Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates

Rating:
Summary: a good, if somehow biased, visit to Oates' personal world
Review: I believe JCO is arguably the best writer to emerge in America in the second half of the 20th century. That said, I read this biography with much interest and found in it plenty of information about the elusive, invisible persona of JCO. However, as much as I appreciatted Mr.Johnson's obvious labour-of-love research and detailed account of the life and times of JCO, I found the whole thing somehow biased as a overly soft and timid portrait of a mysterious, enigmatic woman. I found many of the elements mentioned in the book suggested tremendously interesing points of entry into JCO's personal and psychological universe. None of them were explored. It seems like Mr.Johnson always stops at the threshold of the dark cave and then points his typewriter at some nice, peculiar social event. As I was reading, I felt Mr.Johnson limited his approach to recount little know facts with admirable accuracy and attention to detail, but reading any novel of JCO tells us more about her mind and soul that recounts of many dinner parties at Princeton. If you're interested in this wonderful writer, this book is surely helpful in reconstructing the outside of her life, and most interesting in its depiction of the inner workings of the literary world mafia, but I'd say very far from being the truly meaningful journey into JCO's mind that I'd like to read. I wouldn't like to discourage anyone interested in JCO to reads this, because it is a worthy and valuable read and Mr.Johnson deserves credit for taking on a difficult subject and rendering a never faltering narrative, but I believe JCO, and her readers, deserve even better (and specially braver) and will feel wanting for it. A good first look at this fascinating writer, sure, but she remains as invisible as she was before we opened this biography. Since JCO is after all still very much alive and kicking (her last BLONDE proves she as good as ever or even better), maybe it is a matter of time and perspective. Maybe Mr.Johnson himself, given time and distance, will offer us a deeper reading of JCO. He is surely an able writer and a keen researcher. I'll surely be there to check all the fascinating stuff about one of my favorite authors that this time, somehow, proved invisible, but smellable.

Rating:
Summary: Very Readable Biography, Yet JCO Still Mysterious to Me
Review: Invisible Writer is throughly researched and well written. I found it very readable, even though I was not a fan of JCO's. I'm still not a fan of hers. Greg Johnson manages to create a fair portrait of JCO as a human who is sometimes prickly and vain. I understand other reviewers' comments that he's too soft on her, but I see it as him being careful to be fair in writing about someone who is still producing some of her best work. Oddly I didn't find that his treatment made her more likeable, only that it made JCO someone with whom I can empathize.

After reading this book, the greatest question remaining about JCO is the violence, especially sexual, in her work. A childhood sexual incident is mentioned, but it seems rather mundane. Johnson refers to some of the hardships suffered by JCO's family, but those hardships doesn't seem to explain well enough how this quiet, intellectual woman lives in such another world in her writer's imagination. Perhaps that's the intrigue of JCO.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating biography of an enigmatic, brilliant novelist.
Review: This biography exhaustively plumbs the life and career of Joyce Carol Oates. Although not a biography I would normally seek out, since I've read only a few of her books, "Invisible Writer" was named a "Best Academic Book of the Year" by the American Library Association and received glowing reviews, so I was curious about its content. I was immediately taken in by this sweeping, thoughtful, and superbly written account of a consummate writer's writer. Although Johnson does not shrink from criticizing his subject--her controlling behavior, her tendency to depict "friends" in her fiction in unflattering ways, even an occasional veiled threat of revenge to an unfriendly reviewer--he presents on the whole a fair, balanced portrait of a writer for whom art is almost her entire life. This should be read by anyone interested in writing or writers.