Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates [Paperback]

Greg Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1999

Taking advantage of privileged access to letters, journals, family, friends, and Oates herself, an English professor presents an authorized study of the life and work of the acclaimed, enigmatic writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Commenting on her output of more than 400 published stories, 30-plus novels and other writings, a hostile critic called Oates an "inexhaustible word machine." Johnson, however, evokes her as something more than a typist with a self-confessed "blindness toward excess." Despite Oates's melodramatic oeuvre and her unmelodramatic career, he reveals a life that is more than her works. He not only describes how Oates's hardscrabble upstate New York, violent Detroit and uppity Princeton are metamorphosed and mythologized in her fiction but also displays the humanizing if occasionally unflattering dimension of the writer labeled by John Updike the foremost "woman of letters" in America. Although admiring, Johnson sees in his subject a propensity to exploit unflatteringly people and situations from her life, and he explores the anorexic emaciation, chronic insomnia and attacks of tachycardia that have afflicted her. The author, an English professor at Kennesaw State College in Georgia, concludes that Princeton has been too comfortable, failing to furnish Oates in her middle years?she will be 60 in 1998?with conflict sufficient to power her abilities to their potential, beyond a "Bosch-like American garden of hellish delights."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

With Oates's cooperation and that of her family, friends, and acquaintances, Johnson (English, Kennesaw State Coll.) provides a comprehensive close-up and personal view of the prolific, controversial 20th-century writer. From Oates's birth in Lockport, New York, to her present life in Princeton, New Jersey, Johnson skillfully interweaves the background, personality, character, lifestyle, and writings of the author. Through this fascinating and well-written biography, readers will feel that they know Oates almost as well as anyone can and may find themselves vacillating between great admiration and empathy for the life of this writer possessed by an insatiable desire for writing, but also possessing an unstoppable, inventive imagination and the incredible energy necessary to feed the desire. Whether or not a fan of Oates's writings, anyone interested in literary biography should read this intriguing account of the extraordinary life of a writer. Highly recommended.?Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Plume (April 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452279712
• ISBN-13: 978-0452279711
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating biography of an enigmatic, brilliant novelist., March 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates (Paperback)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative. Well researched. Simple, February 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates (Paperback)

This biography by Greg Johnson is good. I don't know if something more detailed can or has been written about J.C.O., because I have never come across any other biographies which to compare it with; it is informative, but it is simplistic. I read past reviews where readers felt that J.C.O. was looming over the author's shoulder telling him what and how to write. I agree with that observation, because there is a tone or quality of restraint that I felt upon reading it out loud. As J.C.O. fans, I think we were expecting something more -- something that goes beyond the dark fiction that has made her such a unique literary figure. I think we were expecting her to literally have lived the lives of the characters that she has created. But she is not Hemmingwaylike or Iask Diensonlike in that she writes in a fictionalized autobiographical way, as these two did. I believe she uses some personal experiences -- as most writers do, but she is firmly grounded in the turmoil of our country. She hasn't lived the lives of her characters in the truest sense of the word, but she writes about the possibilities of the lives she could have lived. Hemmingway wrote about soldiers and fishermen, etc..., because he was all of them. Isak Dienson was an aristocrat and a farm owner. She wrote about that and beyond. J.C.O. has led an academic life, and in her free time, has thought and thought and thought about socioeconomic conditions that shape human actions and behavior. I don't feel that she is a writer who writes from experience, but a writer who writes through the attainment of knowledge from books and the people around her. I think it is a very honest biography -- true to the work ethic that has made J.C.O. one of my all time favorite writers. To reiterate, this is not an exciting biography -- quite bland, really. But it sheds some light on the Oates mystique.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing, especially her family and personal thoughts., July 16, 1998

By 

Mary Ann Keagy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates (Hardcover)

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.