Reading (story of) O

Journal of Literary Theory, 2010

Resources for American Literary Study, 1989

The Yale Journal of Criticism, 2004

Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 2017

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2020

Joyce Carol Oates weaves the mysteries of life into every level of her texts, be it thematic, structural, lexical, typographical, etc. This article analyses three of Oates's fictional works-The Falls, Beasts and The Tattooed Girl-in order to explore certain textual strategies used by this self-named "formalist" writer to communicate the unconscious realm of her characters. Oates's use of italics, repetition, dashes and ellipses are discussed in depth to show how Oates uses them to evoke the psychological reality of her characters and oppose the notion of appearance to that of psychological experience. These typographical, organizational and punctuation tools allow Oates to underline the communication difficulties, emotions and obsessions they gradually reveal and contribute to evoking Oates's mysterious, frightening fictional realm of characters constantly, yet ineffectually, grasping at meaning. Dans ses textes, Joyce Carol Oates tisse les mystères de la vie à tous les niveaux thématiques, structurels, lexicaux, typographiques, etc. Cet article analyse trois de ses oeuvres (The Falls, Beasts et The Tattooed Girl) afin d'explorer certaines stratégies textuelles utilisées par cette écrivaine, "formaliste" autoproclamée, pour dépeindre le domaine inconscient de ses personnages. L'utilisation par Oates des italiques, de la répétition, des tirets et des ellipses, est étudiée en profondeur pour montrer comment Oates les met en oeuvre pour évoquer la réalité psychologique de ses personnages et opposer la notion d'apparence à celle d'expérience psychologique. Ces outils typographiques, d'organisation et de ponctuation permettent à l'écrivaine d'insister sur les difficultés de communication, les émotions et les obsessions qu'ils révèlent progressivement, et contribuent à évoquer le mystérieux et effrayant royaume fictif de personnages qui tentent constamment, mais sans véritable succès, de saisir le sens. 1 2 3 My translation of: "On n'est pas écrivain pour avoir choisi de dire certaines choses mais pour avoir choisi de les dire d'une certaine façon. Et le style, bien sûr, fait la valeur de la prose." The following abbreviations will be used for in-text citations of these three works: TF for The Falls, B for Beasts and TTG for The Tattooed Girl. Samuel Chase Coale has remarked about Missing Mom (2005), painting out that "the reader is left with a devastating 'why,' the word repeated one-hundred-and-twenty-two times" (438).

Narrative, 2009

The Modern Language Review, 1992

Dandelion: Postgraduate Arts Journal and Research Network, 2016

Writing to his parents on Christmas Eve 1944, whilst stationed on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, 1 over eight-and-a-half-thousand miles from his home in Grafton, Massachusetts, the American poet Frank O'Hara is clear, if not a little reluctant to admit it: 'One can't stay at home all his life, I guess.' 2 It is one in dozens of reflective missives sent to his parents and younger siblings, Philip and Maureen, as the fledgling poet ruminates on how his Navy service (June 1944-July 1946) has left him 'a different person from the one that left' the sheltered, provincial home on 16 North Street. 3 He imagines differences and discrepancies: how will home be or seem different to him? Has he or has it changed? 'Can one really take inventory of the "differences" that determine one's own experience of return,' asks Susan Winnett, 'or does one's situation within this matrix of differences preclude a clear perspective on them?' 4 The anticipated homecoming naturally forces the prodigal son to ask grueling questions as to what 'home' means to him, and it is an opportunity to look in the mirror, too. This is particularly apropos for a writer as peripatetic and unpredictable as O'Hara, who would unequivocally announce to Maureen, at the age of twenty-five: 'I'm leaving, and I'm not coming back.' 5 This article seeks to provide an account of those early poems which address, directly or obliquely, his naval period in what I wish to categorise as his 'seascape' works, as well as gesturing to later compositions which think back to the memory of 'home' and express it with the kind of ambivalence one might expect from a self-proclaimed exile who vowed never to return (and, it must be remembered, Matthew Holman is a writer and AHRCfunded PhD candidate University College London, where his thesis examines poet Frank O'Hara's relationship to the global, transnational, and cosmopolitan. He is a contributor to the Tate 'Refiguring American Art' research strand, and before UCL he was an F. R.

Dix-Neuf, 2004