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Tone Clusters: the Joyce Carol Oates discussion group archive

Monday, May 09, 2005

Re: JCO: Jinx is bitter, but is it just his heart?

Hi Joy,
I too really like this book (but I like most of her work for the reason
you cite below) because she seems to be able to
"get inside" her characters so that they become for me, not characters,
but "real people" in all their complexities.

I don't have an "answer" to your questions, but wonder if it matters.
I see JCO writing about people to whom "things happen", and whatever it
is, we get the chance to see, again in all its complexity, the many
responses that people are capable of WHEN those things happen .......
for a guy like Jinx, the fall WOULD change his life, whether the game
was won or not, but this, of course, would depend on how he chose to
have it change his life, from the one he imagined might happen if he
had won the game and hadn't fallen. (maybe THAT wouldn't have changed
his life as much as he thought it might have....)

sorry that's a bit convoluted ....

I'd be happy to get into more conversation about this if you wish, but
I'm guessing others are already jumping in .......

cheers,
ruth

On 8-May-05, at 2:23 AM, Joy Armendariz wrote:

> The whole chapter talks about the struggle, both emotional
> and physical, Jinx went through. i really liked this chapter because
> it seems almost as if JCO was a basketball player feeling everything
> Jinx was feeling (which i've felt too). It seemed that Jinx had the
> game in his pocket, but almost at the end of the chapter something
> happened and Jinx fell after he attempted to score. He falls and we
> know that something really bad is happening.
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