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Rating: 
Summary: A Solid Collection From JCO!
Review: I Am Know One You Know is one of Joyce Carol Oates's best story collections in a long while. My favorite story is "The Girl With The Blackened Eye," where a girl remembers her abduction, her killer and the killer's victims--whom Oates does best at writing from the POV looking inward from a character as he/she looks outward into their harsh, most often horrible environments of life. My second favorite story would be "The Mutants," a story of a woman caught in the thread of terror on the morning of (possibly) September 11, 2001. Though Oates does not specify it is 9/11, but we can use our imagination within the story, which I think is best achieved than by labeling it as a "9/11" story. "The Mutants" is a bizarre title. It is a title that again shows Oates using the protagonist's inward views of being distraught in the face of terror: "A mutant being, primed to survive. Were there not undersea creatures that required extra sets of gills, eyes on stalks on either side of their blade-thin heads, cunning in the desperation of survivial..."I recommend this solid collection of stories by JCO.
Rating:
Summary: A Solid Collection From JCO!
Review: I Am Know One You Know is one of Joyce Carol Oates's best story collections in a long while. My favorite story is "The Girl With The Blackened Eye," where a girl remembers her abduction, her killer and the killer's victims--whom Oates does best at writing from the POV looking inward from a character as he/she looks outward into their harsh, most often horrible environments of life. My second favorite story would be "The Mutants," a story of a woman caught in the thread of terror on the morning of (possibly) September 11, 2001. Though Oates does not specify it is 9/11, but we can use our imagination within the story, which I think is best achieved than by labeling it as a "9/11" story. "The Mutants" is a bizarre title. It is a title that again shows Oates using the protagonist's inward views of being distraught in the face of terror: "A mutant being, primed to survive. Were there not undersea creatures that required extra sets of gills, eyes on stalks on either side of their blade-thin heads, cunning in the desperation of survivial..." I recommend this solid collection of stories by JCO.
Rating:
Summary: Oates's intense stories immediately grab readers
Review: I AM NO ONE YOU KNOW is the most recent collection of previously published short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. This latest assortment consists of nineteen tales that range from "In Hiding," a creepy tale about the one mistake a person might make in the spirit of generosity that will ultimately bring danger to her/him, to a very charming tale about two friends who happen upon Marilyn Monroe in the famous Strand bookstore in Manhattan. The body of work produced by Ms. Oates is outstanding for its range of topics and its breadth of forms. Her stories are so intense that they immediately grab readers and keep them reading. But more than that, Oates leaves her reader reeling from the way she handles her characters, settings, dialogue, descriptions and on points timeliness. "In Hiding" begins as a pleasant story about a divorced poet/teacher/translator who lives with her teenage son in upstate New York. One day she receives a packet of poetry and prose from a stranger. "Please accept my poetry as a gift. I love your poetry truly. Even if you don't have time to read my writings. Even if you don't have a feeling for it. I understand. His name was Woodson Johnston, Jr. --- 'Woody.' He was an inmate at Kansas State Penitentiary in Fulham, Kansas." She read the poems and the few diary entries he had sent: "She'd given in to impulse [and] mailed off [a thank you] card, and that was that!" But of course it isn't. "Three Girls" is a "typical" New York story, with two students, "NYU girl-poets drifting through the warehouse of treasures as through an enchanted forest, known to them as Strand Used Books on Broadway and Twelfth [during a] snowy March [evening] ... in 1956." In their giddiness among the great books stacked in mile-high piles, one of them glances up and sees "an individual ... pulling down books ... a woman nearly my height ... in a man's navy coat to her ankles and with sleeves past her wrists, a man's beige fedora hat on her head, scrunched low ... and most of her hair hidden by the hat." At first the storyteller is unable to place this woman who is so deep in the study of the tomes she's pulling off the shelves. "The blond woman turned, taking down another book from the shelf, and I saw that she was Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe. In the Strand. Just like us. And she seemed to be alone. Marilyn Monroe, alone!" Still unrecognized, she appeared to be a book junkie just like the other customers. But by 1956, "Marilyn Monroe had entered history, and there was no escape from it." Or was there? Of the nineteen stories, the third that is especially noteworthy is "The Mutants." In this truly realistic and timely tale, a young woman who seems to have been "touched by the angels" has moved from her Midwestern home to New York City. She is blond, beautiful and loved by all who know her. She lives in a gorgeous apartment with a breathtaking view, she is engaged to be married and "... as always on weekday mornings her fiancé left the apartment early. She'd gone out shortly after 8 a.m. to a nearby Kinko's to pick up a color ... manuscript (of a children's book) and she was crossing ... [the street] ... when she heard a droning noise at first annoying and then alarming as of a gargantuan hornet and when she looked up she saw a sight so unnerving her eyes at first refused to decode it; an airplane, a commercial airliner, enormous, flying unnaturally low, careening out of the sky and of her stunned vision behind a bank of buildings as, in the next instant, she was thrown to her knees on the pavement by a colossal explosion ... she fell, slivers of glass were pelting her exposed skin ... yet her reflexes were ... rapid ... and in nearly the same second in which she heard [another] explosion ... she was running into ... her building ... past individuals stunned" [into frozen beings.] When she reaches the sanctuary of her apartment, at first she thinks she's in a daydream until she realizes "she was beginning to breathe strangely. Her mouth was coated with a fine dry dust ... why was it so dark? The sky had vanished." She hesitates and is confused and really doesn't know what to do. Should she try to get out, or should she stay? Was she the only person left inside --- was she the last person alive? Her psyche is too overwhelmed; she is incapable of making a decision about what to do. Her paralysis in the face of what feels like an apocalyptic event is a fascinating character study and reminds us, again, what 9/11 did to our country and our people. The remaining sixteen stories that comprise I AM NO ONE YOU KNOW are as moving, thrilling, frightening, amusing and economical as these. Joyce Carol Oates stands as one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Her canvas is painted with a wide variety of subjects: boxing, religion, murder, politics, relationships, law, health, morality, rage, suburbanites and city dwellers. Her overreaching and kaleidoscopic talent embraces the American scene and its populace. The stories in this collection are a pastiche of the themes, style and versatility of subject that has marked her career as a writer. She has said that "all of us who write work out of conviction that we are participating in some sort of communal activity ... [understand that] in general the writing writes itself." Only an artist who is confident in her work and ideas could make a statement of such sweeping proportions. In her art Joyce Carol Oates has reached far beyond the realm of the ordinary, and in so doing has created a body of work that will endure. --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
Rating:
Summary: Oates's intense stories immediately grab readers
Review: I AM NO ONE YOU KNOW is the most recent collection of previously published short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. This latest assortment consists of nineteen tales that range from "In Hiding," a creepy tale about the one mistake a person might make in the spirit of generosity that will ultimately bring danger to her/him, to a very charming tale about two friends who happen upon Marilyn Monroe in the famous Strand bookstore in Manhattan. The body of work produced by Ms. Oates is outstanding for its range of topics and its breadth of forms. Her stories are so intense that they immediately grab readers and keep them reading. But more than that, Oates leaves her reader reeling from the way she handles her characters, settings, dialogue, descriptions and on points timeliness. "In Hiding" begins as a pleasant story about a divorced poet/teacher/translator who lives with her teenage son in upstate New York. One day she receives a packet of poetry and prose from a stranger. "Please accept my poetry as a gift. I love your poetry truly. Even if you don't have time to read my writings. Even if you don't have a feeling for it. I understand. His name was Woodson Johnston, Jr. --- 'Woody.' He was an inmate at Kansas State Penitentiary in Fulham, Kansas." She read the poems and the few diary entries he had sent: "She'd given in to impulse [and] mailed off [a thank you] card, and that was that!" But of course it isn't. "Three Girls" is a "typical" New York story, with two students, "NYU girl-poets drifting through the warehouse of treasures as through an enchanted forest, known to them as Strand Used Books on Broadway and Twelfth [during a] snowy March [evening] ... in 1956." In their giddiness among the great books stacked in mile-high piles, one of them glances up and sees "an individual ... pulling down books ... a woman nearly my height ... in a man's navy coat to her ankles and with sleeves past her wrists, a man's beige fedora hat on her head, scrunched low ... and most of her hair hidden by the hat." At first the storyteller is unable to place this woman who is so deep in the study of the tomes she's pulling off the shelves. "The blond woman turned, taking down another book from the shelf, and I saw that she was Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe. In the Strand. Just like us. And she seemed to be alone. Marilyn Monroe, alone!" Still unrecognized, she appeared to be a book junkie just like the other customers. But by 1956, "Marilyn Monroe had entered history, and there was no escape from it." Or was there? Of the nineteen stories, the third that is especially noteworthy is "The Mutants." In this truly realistic and timely tale, a young woman who seems to have been "touched by the angels" has moved from her Midwestern home to New York City. She is blond, beautiful and loved by all who know her. She lives in a gorgeous apartment with a breathtaking view, she is engaged to be married and "... as always on weekday mornings her fiancé left the apartment early. She'd gone out shortly after 8 a.m. to a nearby Kinko's to pick up a color ... manuscript (of a children's book) and she was crossing ... [the street] ... when she heard a droning noise at first annoying and then alarming as of a gargantuan hornet and when she looked up she saw a sight so unnerving her eyes at first refused to decode it; an airplane, a commercial airliner, enormous, flying unnaturally low, careening out of the sky and of her stunned vision behind a bank of buildings as, in the next instant, she was thrown to her knees on the pavement by a colossal explosion ... she fell, slivers of glass were pelting her exposed skin ... yet her reflexes were ... rapid ... and in nearly the same second in which she heard [another] explosion ... she was running into ... her building ... past individuals stunned" [into frozen beings.] When she reaches the sanctuary of her apartment, at first she thinks she's in a daydream until she realizes "she was beginning to breathe strangely. Her mouth was coated with a fine dry dust ... why was it so dark? The sky had vanished." She hesitates and is confused and really doesn't know what to do. Should she try to get out, or should she stay? Was she the only person left inside --- was she the last person alive? Her psyche is too overwhelmed; she is incapable of making a decision about what to do. Her paralysis in the face of what feels like an apocalyptic event is a fascinating character study and reminds us, again, what 9/11 did to our country and our people. The remaining sixteen stories that comprise I AM NO ONE YOU KNOW are as moving, thrilling, frightening, amusing and economical as these. Joyce Carol Oates stands as one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Her canvas is painted with a wide variety of subjects: boxing, religion, murder, politics, relationships, law, health, morality, rage, suburbanites and city dwellers. Her overreaching and kaleidoscopic talent embraces the American scene and its populace. The stories in this collection are a pastiche of the themes, style and versatility of subject that has marked her career as a writer. She has said that "all of us who write work out of conviction that we are participating in some sort of communal activity ... [understand that] in general the writing writes itself." Only an artist who is confident in her work and ideas could make a statement of such sweeping proportions. In her art Joyce Carol Oates has reached far beyond the realm of the ordinary, and in so doing has created a body of work that will endure. --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
Rating: 
Summary: Wow... that's all I can say!
Review: I can only expect something staggering and literary when I pick up Joyce Carol Oates. I am No One You Know is one of the darkest and most disturbing short-story collections I've ever read. And I've read my fair share of incredible short stories! Oates writes about rape, murder and depression like very few writers. These stories are thought provoking and gripping, beautiful and poignant. My favorite stories are "Upholstery," "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," "Fire," "Mutants," and "Three Girls." Each of these stories enthralled me from beginning to end. Their messages affected me. I cannot recommend this short-story collection enough. It is the perfect thing to pick up if you're in the bargain for some deep reading.
Rating:
Summary: Past Revision
Review: In this new story collection by Joyce Carol Oates, she invokes a wide range of voices from children to adults, both male and female. The content is sometimes horrifically violent like in 'The Girl with the Blackened Eye' where a woman recalls her experience being kidnapped and at other times the tone of the stories is incredibly tender and gentle like in 'Three Girls' where two young students follow and protect a disguised Marilyn Monroe around the famous Strand Used Book store. What is striking about this arrangement of stories is the very personal feel they all contain with the sense that many of the characters are looking back and trying to decipher crucial moments when their destinies changed.
A mournful feeling of regret runs through this collection. For instance, when using a complex narrator's voice in the story 'Me & Wolfie, 1979' (probably the most experimental and difficult story in the collection) the protagonist states, "For every hurt dealt to her son she loved, Me dealt herself a dozen." In many cases a decision on the part of one person has led to an irresolvable split in that person's family like in 'Curly Red' where a girl chooses to reveal a family secret leading to her own isolation. One of Oates' greatest abilities is to seek out injustice and expose it by giving a voice to those who are silenced. But she is not one to shy from the complexities of certain situations by recognizing the levels of conscious participation on all sides or the wilful self deceit some people impose upon themselves. In 'The Deaths: An Elegy' a woman chooses to confuse the facts of her parents' relationship and strikes out against her brother who probably saved her life. What is interesting about the retrospective sense many of the stories contain is how facts are confused and the way family members recall events differently from others like in 'Happiness' where two sisters disagree over what they saw one day or 'Fire' where a brother breaks the idealized vision his sister keeps of their deceased father. There is a feeling that the individuals in this collection are desperately trying to hold on to a certain vision of themselves which the events of the world are trying to take from them. All the diverse stories in this collection are artfully arranged to convey a wide range of this emotion. One of the first stories 'In Hiding' shows a poet who is trying to protect herself from intrusion by living a sheltered life. But by depicting the experiences of one individual in the events of 9/11the final eerie story 'The Mutants' shows that sometimes the larger events of the world will force themselves into your life and change you - for better or worse.
Rating:
Summary: Past Revision
Review: In this new story collection by Joyce Carol Oates, she invokes a wide range of voices from children to adults, both male and female. The content is sometimes horrifically violent like in `The Girl with the Blackened Eye' where a woman recalls her experience being kidnapped and at other times the tone of the stories is incredibly tender and gentle like in `Three Girls' where two young students follow and protect a disguised Marilyn Monroe around the famous Strand Used Book store. What is striking about this arrangement of stories is the very personal feel they all contain with the sense that many of the characters are looking back and trying to decipher crucial moments when their destinies changed.
A mournful feeling of regret runs through this collection. For instance, when using a complex narrator's voice in the story `Me & Wolfie, 1979' (probably the most experimental and difficult story in the collection) the protagonist states, "For every hurt dealt to her son she loved, Me dealt herself a dozen." In many cases a decision on the part of one person has led to an irresolvable split in that person's family like in `Curly Red' where a girl chooses to reveal a family secret leading to her own isolation. One of Oates' greatest abilities is to seek out injustice and expose it by giving a voice to those who are silenced. But she is not one to shy from the complexities of certain situations by recognizing the levels of conscious participation on all sides or the wilful self deceit some people impose upon themselves. In `The Deaths: An Elegy' a woman chooses to confuse the facts of her parents' relationship and strikes out against her brother who probably saved her life. What is interesting about the retrospective sense many of the stories contain is how facts are confused and the way family members recall events differently from others like in `Happiness' where two sisters disagree over what they saw one day or `Fire' where a brother breaks the idealized vision his sister keeps of their deceased father. There is a feeling that the individuals in this collection are desperately trying to hold on to a certain vision of themselves which the events of the world are trying to take from them. All the diverse stories in this collection are artfully arranged to convey a wide range of this emotion. One of the first stories `In Hiding' shows a poet who is trying to protect herself from intrusion by living a sheltered life. But by depicting the experiences of one individual in the events of 9/11the final eerie story `The Mutants' shows that sometimes the larger events of the world will force themselves into your life and change you - for better or worse.
Rating:
Summary: Love Me or Leave Me
Review: There is little doubt that Joyce Carol Oates is not afraid to write about all the things we fear: child abuse, rape, neurotic parents, murder. But just when you think that you have got her pegged, she writes a lovely story like "Three Girls" about a chance meeting, viewing really of Marilyn Monroe by two uppity yet driven-to-distraction-because they see a star college girls at a bookstore in downtown NYC. ("...Marilyn Monroe. She gave us a book. Was any of it real?") Then of course she includes "The Girl with the Blackened Eye" in this collection that recalls her recent "Rape...A Love Story" and once again writes of a brutal rape.
The stories in "I Am No One You Know" are uneven which pretty much goes hand-in-hand with this type of story collection...i.e. taken from many sources, written over the course of several years. But nonetheless there are several real doozies, for example : "Aiding and Abetting, " about how families look away when there is real horror amongst their own and how a huge price can be paid for this and "Fire" about the pleasures of alcohol ("Drinking clarified. Confusion dissolved.")
Oates is equally at home in the short story and the long format form. And, of course she has written brilliantly in both. But there is something about Oates's short stories that draw you in even closer, telescope and make what she is saying even sharper and "I Am No One You Know" contains some shining examples of this.
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