From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
 Date:  Sun, 16 Nov 1997 07:57:18 -0500 (EST)
To: jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  hello? hello?

Hello, everyone.  I've been out of town 5 days.  To my surprise, no one's
been talking here all that time.  Is there a malfunction?  Cyrano



From: Doozer411@aol.com
Date:  Sun, 16 Nov 1997 13:17:18 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: hello? hello?

I've been wondering the same thing.  Where is everyone?



From: Cyranomish@aol.com
 Date:  Sun, 16 Nov 1997 17:40:59 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: hello? hello?

Maybe we should start a totally groundless rumor -- kick up some
controversey. Cyrano



Date:  Sun, 16 Nov 1997 18:22:51 -0500 (EST)
From:   Jennifer Nash jnash@fas.harvard.edu
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: hello? hello?

well, i am still here - things have gotten a little chaotic so i haven't
had much time to do a lot of non-academic reading.
out of curiosity, are there any borges fans on the list?

- jen

"...what i won't give to have the things that mean 
the most not to mean the things i miss..."
- indigo girls



To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  hello? hello?
 From: composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
 Date:  Sun, 16 Nov 1997 20:15:04 EST

well, we could always propagate the whole Erica Jong liaisons...



From:  Doozer411@aol.com
Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 09:43:08 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  starting conversation...

Ok- I will start something.  One of my favorite JCO novels is Solstice, and
it's never brought up in discussion.  I'm curious to know what you all think
of this novel.  Also, I heard JCO speak at Barnes and Nobles in NYC last
September, and she mentioned that Solstice was being made into a movie.  I
have yet to hear anything else about it, though.  Has anyone else heard/know
anything?
                                                 -Lindsay



From:  Amy_Hendrick@baylor.edu
Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 09:14:07 +0000
 Subject:  Re: starting conversation...
 To:  jco@usfca.edu

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 09:43:08 -0500 (EST) jco@usfca.edu wrote:

>Ok- I will start something.  One of my favorite JCO novels is Solstice, and
>it's never brought up in discussion.  I'm curious to know what you all think
>of this novel.  Also, I heard JCO speak at Barnes and Nobles in NYC last
>September, and she mentioned that Solstice was being made into a movie.  I
>have yet to hear anything else about it, though.  Has anyone else heard/know
>anything?
>                                                 -Lindsay
>

I speed-read the novel recently (for a paper, not my preferred method), so I may 
have missed something--but I found it strange that I had read many descriptions 
of the novel that described the relationship between the two women as lesbian 
when in fact, there seemed to be no evidence of this in the text. (How to 
explain this?  Crass sensationalism?  Exaggeration by queer theorists?  My own 
misreading?) I did feel there were certain overtones, that perhaps the two women 
might have flirted with the idea or possibility, but I unfortunately can't 
recall any specifics.
A film of Solstice has potential, I would think--probably it's not a big budget 
project, but I picture Meryl Streep as the teacher and Judy Davis as Shiela 
Trask (great name, I've always thought--recognizable, distinctive, but not 
unbelievably so).

Christine C. 



From: diamond@math.wvu.edu (Harvey Diamond)
Subject:  Re: hello? hello?
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 09:35:40 -0500 (EST)

I think we did that already - the apparently mythical JCO son (although
it prompted lots of interesting stuff).
> 
> Maybe we should start a totally groundless rumor -- kick up some
> controversey. Cyrano
> 



From: RJohn713@aol.com
 Date:   Mon, 17 Nov 1997 10:01:31 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

The SOLSTICE project was being done by Jeanne Moreau, who visited Princeton
several times to work with JCO on script revisions.  At one point, Susan
Sarandon had agreed to play one of the leads.  But like most of JCO's film
projects, this one has since fallen into limbo due to lack of financing.

Greg



Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 10:50:30 -0500
 From:   "Ralf A. Engeldinger" oatesian@feynman.harvard.edu
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

> A film of Solstice has potential, I would think--probably it's not a big budget
> project, but I picture Meryl Streep as the teacher 
> 
> Christine C.


Meryl Streep as an Oates character? You must be kidding!

Ralf A. Engeldinger



From:  Doozer411@aol.com
 Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:05:15 -0500 (EST)
 To: jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: starting conversation...

I actually like the original Susan Saradon idea for Shiela.  Hmmm... Who
would play Monica?  I'll have to think about that one.



Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:05:17 -0500
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 From:   "CinemaSource, Inc." kpetras@cinema-source.com
 Subject:  borges

Jen- I am a Borges fan....what have you read recently?



From: cambre@juno.com
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 08:33:22 -0800
 Subject:   Re: starting conversation...

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 10:50:30 -0500 "Ralf A. Engeldinger" 
>>
>Meryl Streep as an Oates character? You must be kidding!
>
>Ralf A. Engeldinger
>
Actually, I think that's rather a good fit; not just any Oates character,
of course, but Streep IS able to play a wide range of roles. It's just
that she's gotten herself pigeonholed as a dialect - obsessed actress
that audiences (and critics) now tend to look only for her technique when
they're watching her. 

Speaking of actresses, after I saw Juliette Lewis in Natural Born
Killers, I think I finally filled out my mental picture of Thalia, in
"What I Lived For".



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
 Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:52:38 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: Solstice

Hello, Christine, Jen, all.  I reviewed Solstice for a Boston newspaper when
it first appeared -- god how time flies!  I considered the possibility of its
having a lesbian theme, but then decided Sheila & Monica's relationship was
basically a power struggle: the kind of jockeying that most people do when
they first become acquainted, but since this acquaintance is taking place in
a JCO novel,  the terms will be set for EXTREME.Sheila is the dominent
personality from the moment she first appears -- riding up to Monica's
cottage on a gallant steed like some fairy tale hero.  Solstice made me think
about the ways in which extreme, domineering people like Sheila can change
the lives of people who have tried to keep their lives safe and comfortable.
The change is usually a mixture of good and bad.  Think of the hero in Double
Delight -- his suburban cozy life is ruined at the end and he may even be
about to be murdered by his new acquaintances, but he is nevertheless happy
in a way he's never before experienced.  I recall that Monica suffers rape on
one of Sheila's adventures, but I can't remember whether she feels wrecked at
the end of the novel or on the brink of some thrilling new life.  I'll go
check whilst y'all kick it around. Cyrano



From: diamond@math.wvu.edu (Harvey Diamond)
Subject:   Re: hello? hello?
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:58:38 -0500 (EST)

Borges is a favorite writer and Labyrinths a favorite collection of his.
He wrote a number short pieces concerning old mathematical paradoxes and
philosophy (Avatars of the Tortoise, A new Refutation of Time, Death and
the Compass, the Library of Babel) which are very enjoyable and wittily
erudite - but maybe it helps to be a mathematics teacher to get a kick out
of this writing. The Zahir is one his most enjoyable stories for me, starting
out with a long discursion on the ever-changing dictates of fashion and
ending with a vision of the entire world fixated on a magical coin.
He has, above all, that distinctive style: Intellectually curious and
ruminative, a quiet modesty with a self-deprecating wit, a consummate 
gentleman without pretense. I happened recently to come across a slide 
I used to use as a prologue to research talks, a bit from one of his short
stories:

"Trapani said to me, 'Someone showed me your Carriego book where you're
talking about hoodlums all the time. Tell me Borges, what in the world can
you know about hoodlums?' He stared at me with a kind of wonder. 
'I've done research', I answered."


Of course there are many experts, and much expert opinion, on Borges. 

Harvey Diamond



Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:08:12 -0500 (EST)
 From:  Jennifer Nash jnash@fas.harvard.edu
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: borges

I've read El Aleph and Ficciones and I *adore* him - I thin he is pure
genius.

- jen

"...what i won't give to have the things that mean 
the most not to mean the things i miss..."
- indigo girls



Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:09:56 -0500 (EST)
From:  Jennifer Nash jnash@fas.harvard.edu
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: hello? hello?

My favorite Borges story is definitely "El Aleph" because it is a really
awesome mix of his usual cerebralness and something a little more personal
where he gives us a look into his private life - his idea of love
(Beatriz) and includes us because of the infiniteness of El Aleph.

- jen

"...what i won't give to have the things that mean 
the most not to mean the things i miss..."
- indigo girls



From:   Ehaggar@aol.com
Date:  Mon, 17 Nov 1997 18:35:58 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

To Lindsay and everybody--

Solstice is my favorite JCO novel---I have it in paperback and first edition
hardback---and Lindsay, two years ago when I met her she said that Solstice
was being made into a movie, that she was writing the screenplay and that
Jeanne Moreau was going to direct it.....it sounds great, but that's the last
I've heard of it......JCO did say it hadn't been cast yet.....

Ellen Haggar



Date:  Tue, 18 Nov 1997 15:12:41
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
From:  Marie Keller belljar@ptdprolog.net
Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

Hi~
My name is Marie, and I'm new to the list.  
I haven't heard anything about SOLSTICE being made into a movie, though I
did see 
or read something about FOXFIRE being made into a movie.  

Marie
*****************belljar@ptdprolog.net************
"Be master of your will
and the slave of your conscience."
~Hasidic saying



To:   jco@usfca.edu
Date:  Tue, 18 Nov 1997 22:25:49 -0800
 From:   olivetr987@juno.com (Anthony P Shoemaker)

i would like anyone who can to send me any information of Joyce Carol
Oates.  web sites r welcome.  i am doing a research paper on her and
would enjoy plenty of sources for a thorough report.  thanx.



From: Doozer411@aol.com
 Date:   Thu, 20 Nov 1997 11:33:36 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

Marie-
  Yes, we've discussed the Foxfire movie before, but since you weren't
around, I'll warn you.  It is possibly the worst film I have ever seen.  It
completely butchered the novel and was a disgrace to JCO's beautiful
creation.  Foxfire is one of my favorite JCO novels, and I wanted to cry as I
sat through this movie, it was so disgustingly awful.  Don't even bother
seeing it out of curiosity; it will only upset you.    -Lindsay



Date:  Thu, 20 Nov 1997 13:27:27 -0500 (EST)
 From: Heather L Ormiston 
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

        I love Foxfire too, and haven't even seen the movie because I
heard that it was so bad. I think that one of the reasons it is so bad it
because they updated it to the nineties. The book is more powerful in the
fifties because at that time no one was talking about sexual abuse and
harrasment. The thought of young women stading up for themselves then was
unheard of, and that it what becomes one of the most powerful elements of
the book for me. In our days of girl gangs and Anita Hill it just doesn't
seem as powerful. 
Heather



From:  "J D" jdx1138@hotmail.com
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  A site you might like
 Date:   Thu, 20 Nov 1997 15:13:59 PST

I found this place while surfing and even though it's a conservative 
site (ugh, ick, blech) it has a lot of literary message boards, though 
too many students asking for help post.
http://killdevilhill.com/literarychattalkcafe.html
Also, check out the commons and quad discussions.  They hardly get any 
action, so I think it would probably be free reign on the literature 
board.
http://mobydicks.com/commons/common.html
Just a little note for those interested,
JD



Date:  Thu, 20 Nov 1997 23:36:51 -0800
From:  Randy Souther Randy Souther
  To:  jdx1138@hotmail.com, jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: A site you might like

JD,

I don't know if your message was intended as a joke, or if you are
just blindly posting it to every literature group you can find,
but in either case, it is wholly inappropriate for this particular
discussion list, as you should well know.

--------------------------------------

For those in the group who don't know what I'm talking about, the
web sites listed are affiliated with The Jolly Roger, a group who
claim to be leading a "conservative literary revolution" and who
seem to have originated, in part, through their violent and vocal
antipathy toward JCO.

They're entitled to express their opinions, of course. Just not in
my group.

Randy Souther
 
 


To: jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: A site you might like
From:  composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
Date:  Fri, 21 Nov 1997 18:05:31 EST

Amen, Randy.
The group is to modern literature what Muslim extremists are to Middle
Eastern countries.

DAVID

Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 20:17:11 -0500 (EST)
From:  Matthew A Cheney 
 To:  "'jco@usfca.edu'"
Subject:   Movies
 
There's also, I believe, a short film of "In the Region of Ice", which
I've heard is quite good -- if you can find a copy.

Matt Cheney



Date:  Fri, 21 Nov 1997 21:46:14 -0500
 From:   "Thomas A. Hulslander" t-hulslander@top.monad.net
To:   jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: Movies

Matthew A Cheney wrote:
> 
> There's also, I believe, a short film of "In the Region of Ice", which
> I've heard is quite good -- if you can find a copy.
> 
> Matt Cheney
I've seen the film version of "In the Region of Ice" on my local public
televison stations...
Maybe if viewers called/wrote, and asked for it, local stations may be
able to show it.
Krista



Date:  Fri, 21 Nov 1997 19:26:46
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 From:  Marie Keller 
Subject:   Re: starting conversation...

Thanks for your replies.  It seems to me, the consenus here so far is that
Foxfire the movie was terrible.  I will heed everyone's advice and not
waste my time seeing it.  I hate to waste time.  

Forgive me, if this topic has already come up.  Have there been other JCO
novels that have been made into movies?I think it would be quite difficult
to make a movie based on her work, because of its complexity--all the
layers.  

Marie
*****************belljar@ptdprolog.net************
"Be master of your will
and the slave of your conscience."
~Hasidic saying



From: Shmoopak@aol.com
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:01:40 -0500 (EST)
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

I'm new in this group, and I've mostly been listening, but I just reread
Solstice and I would love to discuss it.  I also just saw a play last night
of JCO's Heat.  Love to discuss that too if anyone's interested.



From:  Shmoopak@aol.com
 Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:02:32 -0500 (EST)
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

Hmm.

I can't imagine Susan Sarandon in either of the two leading roles.



From:  Shmoopak@aol.com
Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:04:47 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

don't you think Meryl Streep would be too old?  i just seemed to sense the
teacher as more innocent, and younger than streep?



From:  Shmoopak@aol.com
 Date: Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:08:52 -0500 (EST)
To:   jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

For some reason, I always pictured Thalia as almost bald, I don't know why.
 Maybe it's because I think of her as really sickly.  I know she's supposed
to be anorexic, but I always thought she would look like a cancer patient.  I
always pictured Sinnaed O'Connor, or maybe even a bald Winona Rider.
 Although now that you mention it, Juliette Lewis would seem to be a good
call too.



 From: Shmoopak@aol.com
Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:12:15 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: starting conversation...

I saw one version of foxfire that's now on video - and it's been on again on
cable.  It was made in a very nineties kind of way, but it still seemed to
work.  Some parts seemed a little overblown and preachy though, but the
cinematography (if you're into that kind of thing) was really beautiful in
some parts.  Has there been talk of yet another film version of Foxfire?



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
 Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 16:12:20 -0500 (EST)
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  JCO movies

Hi, all.  W. Rider as she appears on this week's People Mag. would make a
great Thalia -- demure and lethal, only no smiling please, Ms. Rider.  I
haven't yet located "Region of Ice."  Another JCO story from WAY back --
"Norman & the Killers" -- is also a short movie.  Anybody seen it?  What's it
like?  
     Sometimes an author's short stories make better films than do the
novels.  One of my favorite adaptations is John Cheever's great story, "The
Swimmer."  A couple named the Perrys filmed it back in the late 1960s with
Burt Lancaster looking good in swimming trunks, swimming his way across
Weschester County from one pool to the next as he makes his way down the
socioeconomic scale.  I've shown it to classes with very gratifying results.
It elicits a lot of discussion, despite is somewhat dated look.  Check it
out.  Your videostore may have a copy; every public library SHOULD.  (J.
Cheever fans will note with delight to seem him make a brief, nonspeaking
appearance -- beaming and dressed in a white suit -- in the background of a
big poolparty scene.  Cyrano



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 16:18:52 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: starting conversation...

Wow, "Heat's" being performed as a play!  Where?  Is it going to tour?  To
Boston, I hope.  It's one of my favorite JCO stories.  What was it like?  Did
you find it exciting?
Cyrano



From:  Amy_Hendrick@baylor.edu
  Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 16:10:16 -0600
Subject:   Re: starting conversation...
 To:  jco@usfca.edu

On Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:04:47 -0500 (EST) Shmoopak@aol.com wrote:

>don't you think Meryl Streep would be too old?  i just seemed to sense the
>teacher as more innocent, and younger than streep?

I don't remember what the character's age was supposed to be--if it was ever
mentioned at all. But oddly enough, I don't picture the character as being a
young innocent--just a little sheltered, not very experienced, and perhaps a
little unimaginative. She had, after all, been through a divorce, and I seem
to recall that she was somewhat distressed that her "golden girl" image was on
the wane. 

BTW, I completely agree with whoever said that they can't picture Susan
Sarandon in either part. She's too stable, too much the "earth mother" (albeit
a glamorous one) to play Shiela--and I don't think she could ever look like a
natural blonde for the teacher role.

Christine C.



To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  The Swimmer
From:   composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 17:37:43 EST

The Swimmer is Cheever's most anthologized work (followed by The World of
Apples and The Enormous Radio); and I agree about the movie -- it was
excellent.  I missed Cheever's cameo, though -- shame.  Anyway, The
Swimmer also marked the motion picture debut of compoer Marvin Hamlisch's
film music.  Hamlisch tells how he sat in his little New York apartment
with reels of the film and a piano, and wrote his first score -- to The
Swimmer.

David



From:   Cyranomish@aol.com
 Date:  Sat, 22 Nov 1997 23:02:51 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: The Swimmer

Hi, David.  Don't forget Cheever's great story "The Five-Forty-Eight," a tale
that would do any feminist writer proud, also filmed as a pbs movie and
available at some libraries.  I thought of that story at the end of  WE WERE
THE MULVANEYS, when Marianne's brother tracks down her rapist, makes him
grovel in the mud (almost drown in quicksand -- trust JCO to push matters to
their extreme possibility), and -- like the Cheever heroine-- find "some
saneness in me that I can find and use." (great line) Cyrano



From:  JonWendell@webtv.net (John Eggers)
 Date:   Sun, 23 Nov 1997 02:05:18 -0600
To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   My Heart Laid Bare

Is everyone else pleased that the next novel
published will probably be MHLB?  I really have
been waiting for the gothic series to continue.
Also, does anyone know why the only format 
"them" is available in is that cheesy mass market paperback (with the
original cover art from the sixties)?  Am reading the new Drabble
"The Witch  of Exmoor" and really enjoy it.  This
novel was reviewed  by the Chicago Tribune together with Man Crazy.
Joanne Creighton (sp?) was the reviewer.  Both novels received
a thumbs up.  Like the thread of short story into
film.  I will check out my library for The Swimmer.    All for now



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
   Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 08:42:05 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@lovelace.usfca.edu
  Subject: them's cover

Hi, John.  When I taught them last summer, I used a Quality Paperback Book
Club edition that I'd lucked out finding in a remote Arizona
trash-and-trinkets-second-hand-store (along with a mint hardcover ed. of
Cheever's collected stories.)  The Quality Paperback has a smokey b&w photo
on its cover of a sinister Detroit street during the 1967 riot, and it
contains both JCO's forward and her mid-1980s afterward.  In the afterward,
she appears to be  backing off her earlier statement in the foreward that
Maureen & Jules are/were real people.  The afterward 
says they were actually composites and that readers who have fallen in love
with Jules should stop trying to look him up. I always thought the Wendell
kids (including Betty) were all aspects of the author -- in that sense, they
are/were real.  Anyways, the students in my class had either a hardcover
library edition of them or the aforementioned cheesy 1960s cover.  I like
that old cover, though, it evokes for me my discovery of JCO when that kind
of graphic was what you saw in bookstores -- back  in 1971 when the book
upset me so much that I could only read a few pages before I angrily flung
the novel into a corner.  Then, of course, I'd retrieve it from wherever it
had landed, a few days later, and press on.  That's what great literature
does -- shocks & intrigues us and makes us angry and confused and thoroughly
enthralled.  Cyrano



From:  Doozer411@aol.com
Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 13:38:04 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:    Re: starting conversation...

actually, we do know their ages.  Monica is in her late twenties- possibly
twenty-seven, and Sheila is in her forties.  I don't know, fellow Oates fans,
you really couldn't see Susan Sarandon galantly riding up to the house on a
beautiful horse?  I really think it might work. -Lindsay 



To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: them's cover
From:  composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
 Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 13:38:29 EST

i have a book-of-the-month club hardcover copy of them, which i picked up
for $5 at a local barnes&noble, and the cover is much the same of
cyrano's description of the sinister detroit street.  i, too, am fond of
the 60's cover, though.  i think that them is jco's only mass market
paperback (all the rest are trade, so too have john updike and paul
theroux moved to trade from mass market).

david



Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 15:39:57 -0500
 From:   "Ralf A. Engeldinger" oatesian@feynman.harvard.edu
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Solstice

Doozer411@aol.com wrote:
> 
> I don't know, fellow Oates fans,
> you really couldn't see Susan Sarandon galantly riding up to the house on a
> beautiful horse?  I really think it might work. -Lindsay

I think Susan Sarandon simply is too warm a person to play an
authentic Sheila Trask. What about Theresa Russell? Or Sigourney
Weaver? It would have to be an actress who can credibly cover both
the intellectual as well as the cold, manipulative side of her.

I'm trying hard to think of someone for the Monica Jensen character
but I just can't think of anyone. Someone who inspires pity, but
is not really likeable, someone who makes me feel that she basically
gets what she deserves.

By the way, I love that phrase of Sheila's, "as shallow as a dime store 
teaspoon." I found myself quite often agreeing with her intellectual
analysis, even though I couldn't stand her as a person. This is the
only novel I've ever read where I disliked all of the leading characters
but still was completely absorbed by the novel. (It had been
my second novel of JCO's only, thus it played an important role in 
getting me hooked on her.)

Ralf A. Engeldinger



To: jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  belljar
 From:  composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
 Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 16:34:05 EST

i didn't know HEAT was a play!  boy, i find that very interesting.  very,
very interesting.

I like the e-mail address, "belljar"  that is somewhat creative, very
"plath-ian."  speaking of sylvia plath, how is ted hughes doing?  it
seems has been producing a steady body of work and is more respected as a
poet now as ever.

a recommendation for a cold, winter night between thanksgiving and
christmas -- DELIVERANCE! by James Dickey is an excellent book, as is his
more recent, TO THE WHITE SEA. 

REQUEST:  I am trying to get a copy of James Dickey's 1987-88 book
"Alnilham."  Can anyone help!?  It doesn't seem to be in print anywhere.

Thanks.

David



From: Cyranomish@aol.com
Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 18:00:46 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: them's cover


Speaking of cheesy covers -- I used to see copies of WITH SHUDDERING FALL
that had one of those gothic soap opera-type covers: big man, little woman;
and a WONDERLAND in which a man -- supposedly Jessie, the hero, looms
gigantically, glaring into the middle distance, while a women about half his
heighth cowers at his side
-- for protection, I guess.  My battered old 1973 paperback of her short
story collection MARRIAGES AND INFIDELITIES has a romance-novelette looking
cover: wholesome boy and girl cuddling in the foreground; in the background
the requisite gothic, many-turreted house connoting stability and prosperity,
not dark secrets and torment.  One nice thing about those covers -- all kinds
of readers grabbed them up, expecting a certain product.  Imagine their
surprise



Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 16:00:10
 To: jco@usfca.edu
From:  Marie Keller belljar@ptdprolog.net
 Subject:  HEAT

Tell us more about the play, HEAT.  It is such a powerful, moving story.
Did it adapt well to the stage?  Or was a lot of meaning lost?
Marie
*****************belljar@ptdprolog.net************
"Be master of your will
and the slave of your conscience."
~Hasidic saying



Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 16:09:11
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 From:   Marie Keller belljar@ptdprolog.net
 Subject:  Re: them's cover


Yes, I also have the "Cheesy" paperback.  I bought it as part of a set, and
it was my initiation to JCO.  Though I prefer hardback copies for my
personal library, I am happy to acquire any of JCO's work, hard copy or
paperback.  Around here, her work is scarce.  I was fortunate enough to
find some original hardbacks at a library fundraiser recently.  
I wonder what possessed her to retract her statement about Maureen and
Jules being "real."  Perhaps too many people were pestering her for
updates/sequels, or they were trying to look up the actual characters
themselves.  I've always thought that when a writer creates a story, bits
of the author appear in every character.  When I read a work of fiction, I
don't care whether it's based on actual events or people.  It's fiction,
after all.  All I care about is whether the author makes the story "real"
for me.

Has anyone read the collection, NIGHT-SIDE?  It was published in the
1970's.  I don't know whether it was just my frame of mind that night,
being tired, whatever, but I just couldn't get into it.  I ended up trading
the book for something else.  What did anyone think of these stories?  Are
they utter crap or should I give it another chance?

*****************belljar@ptdprolog.net************
"Be master of your will
and the slave of your conscience."
~Hasidic saying



From:  Doozer411@aol.com
 Date:  Sun, 23 Nov 1997 20:16:09 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: Solstice

I'm definitely a fan of the Sigourney Weaver idea.  



Date:   Mon, 24 Nov 1997 00:46:26
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 From:   Marie Keller belljar@ptdprolog.net
 Subject:   Re: belljar

At 04:34 PM 11/23/97 EST, David wrote:

>I like the e-mail address, "belljar"  that is somewhat creative, very
>"plath-ian."  speaking of sylvia plath, how is ted hughes doing?  it
>seems has been producing a steady body of work and is more respected as a
>poet now as ever.

It is Plath-ian.  I chose the name in honor of the book that motivated me
to write again.  I had some years of discouragement, and then, I picked up
this book and pulled me back in my writing mode again.  Don't know much
about Ted Hughes, except what I've read about him in her biographies.  I
know they're mostly biased against him.  I se his name pop up from time to
time in Poets & Writers.  He just won an award for something.  


*****************belljar@ptdprolog.net************
"Be master of your will
and the slave of your conscience."
~Hasidic saying



From: Ehaggar@aol.com
Date:  Mon, 24 Nov 1997 08:34:37 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: belljar

David,

I am a grad student at the University of SOuth Carolina where Dickey was
stationed, so to speak, and would be glad to send you a copy of "Anilham"
which I can never spell.  My Email address is ehaggar@aol.com.  Around here
you can't get away from that damn book!

Best,
Ellen Haggar



Date:  Mon, 24 Nov 1997 10:54:40 -0500 (EST)
From:  Matthew A Cheney macheney@cisunix.unh.edu
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:    Re: them's cover

Cheesiness of covers is actually a subject I've been curious about for a
long time -- what is up with the vampire ladies on the first mass market
of "Solstice"?!  Even worse, though -- and one of the all-time worst
covers I've ever seen -- is "Marya".  I'm very fond of that novel, but I
haven't found an affordable hardcover of it yet, so what I've got is the
swampwoman mass-market.  Don't judge a book by its cover, but that one
inflicts pain! 

It's time for Penguin to reprint all of JCO's work (since so much is out
of print) in a uniform edition, kind of like what's happening now with
Updike and Vonnegut and all the male writers of her generation.

Matthew Cheney



From:  Doozer411@aol.com
Date:  Mon, 24 Nov 1997 11:36:48 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: them's cover

Just to be a little more positive, one cover I actually like is The Rise of
Life on Earth- the one with the painting (I forget who it's by) of the
volumptuous woman standing nude in front of a window.  I thought that was a
very appropriate cover. -Lindsay



From:   Cyranomish@aol.com
Date:  Mon, 24 Nov 1997 11:42:23 -0500 (EST)
To: jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Nightside


Nightside's got a lot of good work.  "The Widow" is an interesting
pre-SOLSTICE story. "The Dungeon" is one of her intense inner-monologues,
narrated by a gay man -- it gets lively discussions in my classes.  I've
always liked "Giant Woman," because it's one of those
childhood-in-Eden-County pieces that I find fascinating, having grown up in
the same region.  And "The Snowstorm" is another univerity story -- about a
teacher who is overwhelmed by her women-students problems with the downside
of the sexual revolution in the 1970s -- a good companion to that movie "Ice
Storm" that everyone's talking about now.  Which story/stories did you read
in Nightside  that struck you as not-so-hot? Cyrano



Date:   Mon, 24 Nov 1997 11:55:23 -0500
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
From:   cliff cliffb@pop.iquest.net
 Subject:  Re: Alnilam


>REQUEST:  I am trying to get a copy of James Dickey's 1987-88 book
>"Alnilham."  Can anyone help!?  It doesn't seem to be in print anywhere.

Volk & Iiams, Booksellers, in Sacramento (916-392-0498) has a copy of
"Alnilam" for $10.00.  Tell them it is book # 1955 from the Advanced Book
Exchange on the web.  They accept visa, mastercard and personal checks.
Shipping is an additional $3.50.  It is a first edition used copy in very
good condition.

Cliff



To: jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Reprints
From:  composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
 Date:   Mon, 24 Nov 1997 12:47:00 EST

Look for Vintage to reprint all of Norman Mailer's work soon, beginning
with The Fight, I believe.  I talked to Mailer last May about this very
issue of reprints, and he said Vintage was reprinting all of his stuff. 
I know he has a collection of some sort, hardcover, that is coming out
this spring also.

It sickens me to pay for trade paperbacks though.  I am glad I built up
my Updike library before they switched to trade, and I proudly own the
whole Rabbit tetraology in original hardcover.  Paul Theroux has also
been switched to the uniformed trade paperback, as is Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. 

Lately, Oates's paperbacks are being published with the same covers as
the hardcover editions, save Zombie which was totally different. 
Wonderland, Expensive People, and some others are exclusively printed
through her own Ontario Review press now, too (as is her fledgling
author's, Pinckney Benedict, original work, Town Smokes).
 
Many times, we must wait until several years after an author's death to
get a nice set of their work (like I am hoping will happen with my
beloved James Dickey), but then again, if Barbara Kingsolver can get
published in uniform, nice editions right now, why can't
Oates???????????? 

David

P.S. -- think about it, those of us with extensive Oates collections have
some of the most colorful  bookshelves!!



Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 14:09:12 -0500 (EST)
From:  Jennifer Nash jnash@fas.harvard.edu
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: them's cover


The cover of the rise by Hopper is also so appropriate because so often he
deals with the themes of human isolation and solitude.

- jen

"...it must be that the soul has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing circle can take in all,
can accomplish all..."
- jorge luis borges



From: Cyranomish@aol.com
Date:  Mon, 24 Nov 1997 18:27:55 -0500 (EST)
  To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Thalia look-alike

Correction, correction.  It's US Magazine, not People Magazine, on the cover
of which Winona Rider appears in her Alien role, looking lethal and demure
enough to be a dead ringer for Thalia in WHAT I LIVED FOR.  Cyrano



From:   Ehaggar@aol.com
 Date:  Tue, 25 Nov 1997 00:26:40 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: Reprints

and Kingsolver may well be one of the world's most overrated writers now.....



Date:  Tue, 25 Nov 1997 01:59:01 -0500 (EST)
 From:  Matthew A Cheney macheney@christa.unh.edu
  To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  "The Dungeon"

I got a copy of NIGHT SIDE just a few days ago, and after seeing a recent
message mentioning it, I read the story "The Dungeon".  Then I reread
"Life After High School" in WILL YOU ALWAYS LOVE ME.  Interesting
comparison...

>From my point of view -- having been born probably about a year before
"The Dungeon" was first published -- the story seemed a little, well, 
quaint.  At the end it began to push some of my (perhaps hypersensitive)
PC buttons, because the characterization was so broad that I couldn't help
feel that the story was implying that repressed gay men are misogynists.
What are we to make of that line at the end, "You failed me.  Like all
women.  Might have 'saved' -- baptized -- me.  Be no: too selfish."  But I
reminded myself that the story was published in the late seventies.  And
that made it all the more frustrating, because I think the general culture
has become more tolerant since then, more open, and so if the story were
published today I would give the author more credit than I was giving
Oates, and I would think, "Of course this is just a portrait of one sick,
repressed, obsessive, confused guy.  A singularity, not a universal."  So
I began to think that I wasn't giving Oates enough credit at all, and I
was just reacting in standard knee-jerk fashion, and what the hell do I
know about culture in the '70s, anyway? 

So I reread "Life After High School", a story I had first read a few
months ago and had very positive memories of.  On rereading, I agreed with
my months-younger self's opinion (a rare thing!), and found the story even
more complex and profound on a second, closer reading.  A reading informed
by "The Dungeon".  For in Zachary we have a very similar character to the
narrator of the earlier story, but we see him from a distance, we never
get into his mind, and he remains an enigma.  For me, the story is so much
more haunting, so much closer to truth, so less provocative in knee-jerk
ways and more provocative in terms of the character and situation.
Certainly it's nice to see an author progressing over time, and I wonder
if, perhaps, Oates hadn't quite figured out the best way to tell this
particular story -- or express this particular character -- when she wrote
"The Dungeon", but found it decades later with "Life After High School".  

Or is it even fair to so closely link such different tales?


Matthew Cheney



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
   Date:   Tue, 25 Nov 1997 09:50:52 -0500 (EST)
  To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Dungeon & Life After High School


Hi, Matthew.  I'm going to re-read "High School;" I'm intrigued by your
linking those two .
I read Dungeon when it first came out.  I read it to mean that gay men, like
straight men,
can be misogynist, not that gay men are misogynist.  Like Oates' story Up
>From Slavery in HUNGRY GHOSTS -- which depicts the rude awakening a college
teacher gets when she discovers that the black male colleague whom she
thought was her ally actually dispises her as a meddling white women and has
taken steps to get her fired.  Way back in the seventies, there was a theory
that gays, women & blacks were all allies.  JCO's stories challenge this
wishful thinking by showing how people are simply people before they are
women, blacks, & gays -- individuals with very powerful ids & egos who are
struggling to get their own needs met.  Dungeon does show that Darrell, the
hero, is angry and confused at least in part because of the police
harrassment that he has suffered and the heterosexist public policies and
attitudes that force him to keep his true sexual feelings hidden.  No wonder
he resents his co-workers and his female "friend" so much: he's afraid -- and
with good reason --of the comtempt he might receive should he be honest with
them.   The woman whom he's reproaching in that line you quote might have
become a good friend to Darrell, but thanks to homophobia and mutual
mistrust,  their friendship turned into bitter enmity -- they as well as
society stuck in a dungeon. Cyrano.



To: jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: Reprints
  From:   composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
 Date:   Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:40:18 EST
 
Yes, that's true...  but she is better than Michael Crichton, John
Grisham, Tami Hoag, and on and on of the "supermarket" genre

On Tue, 25 Nov 1997 00:26:40 -0500 (EST) Ehaggar@aol.com writes:
>and Kingsolver may well be one of the world's most overrated writers 
>now.....
>



From:  Shmoopak@aol.com
 Date:  Tue, 25 Nov 1997 15:05:00 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: starting conversation...

I saw the play Heat in the basement of a small cafe in Chicago.  Here is the
write up taken from the Chicago Reader:

Critics' Choices

     HEAT
     A single voice telling a single story might not sound like a pleasant
hour's entertainment,
     even if the story is an account of a grisly child murder on an
oppressively hot day. But
     this story is authored by Joyce Carol Oates, who rejects lurid
speculation on the facts
     of the case to describe, in meticulous detail, the many ancillary
personalities affected by
     the event. Penlight Theater director Eric Ziegenhagen likewise allows
the material,
     which is read verbatim, central focus. Narrator Sarah Phemister makes no
attempt to
     mimic the personalities she describes but offers her testimony with a
stone-faced
     impassivity that masks the carefully crafted phrases. Punctuating her
words with
     carousel-projector slides (included only for the sake of stage
business--the slides are
     blank), she evokes a smothering sultriness--no easy task in Voltaire's
gloomy basement
     only an hour before midnight--to create a simmering portrait of
small-town horror.
     Voltaire, 3231 N. Clark, 312-409-2674. Through November 22:
Fridays-Saturdays,
     11 PM. $7. 


           -- Mary Shen Barnidge

It was a very small production in the basement of a cafe, but it was truly
frightening.  I went alone, since I couldn't convince anyone to go with me,
and the el ride home alone at midnight was probably one of the spookiest I'd

ever taken.  The one woman narration worked really well, in light of the
newspaper like account of the story itself.  Yet just as in the book, the
narrator allows herself to get "upset" during certain scenes.  For example,
when she imagines the twin - Rhoda, waiting for her sister Rhea to come out
of the killer's room.  And the frustration, anger and absolute terror she
must feel upon entering that room herself.  But then the narrator goes back
to being a newspaper narrator again.  In the play, she is presenting a
slideshow, but all you see is the projector.  You never see the "screen" onto
which she is supposed to be projecting pictures of Rhea, Rhoda, the killer,
and the families.  The scene where she narrates what happens to the twins is
absolutely chilling, specifically because of what she doesn't tell the
audience.  Just like the book, we are forced to "see" what happened that day
by ourselves.  And of course, what we imagine is far grislier than anything
even JCO could come right out and tell us.  I know a one-woman one act play
might sound really boring, but this one really spooked me.



Date:  Tue, 25 Nov 97 14:28:31 CDT
 From:   "Nancy Hunter" nhunter@fsc.follett.com
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re[2]: starting conversation...

     Is this play going to be re-run elsewhere? I am very interested in 
     seeing this! Please let me know.
     Nancy



From:  RJohn713@aol.com
Date:  Tue, 25 Nov 1997 19:01:21 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: Reprints
  
An "aesthetically standardized" set of JCO paperbacks is in the works from
Dutton/Plume.  I have no info at the moment on what the design(s) will be.

Greg



Date:   Tue, 25 Nov 1997 21:25:54 -0500
From:   "Ralf A. Engeldinger" oatesian@feynman.harvard.edu
To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: Reprints


RJohn713@aol.com wrote:
> 
> An "aesthetically standardized" set of JCO paperbacks is in the works from
> Dutton/Plume.  I have no info at the moment on what the design(s) will be.
> 
> Greg

Any information on which books they intent to reprint?

Ralf A. Engeldinger



From:   RJohn713@aol.com
Date:  Wed, 26 Nov 1997 18:02:52 -0500 (EST)
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:   Re: Reprints

Sorry, I'm not sure--but only post-1980, Dutton titles will be included, I
gather.

Greg



From:  Shmoopak@aol.com
 Date:  Wed, 26 Nov 1997 22:16:47 -0500 (EST)
   To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: Re[2]: starting conversation...

I'm not sure if this play is being run elsewhere.  I think it was a very
small local production.  if I hear otherwise though, I'll let you know.



From:  Ivan139@aol.com
 Date:  Sat, 29 Nov 1997 03:08:02 -0500 (EST)
To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  We Were the Mulvaneys

Granted, it is my first time reading JCO.  I am not, so far, that impressed
with Mulvaneys, but surfing this site has made me feel I should be so.

So what's the big deal?

Anyone care to innundate me with JCO's views on Christianity/Spirituality?

I cannot understand how the tragedy of the rape so upsets the balance of the
Mulvaneys.  If they were not Christians but turned so for deliverance from
their perils, that I could accept (though still not entirely agree with.)

The rapidity of the tragedy leads me to surmise the Mulvaneys are fragile,
too fragile; any pride in themselves is lost immediately, which means it must
have been barely there to begin with.  Everyone supposedly thought the
Mulvaneys were so hot -- except the Mulvaneys.  

But I can't accept this from JCO!  I need enlightenment!  (Sure I should
finish the book, and will this weekend, but it is hard to continue reading
about such a foolish and fragile family.)

Please help!



To: jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: We Were the Mulvaneys
 From:  composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
 Date:  Sat, 29 Nov 1997 12:12:04 EST

Granted, Mulvaneys is not JCO's best book, but it's not bad!  It's much
better than MAN CRAZY.  Look at a lot of the trash that is being
published nowadays, and you'll see that wow!  We Were the Mulvaneys is
great...

David



From: Ivan139@aol.com
Date:  Sat, 29 Nov 1997 13:30:27 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:   Re: Re: We Were the Mulvaneys

David, that wasn't much consolation. :{(  Like I said, I haven't read any
other JCO.  I'm not finding the book that bad, I just feel a profound lack of
sympathy for the family for not having much of a back bone, if any at all.  

So what are you implying, that JCO is the best of the trash?

Ironically, I had just read The Jolly Roger's manifesto, and they outright
mention JCO (I believe the only author so honored).  I didn't much agree with
the manifesto, in fact I cringed in places, but your response triggers a
sudden        apt-ness.  I'm sure their further publications will make me
cringe, but so does JCO at times.  Isn't there any end to the cringing at
modern literature?



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
Date:  Sat, 29 Nov 1997 16:15:11 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  cringing Mulvaneys

Hi, Ivan.  It looks like the M's Christianity wasn't as deep as we'd first
thought.  If you're interested in JCO's take on religion, you might want to
consult a book entitled CONFIRMATION or  CONFIRMATIONS (I don't have the
editor's name with me; let me know if you need it). It's a collection of
authors' writings on the Bible in their lives. JCO, in her essay, defines
herself as "a nonreligious observer of religion" and tells how reading the
Bible  (as a collection of fascinating narratives, not as gospel truth) has
always been a part of her life; and she gives an interesting account of how
she attended both Methodist and Catholic churches before she left home for
college.
     In Mulvaney's I was not convinced by Marianne's abandonment of religion:
she doesn't so much rebel and reject it as she simply drifts away from it
after her rape.  You might say that her total lack of bitterness toward her
assilant may be some residual religion, but she's not the vocal Christian she
was when the book started.  When I interviewed JCO about the book for a local
newspaper, I tried to find out exactly what the Christian counselor says to
Marianne right after the rape becomes public knowledge.  JCO said
that the counselor said what you would expect a Christian counselor to say.
 I didn't belabor the subject.  I suppose such a counselor would advise that
one forgive the rapist and get on with one's life.  This turns out to be
pretty much what Marianne does, although it's a long process and she drifts
in dangerous directions before she meets up with the animal doctor, a good
understanding man who eventually coaxes M. back into normal human relations.
 I liked the way JCO has M. reject several people who love her because she
doesn't trust anyone who loves her.  As for her parents, father's downfall to
booze and rage was not surprising, considering that those two forces were
part of his youthful background.   A happy marriage saved him for a while,
but it wasn't enough to get him through the crisis of his daughter's rape and
the community's condoning of that rape.  I was very moved by the scene where
his wife tells him what happened and the poor man nearly has a stroke on the
spot.  
     Mulvaneys may not be your cup of tea.  I always suggest that readers new
to JCO begin with her stories.  The collection WILL YOU ALWAYS LOVE ME?  is
superb.  One of the stories in it -- "Is There Life After High School?" --
has a heroine like Marianne: a rather glib and very vocal Christian who gets
an unpleasant surprise (not rape) when an eccentric local boy gets a crush on
her, and she thinks she's winning a soul for Jesus.
Cyrano



From:  Cyranomish@aol.com
 Date:  Sat, 29 Nov 1997 16:41:15 -0500 (EST)
To: jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  cringing Mulvaneys, part 2

Hi, Ivan and everybody.  I checked that reference I just mentioned.  The
essay about JCO and religion "Genesis (Eden) and John,"  is in a book
entitled COMMUNION: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS REVEAL THE BIBLE IN THEIR LIVES,
edited by David Rosenberg.  It's a very interesting JCO first-person article.
 Cyrano



Date:  Sat, 29 Nov 1997 19:32:41 -0600
 From:  David Kodeski 
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject: Re: cringing Mulvaneys

We are the Mulvaney's was my first JCO. I'm now reading Bellefleur
(loving it!) I grew up in the same region as JCO - I know the people she
wrote about in that book. I was pulled into the story and believed
implicitly Marianne's drifting from religion - and trying to find it
again on the co-op farm... 

I've been told We Were The Mulvaney's has one of JCO's most upbeat
endings. True?
-- 




From: Ivan139@aol.com
Date:  Sun, 30 Nov 1997 00:41:59 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: Re: cringing Mulvaneys

I'm just in the middle of Mulvaneys, so am unable to discuss the quality of
the ending.  Sorry.  I am reading it with our book club (meeting is next
week) and as it is our first JCO, I thought I would do a little research.
 Little did I know I find a web page solely devoted to her.  

As to Marianne's drifting from religion:  my wife is a little behind where
I'm at and she is supposing Marianne becomes a nun.  I guess I supposed so
too.  Knowing that she drifts from religion relieves me, but leaves me more
and more confused about JCO.

I am not what you would call a Christian, though my whole family is, so I am
a little sensitive to it (and probably base my expectations on that).  I am
literally stunned by the overt references to christianity in Mulvaneys, and
the casting of the family as such.  And more and more I am surprised by the
rapidity with which the tragedy overtakes and disintegrates the family.  On
the web page I read the JCO interview regarding Mulvaneys, and I find JCO's
remark that the path of the family could have gone differently had the father
not fell apart so completely rather flippant.  I feel the undoing of the
father a little exaggerated and a lot unbeleivable.  Perhaps my own
ignorance?

To date I find the Mulvaneys weak, weak, weak.  That they do not endeavor to
change the outcome of their fall, and in fact ship Marianne off, is even more
unbelievable.  There is a victim mentality at work which I find hard to
accept.  It is not pride I'm wanting, it is strength and determination and
resolution.  Back bone.  Character.  Where is it?  I'm sure it comes later,
but that still doesn't satisfy me.  

What region did JCO (and yourself) grow up in, and what people did she write
about?  Am very curious to know.

Thanks for the response.  Take care.



From:  JonWendell@webtv.net (John Eggers)
Date:  Sun, 30 Nov 1997 08:49:24 -0600
 To:   jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  Re: Re: cringing Mulvaneys

I think it is important to remember that the rape
takes place in the 70's.  This is before "date rape" even had a name or
was discussed openly and in the media.  I think Mulvaney's
confronts the myth of  "the american family"
i.e. strong , patriotic, devoutly religious.  Corrine
is actually the strongest personality in the book, Michael is the
weakest.  Matriarchal family instead of patriarchal.  What is acceptable
by
societies standards? How does one family deal  with societies values?
That  is what the novel
is addressing.    
  Ivan, by the way, the Jolly Roger has a personal vendetta against JCO.
Also Toni Morrison and Russell Banks.  (All three are
professors at Princeton, the university he 
attended)  



From: Cyranomish@aol.com
Date:  Sun, 30 Nov 1997 10:22:11 -0500 (EST)
To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Again, Mulvaneys

Hi, Ivan.  I think you'll really get a lot of insight into JCO's religious
orientation when you get that book COMMUNIONS by David Rosenberg.  John's
comment that "date rape" was not yet a public concept is very important.
 Marianne has no name for what's happened to her ... a fact very poignantly
demonstrated in the novel.  Michael Mulvaney's
background, which it sounds like you haven't reached yet, may help illuminate
why he falls apart over his daughter's crisis.  
      My religion?  Hardly any, except a couple of stints in
"nondenominational" bible club camps in late childhood, a very positive
experience during which -- like Woody Allen -- I was beaten up by youths of
all races and creeds. (And learned how to make a bed, much to Mom's delight.)
 Cyrano



Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 20:12:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Jennifer Nash jnash@fas.harvard.edu
To: jco@usfca.edu

what book is "the turn of the screw" from?

thanks,
- jen

"...it must be that the soul has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing circle can take in all,
can accomplish all..."
- jorge luis borges



To:  jco@usfca.edu
 Subject:  turn of screw
 From:  composer2@juno.com (David C. Chaudoir)
Date:  Sun, 30 Nov 1997 21:55:35 EST

i know it can be found in the collection, 'where are you going, where
have you been? collected early stories' by jco.  it is a pretty
avant-garde story for the time it was written!  and an interesting one at
that!

David



From:  Ehaggar Ehaggar@aol.com
 Date:  Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:18:30 EST
To:   jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re:

It is the name of a short novella byHenry James



From:  Ehaggar 
 Date:  Mon, 1 Dec 1997 00:21:00 EST
 To:  jco@usfca.edu
Subject:  Re: turn of screw

JCO's Turn of the Screw is a deliberate turn on James story--you actually need
to read both in order to "get" JCO's story---but I promise that James is worth
it!

Ellen Haggar

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Last updated 12-1-97
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