I've been listening to the wonderful CD Haunted that JCO very kindly sent me
a copy of. It is very beautiful and has a real spiritual connection to the
stories and books which inspired all the songs. I just noticed the two
artists names who worked on it though: Jeff Kelly and Laura Weller. Almost
like Lauren Kelly if you combine the names. Spooky. :)
Eric
>From: Cyranomish@aol.com
>Reply-To: jco@usfca.edu
>To: jco@usfca.edu
>Subject: Re: JCO: "In the Region of Ice"
>Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 09:29:32 EST
>
>Oh, no, Anne. I wouldn't want to rewrite it, but I remember being
>frustrated
>by it when I first read it back in the 1970s. I had read a lot of nun
>literature at the time -- including K. Hulme's excellent novel The Nun's
>Story. I
>think JCO got the details of convent life well enough for that era -- which
>was
>a time of great change and breakup in US convents. For Sister Irene to run
>off to solve her student's problems without consulting her mother superior
>is
>quite typical for the era. Young nuns in the late 60s and early 70s were
>questioning authority, modernizing the habit -- in a movie still I saw,
>Sister
>Irene wears a modern suitlike outfit with an abbreviated veil. Many young
>women
>-- and middle-aged women -- left the convent during the 70s -- some to do
>more
>"socially relevant" work among the poor, others to get into the dating
>scene
>and eventually get married (and divorced and remarried, like the rest of US
>society.)
> I think Sister Irene was carried away with Allan's problem because he
>embodied many of the emotional aspects within herself that she had tried to
>root
>out: impulsiveness, rebelliousness, unreasonableness, selfish egoism,
>pride,
>unrestrained intellectual curiousity. He is her male "other" in many ways.
>Jung would call Allan her "animus". Also, Sr. Irene found herself in the
>midst
>of a father and son struggle, a battle that she could not hope to win. She
>was a pawn between Allan and his father. (You could see how little power
>Allan's own mother had in that struggle.)
> I was initially put off by the last lines of the story, which implied
>that Sr. Irene had no feelings about the way things turned out. On further
>reflection, it seems to me that she certainly did have feelings -- of
>frustration
>-- and more importantly relief -- a forbidden aspect of herself had been
>killed
>off once and for all. I think the suicide of JCO's student back in Detroit
>in the 1960s provided the emotional drive for In a Region of Ice.
> I find "Region" a very well-presented and thought-out story. I
>wouldn't
>change a word. Although one might choose to write one's own short story on
>a
>similar theme.
>Cyrano
>
>In a message dated 11/30/2005 11:48:11 AM Eastern Standard Time,
>CoonHollow@aol.com writes:
>
><< I do have some opinions about this story, which seems in a rough draft
>form
> to me, but then that is my complaint about much of Oates's fiction--that
>she
> seems in a rush to finish, and the finer points that could be developed
>don't
> get developed. We get sketches instead of development--more so in her
>stories
> than novels, to be sure, but that follows.
>
> In "The Region of Ice," we get a pretty good sense of Allan Weinstein
>through
> his explosive conversations, which he may as well be having with himself
>for
> all the contributions Sister Irene makes. What we know about Sr. Irene
>is
> told to us rather than shown, which would have been more effective.
>
> I would have liked more detail of the convent life, too, to understand
>the
> specifics of her practice. She appears to be in a teaching order, but
>Oates
> calls her prayerful times "meditations," which is the wrong word, so this
> confuses rather than expands our understanding of her practice.
>
> It would have been helpful to know why (precisely) she joined the Order.
> Did she really feel she had a true vocation, or was she just wanting the
>easy
> way out of her parents' emotional dependencies? How her practice shaped
>her
> could add much to the story, in my view.
>
> There is very little conversation between Sr. Irene and anyone. Should
>she
> not have brought her concerns to the Mother Superior, for example? or
>her
> confessor? The story would be the richer for more dialogue and more
>convent
> details. Somehow I don't think these omissions were by design; I think
>they
> reflect Oates's paucity of background.
>
> What happens instead is that Sr. Irene is a flat character for whom we
>can
> feel no sympathy, only pity.
>
> IMHO, it's a badly written wonderful story. I itch to revise it :)
>
> Anne D'Arcy, Ph.D.
> Solano College
>
>
> >>
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