Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

Wife suggested this as another must-read on the heels of the last must-read by this up and coming author named Flannery O’Connor. I noted then that O’Connor showed “good, intriguing promise as a writer.” This Oates gal is no different. I’d say she demonstrates exceedingly high competence and promise with words and images and flow. Spoilers to follow. This is as powerfully horrifying a fucking story as the last one. I might ask my wife to suggest some some buoyant material the next time. Same feeling where I sat up straight, read incredulously, got swept up into this delirium where my head screamed “Noooooo!”, and read it at least twice to figure out the horror of what had happened first and what it was all about next. There is a lot of interpretation and commentary and even a movie (starring Laura Dern, fittingly called Smooth Talk). I was very surprised to see a dedication to Bob Dylan. And Oates herself thought that “Death and the Maiden” was “rather too explicit”: Oates said that…