137 - Joyce Carol Oates: Craft in Fiction and Poetry

Joyce Carol Oates is the Rogers S. Berlind ’52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities at Princeton University with the Program in Creative Writing. She is among the most widely-recognized and respected writers of our time, and has written in a wide variety of media and genres, from poetry and fiction in the former category to horror and Gothic in the latter. Her work has also been adapted into various other media, from plays to film. Joyce is the recipient of two O. Henry Awards and the National Book Award, among many others. In this conversation, Robinson and Joyce talk about various dimensions of fiction and poetry. Their discussion largely centers on technique and form, and touches on the work of James Joyce, Stephen Crane, Vladimir Nabokov, and Edgar Allan Poe, in addition to Joyce’s own novels and short stories.

Errata: In the section marked “Edgar Allan Poe and James Joyce”, Joyce says “Blazes Boylan” when she intends to refer to Buck Mulligan.

Joyce’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoyceCarolOates

Joyce’s Substack: https://joycecaroloates.substack.com

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:55 Introduction

05:39 On Stephen Crane and The Bitter Heart

31:22 Literature as a Distillation of Life

42:53 Repetition and other Techniques

53:07 Edgar Allan Poe and James Joyce

01:08:14 Stephen Crane’s Many Red Devils

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.