Joyce Carol Oates & The Hitcher
Oct. 18th, 2015 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foolish_m0rtalJOYCE CAROL OATES
I am so fucking excited - Harvard Book Store, which always has wonderful author events (earlier this month, Kate Beaton + book signing with free copy of "Step Aside Pops", $22 !!!), is hosting Joyce Carol Oates tomorrow, with $5 admission tickets. I died. I bought a ticket. I might faint.
I was first introduced to Joyce Carol Oates through her short story collection, specifically "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (story here) and "Where Is Here", (story here) two pieces I read as a teenager for English class which resonated so strongly with me that they've greatly influenced the stories I like and the way I write.
I adore the way JCO writes thrillers: unsettling, unpredictable, weird. It whetted my taste for surreal fiction, inspiring my love for writers like Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, stories where the boundaries of normal were warped with dreamlike characters who operated under the new rules of their reality. ("It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange" - Inception).
Oates's newest collection, "Lovely, Dark, Deep", is an incisive portrait into people's insecurities and their sense of self. I just found The Museum of Dr. Moses at a used bookstore in Cambridge and bought it for the signing tomorrow ("Where Are You Going...Been" and "Where is Here" have been out of print since the 90s, and I can't find them anywhere.)
THE HITCHER (1986) & JCO INFLUENCES
When I first watched Rutger Hauer's "The Hitcher", I immediately recognised the sinister unexpected menace in the plot juxtaposed against its bright sunny Texan backdrop. (M.R. James does this same contrast to wonderfully chilling effect in his antiquarian ghost stories, if you're looking for stories to read during Halloween month). The fear of finding the bizarre inside the normal and the struggles with identity and purpose were so very deliciously Oatesy that the film became an instant favourite of mine. You can find my slightly silly overview of this film here as a part of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
smallfandomfest.
"Where Are You Going..." was also a huge influence on the massive long-laboured fanfiction I wrote for The Hitcher ("The Scales & The Sword"), a WIP I never thought I'd see come to light, which my beta and cheerleader![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
missaffliction was instrumental in bringing to its finish. The porch scene in "TS&TS" is an homage to the porch scene in "Where Are You Going...", and the whole fic is rotten with my love for erotic thrillers, fatal attraction, and demon lover tropes with the main character struggling to recouncil various parts of their identity, talents, and desires. (YUP, I was an early adopter into the Hannibal/Hannigram fandom)
Another attractor is that many of the people in JCO's stories are at a crossroads, something many of us have to face in our lives (I'm having a quarter life crisis situation right now, ha), and that vulnerability is often laid bare for outside forces to exploit. The unnerving avenues people can take to worm themselves into our orbits, and the methods we use to rationalise these interactions, also serves as a sort of dream sequence where we don't understand the strangeness till we open our eyes.
I'm forever grateful to my luck in having Joyce Carol Oates's selected works in my life so early and the influences she's had on my writing and reading habits ever since. I can't wait to meet her tomorrow!
I am so fucking excited - Harvard Book Store, which always has wonderful author events (earlier this month, Kate Beaton + book signing with free copy of "Step Aside Pops", $22 !!!), is hosting Joyce Carol Oates tomorrow, with $5 admission tickets. I died. I bought a ticket. I might faint.
I was first introduced to Joyce Carol Oates through her short story collection, specifically "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (story here) and "Where Is Here", (story here) two pieces I read as a teenager for English class which resonated so strongly with me that they've greatly influenced the stories I like and the way I write.
I adore the way JCO writes thrillers: unsettling, unpredictable, weird. It whetted my taste for surreal fiction, inspiring my love for writers like Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, stories where the boundaries of normal were warped with dreamlike characters who operated under the new rules of their reality. ("It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange" - Inception).
Oates's newest collection, "Lovely, Dark, Deep", is an incisive portrait into people's insecurities and their sense of self. I just found The Museum of Dr. Moses at a used bookstore in Cambridge and bought it for the signing tomorrow ("Where Are You Going...Been" and "Where is Here" have been out of print since the 90s, and I can't find them anywhere.)
THE HITCHER (1986) & JCO INFLUENCES
When I first watched Rutger Hauer's "The Hitcher", I immediately recognised the sinister unexpected menace in the plot juxtaposed against its bright sunny Texan backdrop. (M.R. James does this same contrast to wonderfully chilling effect in his antiquarian ghost stories, if you're looking for stories to read during Halloween month). The fear of finding the bizarre inside the normal and the struggles with identity and purpose were so very deliciously Oatesy that the film became an instant favourite of mine. You can find my slightly silly overview of this film here as a part of
smallfandomfest."Where Are You Going..." was also a huge influence on the massive long-laboured fanfiction I wrote for The Hitcher ("The Scales & The Sword"), a WIP I never thought I'd see come to light, which my beta and cheerleader
missaffliction was instrumental in bringing to its finish. The porch scene in "TS&TS" is an homage to the porch scene in "Where Are You Going...", and the whole fic is rotten with my love for erotic thrillers, fatal attraction, and demon lover tropes with the main character struggling to recouncil various parts of their identity, talents, and desires. (YUP, I was an early adopter into the Hannibal/Hannigram fandom) Another attractor is that many of the people in JCO's stories are at a crossroads, something many of us have to face in our lives (I'm having a quarter life crisis situation right now, ha), and that vulnerability is often laid bare for outside forces to exploit. The unnerving avenues people can take to worm themselves into our orbits, and the methods we use to rationalise these interactions, also serves as a sort of dream sequence where we don't understand the strangeness till we open our eyes.
I'm forever grateful to my luck in having Joyce Carol Oates's selected works in my life so early and the influences she's had on my writing and reading habits ever since. I can't wait to meet her tomorrow!
