Dawn Powell wrote all the time, Joyce Carol Oates writes even more, in fact, she must be the most prolific writer of today. So abusive, so violent, she lacerates, she whips with her words, you feel yourself falling off a cliff, it's terrifying at times. You'd think she'd gift you with a reprieve, but she won't. So don't prey for that parachute, that rope will never appear, it will not end well, why? Because Joyce Carol Oates is a truth teller, that's why.
Her milieu is dark, I know dark but violence is foreign to me. Abuse, torture porn, I'm not normally drawn to this world, but when she creates a period of time, a slice of drama, I'm fascinated and find myself willing to go anywhere she's willing to take me, knowing it will all end in tears.
Such is the stunning effect of this writer. When you're reading Black Girl White Girl you might assume it's all about the relationship between two young women, one white, one black who happen to be room mates in an exclusive liberal arts college, if only because she writes about that relationship in the most devastating way, but its not. It's really about a white girl and her relationship with her radical Dad. Her Dad and his extreme left-wing activism, his attitudes about money, class, politics, the deceptive left-right paradigm that began to unfold in America circa 1970. Oates gets to highlight reverse racism, hypocrisy and liberal guilt in post-Vietnam America as only she can do.....
God she's brilliant, so brutal and honest. Her high literature style collides with informal, staccato, internal thought. In this book, it feels reminiscent of falling back into the blissed out, bonkered, wonderful, horrible life that was Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. I've blogged before but I'll blog it again, any women that wants to read about their own sex, their own fear, control, love, knowledge or lack thereof regarding their own sex, read Blonde, I dare you. That book is fierce.
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