Customer Reviews

High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006

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I am a huge fan of Joyce Carol Oates and have always looked forward to reading her short-story collections. High Lonesome is a rather large volume full of some of Oates's best stories with some new ones that will satisfy people who have already read and own her old ones (like me). Some of the "new" stories had already been published, but the ones that hadn't been published (or that I hadn't already read) are wonderful. My favorites from 2006 are: "The Cousins," "The Lost Brother," "High Loneliness," and "Fat Man My Love." The aforementioned stories are clear reminders that Oates hasn't lost her touch in her long, brilliant writing career. Her stories are dark, surreal and somewhat disturbing at times, but that is why I read them. And then there are classic ones that I'd discovered and been reading for a few years now, like "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," "Small Avalanches," "The Knife," and "Manslaughter." High Lonesome is a wonderful addition to the spot on my bookshelf devoted to this author. My one complaint is the rather steep hardcover price. This is very expensive for a book full of mostly previously published material. I checked this one out of the library because I am now in the why-should-I-spend-thirty-dollars-on-a-hardcover-when-I-can-buy-four-mass-market-paperbacks-for-the-same-price mentality. And that is why I give this four stars instead of five. High Lonesome is something I'd like to own, but I'd rather wait for the paperback.

Coming in at almost 700 pages and featuring eleven new stories as well as two-dozen classic short stories from the 1960's thru the end of the twentieth-century, plus commentary from Oates herself, this anthology represents a sweeping cross-section of this ingenious writer's best short fiction. Her tremendous talent as a novelist aside, I've always felt Oates was at her best when dealing with a short subject, and for anyone unacquainted with her writings it would be hard to find a better starting point for an introduction to one of America's greatest creative minds. As for Joyce Carol Oates' admirers, this is simply a must-possess volume.

While there is a lot of fine writing inside this collection, probably my favorite five stories in High Lonesome would be (in no special order):


Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Corrections, and Began My Life Over Again

Heat

Four Summers

Concerning The Case of Bobby T.


Considering just how prolific Oates has been since the early 1960's and stopping for a moment to ponder the immensity of her output and all that is out there to be read, collections like this one are very nice, and I hope we soon see further volumes that gather in more of her incredible writings.

Joyce Carol Oates is a gifted writer, and if you're a fan you won't want to miss adding this to your collection. The stories are pretty creepy, but nevertheless appeals to me for it really reveals the darker side of human nature. A gripping read!

If you've never read Oates- read this for your introduction. It is beautiful and the stories seem prefectly picked. I loved how you can see her progression as an author and also the different paths she's followed in her fiction. Worth it's wait in gold- an then some.

Joyce Carol Oates has been an amazingly prolific writer, of both novels and short fiction. This collection, although only a small portion of her literary output, is a must-have for any fan of her work. The fact that she also wrote the Afterword, explaining her decisions regarding which works to include (for the list was so vast that they couldn't all be in there!), is a plus. (Although I, too, regret her leaving out her "gothic" work, as she did.) Ms. Oates' work can be grim and dark, but I have always been drawn to it, probably because I prefer fiction that explores the darker side of life, and that focuses on the gray areas of reason and moral choices, as I find this much more interesting and thought-provoking. There are seldom, if ever, any tidy endings in her stories, but life moves inexorably forward nonetheless. Hope? Possibly, but often not, or hidden behind despair and longing. Truth? Absolutely, without gloves. Beautiful writing, fascinating stories and characters. Oates is not for everyone, but for those of us who value her work, this volume is a treasure.

HIGH LONESOME, the latest collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates, is also the most extensive. Work is amassed from over four decades of her career and includes 11 new stories, all of which exhibit her razor-sharp ability of cutting straight to the heart of the middle class. Her familiar themes of innocence lost, violence unchecked (usually against women), and the seamy underbelly of suburbia abound throughout.

After four decades of writing, Oates is far from past her prime, her new stories resonant with her recurring motifs. In "Spider Boy" a teenage son is used for bait by his powerful politician father as he trolls for young men. Normally her work demonstrates violence against women, but in this story the politician is exploiting (and quite possibly murdering) his young male prey. The young son must decide how much to divulge to the police, resulting in a powerful --- albeit horrific --- morality play that could have been ripped from today's headlines.

In "The Fish Factory" we see the disintegration of a couple's marriage after tragedy strikes. Narrated by the heartbroken wife, the story begins after the body of her teenage daughter has been discovered behind a dilapidated factory: "Seeing my daughter discarded like trash behind the fish factory where on even the breeziest days a faint stink of fish prevails." "The Gathering Squall" depicts the violent aftermath of a high school girl being violated and humiliated by a group of high school boys, similar territory to Oates's bestselling WE WERE THE MULVANEYS.

The title story opens with the fateful words, "The only people I still love are the ones I've hurt." Daryl McCracken looks back at his life spent on his step-grandfather's farm, a man they called "Pop," who played the banjo "making this high old lonesome sound like a ghost tramping the hills." When his disoriented grandfather is arrested for soliciting a prostitute, Daryl is stunned and saddened that his cousin Drake, a Sheriff's Deputy, did not intervene to help the old man, and he decides to seek his own form of retribution.

"B*D* 11 1 87" is an intriguingly eerie entry about organ donors who are bred for harvesting, although they aren't aware of this fact until it's too late. The narrator is a high school senior who wonders why his teachers and counselors aren't recommending him for college. In addition to highlighting the evil inherent in society that exists today, Oates shines a light on the evils yet to come.

Even after many years, her earlier works stand the test of time. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" arguably one of her most well-known short pieces (and the basis for the film, Smooth Talk), tells the story of a restless teen named Connie who meets her match in the charismatically menacing drifter Arnold Friend. Was it rape or seduction --- or perhaps a little bit of both? In "The Swimmers," a young girl recalls the mysterious woman who dated her uncle --- a woman who kept many secrets. In true Oates fashion, the story is imbued with her trademark longing and dread.

The most difficult part of compiling collections such as these is which stories to include and which to leave out, especially when trying to cull from such an extensive career. Oates addresses this issue in her afterword, as she explains how she tried to stick mostly to stories that were featured in collections that were no longer in print.

HIGH LONESOME is a treasure trove for Joyce Carol Oates fans and a gift for first-time readers. Publishers Weekly has said that "much is made of her prodigious output...(but) it's the consistent quality of the work that lifts Oates into the literary pantheon."

--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller

I bought this book having previously read, "Where are you going, Where have you Been? And more recently *BD*11 1 87 in the Atlantic, which blew me away. So I bought High Lonesome for further thrills and I am not disappointed. I really enjoyed "The Lady with the Pet Dog" This story had such subtle genius that it wheedled into my subconscious and I had to finish it by the second sitting."Fat Man My Love" is a grim and starkly original tale that takes courage to get through but it's worth it. In fact all of Oats' tales are a little risky because each character exposes our own weaknesses so well.

I did not give it a fifth star because the physical characteristics of the book, paper, cover, and the texture seems pulpy, cheap and prone to yellowing.

Other than that, an outstanding product.

This collection merely offers a peek at the tip of the iceberg that is Oates' massive talent... Despite spanning four decades, Oates tells us in the afterword that she had to leave out many of her defining works like the miniature narratives and gothic/mystery stories.

She's brilliant at crafting characters who are just short of likeable, and yet you feel drawn in enough to want to know what happens to them.

Her female protagonists especially, seem to invite some of the catastrophes that happen to them, and there's that sense of inevitable disaster even as she lays out the path leading to their destruction, either by a seemingly harmless flirtation, or vain indulgence in (unwanted?) attention.

A sense of unease underlies most of these stories, and you go away from them wishing the characters could have made better choices. But perhaps this mirrors real life and makes her stories more painfully realistic. Painting pretty pictures was never Oates' intention to begin with...

Didn't know she was that good. Was aware of her from the Sixtes, but never took her up. Couldn't believe that someone so prolific could have that much to say, so I dismissed her as a neurotic hack.

Her novel them (1969) won the National Book Award, and her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

High Lonesome is a collection of her short stories from 1966-2006. The first eleven are new works and throughout she exhibits a very versatile voice, although each narrator displays a disjointed groping for understanding and solace. These stories are about broken lives that some people can find depressing and possibly horrid, but there resides a resolute heroic quality in the struggles of these very ordinary people as they try to come to grips with the calamities that have befallen them. Life isn't always a romantic comedy and heroes aren't always larger than life.

The stories from the Sixties are more conventional stylistically, but their themes remain the same: families in crisis, individuals teetering along the edge of spiritual, emotional abysses, the high lonesomeness of existence.

She has a keen eye for character, their behaviors and assumptions, their tactics for understanding and coping with the world, their emotional, psychological thought processes. Not once did I say to myself, "no, that's just not believable, nobody acts or thinks that way."

Although her stories deal with everyday people coping with commonplace issues, she has a great gift of being able to craft seductive mysteries that the narrative subtly exposes. At times you wonder where the story is leading you to; and you hope that the ending isn't trite, banal, obvious, or the insipid open ending. For the most part she succeeds and prompts you to reflect back upon the story and its meaning. That's good stuff, I say.

Again, these stories are not for those readers who wish to escape, to be entertained and have a good laugh or two. These aren't stories fit for pop culture, but rather for those readers who are interested in stories that probe into the deeper essences of what it means to be alive, what it means to be conflicted, to be lost and torn, to have doubts, fears, anxieties, troubles and sufferings. Real troubles and real sufferings, not the manufactured kind of almost all movies and novels.

I'm only about halfway through this book right now but I highly recommend it for anyone who likes Joyce Carol Oates or just a good short story. I've been a reader of hers for a few years now and it's nice to see how her writing has changed through each decade. I enjoy the stretches she takes in her stories and the risks she takes...I always seem to find a surprise at the end of everything she writes. This book definitely takes a while to get through...not a quick weekend read but enjoyable nonetheless.