JCO: RE: RE: Female of the Species

"I haven't
read these particular stories, but it sounds like JCO is raising serious
issues here, and doing it in the form of telling good stories. Why on earth
would there be anything wrong with that, and why should any reader feel
uncomfortable, as this reviewer seems to have done, in enjoying the book?"

Maybe the "uncomfortable" feeling on the part of this reviewer comes from
the issues themselves as well as the fact that JCO has the nerve to raise
them and do it in a genre form of all things. How dare she! <g>

I am often left with an altered view of human nature at the close of some of
JCO's more poignant and disturbing stories. This is one of the reasons I
read her work. Some people, evidently, don't want their little worlds rocked
by the fiction they read. Go figure.

Kim

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JCO: RE: Female of the Species

Hi Randy and Everyone:

>
> NY Times review of The Female of the Species:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/books/review/22frey.html
>
> "Even as you're wishing you could, you can't put this book down."
>
> Randy

The tone of this review struck me as very condescending. Surely JCO has
earned the credibility for someone who seems to think that JCO is slumming
to consider seriously why she would do so. Though, in fact, JCO has been
putting her spin on various forms of popular genre fiction for decades (I
include tabloid stories as "popular genre fiction"), as she examines what
these genres do and don't tell us about society and individuals. I haven't
read these particular stories, but it sounds like JCO is raising serious
issues here, and doing it in the form of telling good stories. Why on earth
would there be anything wrong with that, and why should any reader feel
uncomfortable, as this reviewer seems to have done, in enjoying the book?

Steve

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

Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Home Page:
http://jco.usfca.edu/