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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 fashion, the story is imbued with her trademark longing and dread.
The most difficult part of compiling collections such as these is which stories to include and which to leave out, especially when trying to cull from such an extensive career. Oates addresses this issue in her afterword, as she explains how she tried to stick mostly to stories that were featured in collections that were no longer in print.
HIGH LONESOME is a treasure trove for Joyce Carol Oates fans and a gift for first-time readers. Publishers Weekly has said that "much is made of her prodigious output…(but) it's the consistent quality of the work that lifts Oates into the literary pantheon."
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
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