![]() Many of the questions in this interview were answered via correspondence. Oates and her husband attended a seminar on her work, which was part of that year's Modern Language Association convention. She sets these dreams physically onto paper on a writing table in her study, which faces the river.Īdditional questions were asked in New York during the 1976 Christmas season, when Ms. Talk continued during a stroll by the banks of the Detroit River where she confessed to having sat for hours, watching the horizon and the boats, and dreaming her characters into existence. (She is a confirmed cat lover and recently took in two more kittens at the Princeton house.) Oates answered all questions openly while curled with her Persian cats upon a sofa. One receives the impression that she never speaks in anything but perfectly formed sentences. When interviewed, her speaking voice was, as always, soft and reflective. This interview began at her Windsor home in the summer of 1976 before she and her husband moved to Princeton. If her manner is taken for aloofness-as it sometimes has been-it is, in fact, a shyness that the publication of thirty-three books, the production of three plays, and the winning of the National Book Award has not displaced. She is highly attractive but not photogenic no photo has ever done justice to her appearance, which conveys grace and high intelligence. Oates is striking-looking and slender, with dark hair and large, inquiring eyes. And despite the added demands of teaching, she continues to devote much energy to The Ontario Review, a literary quarterly that her husband edits and for which she serves as a contributing editor. ![]() Joyce Carol Oates is the rarest of commodities, an author modest about her work, though there is such a quantity of it that she has three publishers-one for fiction, one for poetry and a “small press” for more experimental work, limited editions, and books her other publishers simply cannot schedule. Photo by Dustin Cohen, courtesy of Ecco Press ![]() Interviewed by Robert Phillips Issue 74, Fall-Winter 1978
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