JCO: Today In Literature: A Garden of Earthly Delights

 
From Today in Literature daily newsleter, Sept. 7:
 
"Joyce Carol Oates's A Garden of Earthly Delights was published on this day in 1967. It was her second novel and her first hit, in a prolific, award-winning career which has provoked some to lobby for a Nobel nomination. Others, such as the writer of a recent article in Psychology Today — have placed Oates on their list of hypergraphics, the "midnight disease" of compulsive writers. The current tally of her books stands at 118, with three more due out shortly."
 
I don't know what "hypergraphics" means, but the phrase "compulsive writers" certainly sounds negative. However, I think they were just trying to be cleaver in the blurb at the bottom of the newsletter. There is another more positive piece about Oates on the site (http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/joyce.carol.oates.asp).
 
When I read a novel like The Falls, or The Gravediggers Daughter, as I currently am reading, I couldn't care less about how many other books she has written because I am engrossed in the current work. I would expect that most readers are interested in the individual novels, not how many she has written, as they take you inside people in ways that can be very revealing for readers. The problem her "prolific" career has for me is one of not being able to keep up with her. I can't read as fast as she writes.  I am always a little behind this group in reading her new novels.  However, I don't mind having that problem, as there is always something wonderful to read on my bookshelves.
 
I scan the used bookstores for older novels that are not readily available. Last month I found a First Edition of American Appetites with J.C. Oates signature! What a find. I have about 10 of her older novels that haven't read yet because I am so busy with her current work. 
 
Perhaps when reviewers mention how many novels she has written, they are not criticizing her so much as revealing how inferior they feel in not being able to read all she's written!
 
Actually, since I started this email, I read the article in Psycology Today, and it is not a negative thing, just a condition of the brain being in overdrive. Alice  Flaherty, who published a book on the subject in 2004 called it The Midnight Disease. "Hypergraphia is abnormal, but it's not necessarily bad," she says. "For us it is mostly pleasurable. You only suffer when you think you're writing badly."
 
Well, shedoesn't write badly, so I don't think JCO is suffering! :)
 
Jane