An interview with The New York Times T Magazine
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| Joyce Carol Oates. Photograph: Marion Ettinger/Corbis Outline |
American writer and critic Joyce Carol Oates talks to Stephen Heyman about her new short story collection,
Black Dahlia & White Rose, and the representation of violence in her work:
Are you still asked why there’s so much violence in your work? Thirty years ago you said that question was ”ignorant,” “insulting” and “sexist.”
I’m still asked the question constantly. And it seems so strange because I don’t think they’d ask a question like that of most male writers, or they wouldn’t ask that of someone who’s covering the war in Afghanistan or who’s writing about the Third Reich or Mao’s China. It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence. But I’m sure my friends get the same kinds of questions, too. My friend Edmund White is probably asked why he writes about his love affairs. And Anne Tyler is probably asked, “Why do you always write about housewives?” [Read More]
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