Joyce Carol Oates (1938 - ) is an American author.
Preview the book, Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates has taken the American critics by surprise with her concise and inspired volume On Boxing. “I can't imagine putting one's whole life on the line, all that you are up to that moment, and stepping into the ring and more than I can imagine stepping into oblivion,” she says. “Maybe it's partly because I'm a woman. But it is one of the reasons why I am fascinated by boxing.”
Her empathy with the boxer and the aficionados of his sport began in her early childhood, when her father took her to matches. “I come from a world that is somewhat under-privileged, and when I was young and taken to boxing matches I had no critical sense at all. But I saw dramatized in front of me a spectacle that these working-class men were reading as something very symbolic. It was telling them a story about themselves, about their lives. And they didn't get this story from the government or from the church. For many of these young men, the boxing ring is a place of sanctuary.”
But the controversy surrounding Oates's celebration of boxing has obliged her, somewhat unwillingly, to defend herself, and although there is no hint of feminist ideas within her book, and no moralizing on the sport, she arms herself, in conversation, with arguments that belie the tone of her writing.
“Almost no women have written about boxing. There's a whole macho tradition of talking about boxing as if only men can talk about it. That's not the reason why I chose to write about boxing, because I like boxing. But, even if I didn't like it, I would be drawn to it as a sort of quintessential masculine exhibit of masculiniity."
"Arts: Pugilistic primacy [PDF]
excerpted from The Times [London] 10 June 1987.
Joyce Carol Oates on Badlands: “Badlands is a very strong, very intelligent and very intriguing novel.”
"The topics discussed resonate today, interesting as this conversation took place in 1987. I am always curious about the writers whose work I devour, what they think about certain subjects, how it relates into the creation of their characters, what they’re trying to say about the world through fiction. Not because I have to agree with them or disagree, simply I enjoy feasting on the food of their thoughts. Yes, I would purchase for a friend.”
— Lolly K. Dandeneau, Bookstalkerblog.wordpress
"Camber Porter and Oates discuss boxing, literature, politics, and the inexorable advancement of anti-intellectualism in American culture. Oates speaks of Donald Trump predicting the political evolution thirty years in advance. This is one of those books that creates a new understaning as if workers came with materials and built on a new wing with an attached patio."
— David Mana, Science Fiction Writer (Translated from the Italian)
