Joyce Oates: The Lost Landscape

Joyce at her first desk, five years old. At home in Millersport, New York. (Fred Oates)

‘As profound, as thorough and, at times, as dark as anything Oates has ever done’

Buffalo News

‘Offers a window into a highly original mind. While it is never a given that a writer’s personal story can illuminate her work, in Oates’s case, it very much does’

Minneapolis Star Tribune

‘A window into one of our most powerful writers’ coming-of-age and the forces affecting how she sees and writes the world’

Christian Science Monitor

‘Oates perfectly captures the unique confusion of childhood, brought on by the unsatisfying explanations of adults’

Elle (US)

‘An exquisitely rendered glimpse of Oates’s childhood in rural upstate New York’

Bookpage

Fourth Estate

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London SE1 9GF

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2015

First published in the United States by Ecco in 2015

Copyright © The Ontario Review 2015

Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Front cover photograph: Joyce Carol Oates in 1948, taken by her father, Fred Oates, and courtesy of the author

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008146610

Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008146603

Version: 2016-09-08

To my brother Fred Oates

And in memory of those who have gone away

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

PRAISE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I

WE BEGIN …

MOMMY & ME

HAPPY CHICKEN: 1942–1944

DISCOVERING ALICE: 1947

DISTRICT SCHOOL #7, NIAGARA COUNTY, NEW YORK

PIPER CUB

AFTER BLACK ROCK

SUNDAY DRIVE

FRED’S SIGNS

“THEY ALL JUST WENT AWAY”

“WHERE HAS GOD GONE”

HEADLIGHTS: THE FIRST DEATH

“THE BRUSH”

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY: THE LOST FRIEND

“START YOUR OWN BUSINESS!”

THE LOST SISTER: AN ELEGY

NIGHTHAWK: RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOST TIME

II

DETROIT: LOST CITY 1962–1968

STORY INTO FILM:

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” AND SMOOTH TALK

PHOTO SHOOT:

WEST ELEVENTH STREET, NYC, MARCH 6, 1970

FOOD MYSTERIES

FACTS, VISIONS, MYSTERIES:

MY FATHER FREDERIC OATES, NOVEMBER 1988

A LETTER TO MY MOTHER CAROLINA ON HER

SEVENTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1994

“WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL

AND MY MOTHER DIDN’T WANT ME”

III

EXCERPT, TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

WITH MY FATHER FREDERIC OATES, MAY 1999

THE LONG ROMANCE

MY MOTHER’S QUILTS

AFTERWORD

PHOTO SECTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NONFICTION BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

The Lost Landscape is not meant to be a complete memoir of my life—not even my life as a writer. It is, for me at least, something more precious, as it is almost indefinable: an accounting of the ways in which my life (as a writer, but not solely as a writer) was shaped in early childhood, adolescence, and a little beyond. Its focus is upon the “landscape” of our earliest, and most essential lives, but it is also upon an actual rural landscape, in western New York State north of Buffalo, out of which not only much of the materials of my writing life have sprung but also the very wish to write.

Because it is essential to The Lost Landscape , “District School #7, Niagara County, New York” has been reprinted from The Faith of a Writer (2003), in a slightly different form. In a more substantially altered form, an updated “Visions of Detroit” ([ Woman ] Writer , 1988) has been reprinted under the title “Detroit: Lost City 1962–1968.” Other chapters have been revised significantly from memoirist pieces published in a variety of magazines, journals, and books, often in response to an editor’s invitation.

To the editors of these publications, heartfelt thanks are due:

“Mommy & Me” originally appeared, in a shorter form, in Civilization , February 1997.

“Happy Chicken” originally appeared in Conjunctions 61: A Menagerie , 2013.

“Discovering Alice ” originally appeared in AARP Magazine , 2014.

“Piper Cub” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in Rhapsody , November 2013.

“After Black Rock” originally appeared in the New Yorker , June 2013.

“Sunday Drive” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in Traditional Home , March 1995.

“They All Just Went Away” originally appeared in a substantially different form in the New Yorker , October 1995. Reprinted in The Best American Essays 1996 and in The Best American Essays of the 20th Century . This essay incorporates “Transgressions,” originally published in the New York Times Magazine , October 1995.

“Where Has God Gone” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in Southwest Review , Summer 1995, and was reprinted in Communion edited by David Rosenberg, 1995 under the title “And God Saw That It Was Good.”

“An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in Between Friends edited by Mickey Pearlman, 1994.

“Start Your Own Business!” originally appeared in substantially different forms in the New Yorker under the title “Bound,” April 2003; and in Conjunctions 63 (2014) under the title “The Childhood of the Reader,” which will be reprinted in Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses 2016.

“The Lost Sister: An Elegy” originally appeared in Narrative .

“Nighthawk: Recollections of a Lost Time” appeared originally in Yale Review , 2001, and in Conjunctions , 2014; reprinted, in a substantially different form, in Narrative , 2015.

“Story into Film: ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ and Smooth Talk ”appeared originally in the New York Times , March 23, 1986.

Detroit: Lost City 1962–1968” appeared originally, in a shorter form, in (Woman) Writer , 1988.