Re: JCO: Oates Country & THe Falls

Hi Cyrano,

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the Lockport/Millersport area, as well as the Falls. Regarding the novel, The Falls, I found it to be one of those books that just swept me up in the story line, a truly enjoyable read.

 

The woman in black intrigues me too. I thought she was Nina Olshaker, recognizing Dirk in Royal, making love to Royall as she had not been able to do with his father. On the other hand, the scene in the cemetery is eerie and unreal enough to make a case for her being a phantom. I was also reminded of Claudine, probably because of the diction you mention, but Claudine would have been much older and never would have worn those clothes, and her hair was blond, not black, and she was always impeccably coifed and never barefoot.

 

Nina is described as the Woman in Black in the "Before" chapter in part two. "She was the Woman in Black. She was observing him, she was waiting to waylay him. She was patient, relentless. Waiting for him...." Dirk forgot her name and "imagined Death." Maybe the woman in black in the cemetery scene is Death, maybe Royall makes love with Death, but I prefer to think it is Nina twenty years later. On page 286 JCO writes "And there was the woman in black waiting for him...." On the next page she writes "Royall realized that the woman must have been waiting for him."  The Woman in Black in Part 2 too closely parallels the woman in black in Part 3 for it to be a coincidence. 

 

I'm curious as to what others may think.

 

Jane

----- Original Message -----

From: Cyranomish@aol.com

To: jco@usfca.edu

Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 9:45 PM

Subject: Re: JCO: Oates Country & THe Falls

Hi, Jane.  A friend drove me around the Lockport/Millersport/Niagara region
last winter.  JCO's childhood home was torn down some years ago and replaced
with a modern house, but I enjoyed seeing "the creek" running behind the houses
-- quite visible from the road with the leaves off the trees.  A lot of her
"back there" stories involve "the crick" -- also the story "The Molesters" which
appears in the novel EXPENSIVE PEOPLE.  We passed the little airfield where
JCO's father took her flying in his plane. (See Greg Johnson bio.) Before
leaving the area we stopped at the county library down the road from the old JCO
homestead, but the librarian didn't know a thing about the author or her history
in the neighborhood.  I said "You'd better read about her -- she may win the
Nobel Prize somday."   :>}  
    Yes, let's talk about THE FALLS.  I read it a couple of months ago, but
it's still fairly fresh in memory.  I was intrigued by The Woman in Black who
turns up in the graveyard.  At first I thought it was Nina, but then she had
that stilted, upper-class diction like Ariya's mother-in-law.  Or maybe it was a
phantom!  What do you think?
Cyrano