Re: JCO: falls/mom

Hi, RFoley. I hope you got to use Freaky Green Eyes in your class. It's a
great young person's book. It's theme of the difficulties of doing the "right
thing" is something young folks need to understand. That no one necessarily
pats one on the back for being brave and assertive. In fact, doing the right
think may make one's life much harder than it would have been if one had simply
shut up and remained passive.
Nikki, yes. That's the name. Thank you. I liked that charcter: she is
neither one of JCO's spectacularly troubled heroines, nor an accomplished upper
middle class professional type character. She is somewhere in the gray
middle, where I live.
Cyrano

In a message dated 11/8/2005 1:47:52 AM Eastern Standard Time,
RFoley7292@aol.com writes:

<< Not to intrude, but I've had two occasions to listen to Joyce discuss her
most recent work in person. From her comments, sincerely and thoughtfully
delivered, as always, I can't buy into parody. She views the work as
deeply and
intensely personal. (The book is, as we know, dedicated to her own late
mother.) Says she seriously entertained the idea of publishing it under
yet
another pseudonym. She thought it might have appeal only to her female
fans,
though that feeling was almost immediately disproven. As a male, I found
her
notion strangely disquieting, especially since I find myself deeply
connected to
the experience and feelings that Nikki Eaton undergoes. I remember being
in
the living room with my mother when she had an infarction and I believed,
at
the time, that she had abruptly passed on (not true, then.) Joyce's
descriptions of Nikki discovering Gwen's body in the garage brought
everything
flooding back as though it were yesterday.

I'm about halfway through a first reading and I find the book gripping on a
personal level.

It seems not to have the epic, mythological quality we associate with some
of Joyce's most important works - e.g. Blonde, the recent The Falls. If
there
is an attempt on JCO's part to create that level, I think it not too
successful, but as a personal "fictionalized" recording of experience and
feeling,
it succeeds brilliantly (for me). Curiously, the last book I read of
Joyce's
was Freaky Green Eyes (which I'm considering using in my classroom) and
there
are some wonderful parallels to be drawn between Franky and Nikki in the
wake (no pun) of their mothers' deaths.

More to come when I finish the book in a day or so.

>>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates discussion group

To send a message to the group, email jco@usfca.edu
To subscribe, email majordomo@usfca.edu: subscribe jco
To unsubscribe, email majordomo@usfca.edu: unsubscribe jco