified than Oates to assemble "The Faith of a Writer," a collection of essays written over a large span of years (many published earlier) that explore the craft of writing? Oates says the collection is "meant to be undogmatic, provisional."

This is not a how-to write book, but rather, a personal take how Oates and other writers like Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and several other notables approach the craft of writing. The most interesting essay, "Notes on Failure," examines the helpful role failure can play when striving for memorable writing. Oates discusses James Joyce's difficulty in getting his first novel published before he wrote the classic "Ulysses." In response to the repeated rejections, "Joyce retreated, and allowed himself ten years to write a masterpiece."

Oates also ponders topics such as inspiration, her early childhood influences, reading as a writer, and self-criticism. Her tone throughout each short essay is crisp and direct, often compelling and endearing, like a schoolteacher who always demands the best. Oates stresses that writing when done well, like any other artistic endeavor, is a craft. She believes, "inspiration and energy and even genius are rarely enough to make `art': for prose fiction is also a craft, and craft must be learned."

Oates' slender volume is a beautiful rumination and worthy addition to her large catalog of work. She manages to pin down and examine the elusive nature of the muse.

Bohdan Kot

Since I have read so many of JC Oates' works over the years, it was with a little trepidation that I approached "The Faith of a Writer." Reading a lot of any writer's works gives you the feeling that you know the author as well as any member of your family or your circle of best friends. So, reading something directly from Oates about her inspirations, her craft and how she goes about actually producing her works was a bit scary for me. It's like meeting a favorite movie star in a one-on-one situation: what if she isn't as smart, as witty, as nice, as perceptive, as devilish as he appears on screen...or in Oates' case, on the written page.
But like listening to a good friend relate stories of her life and how she goes about her craft, Oates enlightens rather than frightens: she adds additional insight to her works of fiction rather than tear down my perceptions of them.
Oates on writers: (they have)..."an affinity for risk, danger, mystery, a certain derangement of the soul; a craving for distress, the predilection for insomnia." And as an extension Oates states these are the people who create "the highest form of the human spirit, Art."
Going against the common notion that we should write what we know (and Oates's works certainly support this contention): "The artist can inhabit any individual for the individual is irrelevant to art."
Like most great artists, Oates writes because she can't help it, it's in her blood and anyone who has read any of her works would have to agree that there are drops of blood as well as sweat on each page of her work.

This is a lovely piece, not meant to be a guide on how to write, which I think the negative reviewers are in need of, but rather it is a brief glimpse at her creative process. She is in love with the written word, and this book is no less eloquent than any of the novels or short stories she has written.

This review was written as an assignment for a graduate school course in the creative writing program at Northwestern University:

"The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art" by Joyce Carol Oates

Publisher: Ecco
Number of Pages: 176
Year Published: September 23, 2003
Price: Paperback version is $11.95; hardcover version is $21.95 (Paperback is widely available and discounted at Amazon.com; Hardcover version is available through Amazon.com, but via other sellers (used); also available at the Northwestern University Library).

Ideal Audience: This book would be useful in many classroom settings. The youngest audience would probably be high school level junior and senior "Introduction to Creative Writing" students. If used in an undergraduate or graduate level creative writing setting, the essays would be best utilized as both inspiration and models for future individual writing. This would also be very helpful in a "Continuing Education" program, possibly associated with a local community center, library or community college.

Brief Summary: This book contains 12 essays and a brief interview with Oates (led by Greg Johnson). The essays explore Oates' inspirations and motivations for becoming a writer. She offers specific advice to young writers ("write your heart out" and to read as often as they can. Oates touches on her first memories as a child and how the book, "Alice in Wonderland," had a profound affect on her life. She also examines her passion for running and illustrates how running feeds her mind and allows her to be very creative. Other essays discuss failure, inspiration (of other writers), how to read as a writer, the process of self-criticism, and a glimpse of Oates' writing studio. The interview was conducted shortly after Oates published her longest novel (752 pages) in 2000, "Blonde."

Representative Section/Excerpt:

(From "To a Young Writer"):
Write your heart out. Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject. Your "forbidden" passions are likely to be the fuel for your writing... What advice can an older writer presume to offer a younger? Only what he or she might wish to have been told years ago. Don't be discouraged! Don't cast sidelong glances, and compare yourself to others among your peers! (Writing is not a race. No one really "wins." The satisfaction is in the effort, and rarely in the consequent rewards, if there are any). And again, write your heart out.



(From "First Loves: From "Jabberwocky" to "After Apple Picking"):
There are two primary influences in a writer's life: those influences that come so early in childhood, they seem to soak into the very marrow of our bones and to condition our interpretation of the universe thereafter; and those that come a little later, when we are old enough to exercise some control of our environment, and our response to it, and have begun to be aware not only of the emotional power but the strategies of art.

Strength: This book is very inspirational and filled with models that can be used a "jumping off" points for writers in their own work. It can be a great tool to use in a classroom setting if a teacher prefers not to use writing triggers or prompts to engage the class in an exercise.

Weakness: A big weakness of this book is Oates' inability to dig deeper and reveal her main inspirations for writing. Although there are sections within the material that Oates' opens up and offers a glimpse of herself, overall, the book is about other people and their techniques/inspirations, etc.

Urgency Rating: Moderate; if you plan on teaching any genre of writing it can be useful in many ways, especially as models (versus triggers or prompts). The most useful parts were the following essays: "My Faith as a Writer," because it made me think about my own "faith" as a writer and think about my earliest memories of the importance of writing in my life; "To a Young Writer," because it is very inspirational/motivational--great advice from an accomplished writer; and "Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman," because it offers great advice about the craft of reading to expand knowledge in our own writing versus reading for enjoyment.

Choosing this book was a no-brainer: I figured an author whose fiction I have enjoyed for as long as I can remember would be able to teach me quite a bit as a fellow writer. This book does not disappoint.

I am a bit perplexed by some of these other reviews: could they have possibly read the same book I have next to me, highlighted - read and re-read, scribbled inside due to the many insights contained within?

I found the chapters on "Running and Writing" and "Failure" to be exceptionally intriguing. The "Running and Writing" chapter reminds me of Natalie Goldberg's love affair with the same topic in her work "Wild Mind". I can completely connect viscerally to Oates' statement, "Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness."

"Failure" reminded me that "the greats" too, have had their own versions of unsuccess... and some people, such as Alice James the sister-in-the-shadows of William and Henry James may have appeared in life to be the personification of "Failure" in her (found after death) words immortal.

Stories such as these, told in the voice of a "JCO" (yes, she refers to her writer self using her initials in the book) are quite enlightening and reassuring to me.

I will treasure this book. I know it will be one I return to repeatedly for guidance, a shot of inspiration and straight shooting when my own words seem to become nothing but an annoyance.

This amazing, awesome little book was totally NOT what I was expecting. Like a previous writer said, it was more of a memoir, but a memoir of her writing history, her early inspiration (Edgar Allen Poe/Lewis Carroll) and her early schooling.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered she read and has been influenced Poe. I won't give away why he left such an impression on her at such an early age (eight!), but suffice it to say, it was enlightening and made me think about the books that formed my early thinking. (Besides the comic books I loved!)

If you're a fan/reader of Oates or a writer or wannabe writer, then you will definitely be encouraged and challenged by this tiny tome. It's an unexpected treasure that I highly recommend.

"Art," writes Joyce Carol Oates, "is the highest expression of the human spirit." And while humankind has often struggled to express why it is that art is so very necessary to our spirits (why is art the first course cut in public education when budgets require constraint?), we cannot exist without it. Art is, in great part, our communication with each other, our attempt as social animals to connect, but first and foremost, as Oates goes on to describe, it is our solitary striving to go deep - into ourselves, connecting with our innermost and hidden hearts.

In this collection of essays, Oates, known perhaps more for her amazing ability to be one of the most prolific writers of all time (something she says in one of her essays that she does not quite understand, that is, why she is seen as prolific ... to which point, I urge the author to check out her own list of published works, in and of itself a short book), examines the art and craft of writing. These are not necessarily essays written one to build upon another, but separate and independent pieces, including an interview done with Oates to discuss her fictionalized history of Marilyn Monroe, "Blonde."

Included in this collection are biographical essays on how Oates grew up, her childhood and one-room school days, a time of discovery that reading books was entering a new world beyond this one. Fittingly, "Alice in Wonderland" was the first book that so mesmerized her and has kept its hold on her lifelong. Dropping down the rabbit hole into a world that was a surprise at every turn, where all things were open to re-creation, where one is never quite sure one will be able to return fully to that other reality, is not unlike the life of a writer.

Also, essays on honing the craft prior to the art - and that would always begin, and never end, with reading. Reading and reading, endlessly reading, and she puts an almost equal importance on reading the classics, but no less the not quite classics, such as comic books. All can teach the writer - something about language, something about storyline, something about plot movement and suspense and conflict and resolution. It is not so much what one reads as that one reads.

There are also essays on a writer's space, what it might and should contain, the art of self criticism, the squishy business of inspiration, surely important notes on failure, and others along that vein. Even a piece on running and writing, how Oates finds that much of her writing happens first in her head, long before it reaches paper (she writes her first drafts always in long-hand), and so running seems to be an activity especially conducive to unstringing such creative and transportive trains of thought.

Above all, Oates states, immerse yourself. If writing is about craft first, the learning of grammar and sentence structure (and she is one of those writers who revises as she writes) and other such primary tools, then it enters that ephemeral world of Art - like dropping through the rabbit hole - when one dares to leave this world and fully enter into that one. Immersion. Nothing less.

"I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called 'culture' - and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species."

Perhaps because fine art, in any medium, is itself a kind of reproducing the species. And giving it new life.

While this is not my favorite book of writer writing about writing - that spot is reserved for Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life," Bret Lott's "Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of a Writer's Life," and Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life" - it was satisfying. I found in some ways a kindred spirit, for I, too, prefer a first draft in longhand, revise along the way, feel that writing is like entering a trance not unlike madness, and wrote my first "masterpieces," just as Oates did, even prior to knowing HOW to write. I saw my parents writing, and although I had no idea what those scribbles meant, I was well amused to sit for hours doing the same. Rows and rows of looping and connected lines, containing magic. With a writer's faith that someday, somehow, someone will read my scribbles and sense the magic, too. As did Oates, today as mesmerized by that process as she was as a child. Therein, one suspects, lies the explanation to her ability to be that prolific.

...which is probably why it is disappointing some readers. All I can say is this: I've been making a living as a writer for twenty-five years and this book was a great moral boost to me. Only another writer can understand the specific ways in which a writer is pummeled, and by the same token, only another writer can give "keep the faith" advice that is truly meaningful. To me, the book was like sending my soul to a spa.

This is not a "How To" book but a collection of various Oates essays (some new and some older) on the often daunting craft of writing and on the writer's life in general. It is wise, fun, and rich with examples on the trials, the joys, and the blessings of writing from a diverse assortment of classic and contemporary authors...with lots of food for thought. This inspiring rumination is sure to ignite the creative fires which makes it a great and appropriate gift for writers at any stage in their career.

Joyce Carol Oates created a wonderful insight to her literary world. I'm a big fan of Ms. Oates and it was a special treat for me to read about her writing process and her love for the written word. Highly recommend.