High Lonesome: Stories 1966-2006

By Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

An unprecedented collection of the best of Joyce Carol Oates's short stories combined with eleven new stories

No other writer can match the impressive oeuvre of Joyce Carol Oates, and High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006 gathers stories from Oates's seminal collections, including The Wheel of Love (1970), Marriages and Infidelities (1972), and Heat (1991), arranged by decade. All demonstrate what the Chicago Tribune has praised: "the fierce originality of Oates's voice and vision, but also how she has imbued the American short story with an edgy vitality and raw social surfaces."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060501197
• ISBN13: 9780060501198
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Ecco
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 2.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.5" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Intriguing

I'm only about halfway through this book right now but I highly recommend it for anyone who likes Joyce Carol Oates or just a good short story. I've been a reader of hers for a few years now and it's nice to see how her writing has changed through each decade. I enjoy the stretches she takes in her stories and the risks she takes...I always seem to find a surprise at the end of everything she writes. This book definitely takes a while to get through...not a quick weekend read but enjoyable nonetheless.

Read this as your introduction

If you've never read Oates- read this for your introduction. It is beautiful and the stories seem prefectly picked. I loved how you can see her progression as an author and also the different paths she's followed in her fiction. Worth it's wait in gold- an then some.

A dark collection that is truly gripping!

Joyce Carol Oates is a gifted writer, and if you're a fan you won't want to miss adding this to your collection. The stories are pretty creepy, but nevertheless appeals to me for it really reveals the darker side of human nature. A gripping read!

The Best Oates Anthology Since 1994's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

Coming in at almost 700 pages and featuring eleven new stories as well as two-dozen classic short stories from the 1960's thru the end of the twentieth-century, plus commentary from Oates herself, this anthology represents a sweeping cross-section of this ingenious writer's best short fiction. Her tremendous talent as a novelist aside, I've always felt Oates was at her best when dealing with a short subject, and for anyone unacquainted with her writings it would be hard to find a better starting point for an introduction to one of America's greatest creative minds. As for Joyce Carol Oates' admirers, this is simply a must-possess volume. While there is a lot of fine writing inside this collection, probably my favorite five stories in High Lonesome would be (in no special order): Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Corrections, and Began My Life Over Again Heat Four Summers Concerning The Case of Bobby T. Considering just how prolific Oates has been since the early 1960's and stopping for a moment to ponder the immensity of her output and all that is out there to be read, collections like this one are very nice, and I hope we soon see further volumes that gather in more of her incredible writings.

A treasure trove for fans, and a gift for new readers

HIGH LONESOME, the latest collection of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates, is also the most extensive. Work is amassed from over four decades of her career and includes 11 new stories, all of which exhibit her razor-sharp ability of cutting straight to the heart of the middle class. Her familiar themes of innocence lost, violence unchecked (usually against women), and the seamy underbelly of suburbia abound throughout. After four decades of writing, Oates is far from past her prime, her new stories resonant with her recurring motifs. In "Spider Boy" a teenage son is used for bait by his powerful politician father as he trolls for young men. Normally her work demonstrates violence against women, but in this story the politician is exploiting (and quite possibly murdering) his young male prey. The young son must decide how much to divulge to the police, resulting in a powerful --- albeit horrific --- morality play that could have been ripped from today's headlines. In "The Fish Factory" we see the disintegration of a couple's marriage after tragedy strikes. Narrated by the heartbroken wife, the story begins after the body of her teenage daughter has been discovered behind a dilapidated factory: "Seeing my daughter discarded like trash behind the fish factory where on even the breeziest days a faint stink of fish prevails." "The Gathering Squall" depicts the violent aftermath of a high school girl being violated and humiliated by a group of high school boys, similar territory to Oates's bestselling WE WERE THE MULVANEYS. The title story opens with the fateful words, "The only people I still love are the ones I've hurt." Daryl McCracken looks back at his life spent on his step-grandfather's farm, a man they called "Pop," who played the banjo "making this high old lonesome sound like a ghost tramping the hills." When his disoriented grandfather is arrested for soliciting a prostitute, Daryl is stunned and saddened that his cousin Drake, a Sheriff's Deputy, did not intervene to help the old man, and he decides to seek his own form of retribution. "B*D* 11 1 87" is an intriguingly eerie entry about organ donors who are bred for harvesting, although they aren't aware of this fact until it's too late. The narrator is a high school senior who wonders why his teachers and counselors aren't recommending him for college. In addition to highlighting the evil inherent in society that exists today, Oates shines a light on the evils yet to come. Even after many years, her earlier works stand the test of time. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" arguably one of her most well-known short pieces (and the basis for the film, Smooth Talk), tells the story of a restless teen named Connie who meets her match in the charismatically menacing drifter Arnold Friend. Was it rape or seduction --- or perhaps a little bit of both? In "The Swimmers," a young girl recalls the mysterious woman who dated her uncle --- a woman who kept many secrets. In true Oates fashi