In twenty-nine provocative essays, Joyce Carol Oates maps the "rough country" that is both the treacherous geographical and psychological terrain of the writers she so cogently analyses-Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, E. L. Doctorow, and Margaret Atwood, among others-and the emotional terrain of Oates's own life following the unexpected death of her husband, Raymond Smith, after forty-eight years of marriage.
"As literature is a traditional solace to the bereft, so writing about literature can be a solace, as it was to me when the effort of writing fiction seemed beyond me, as if belonging to another lifetime," Oates writes. "Reading and taking notes, especially late at night when I can't sleep, has been the solace, for me, that saying the Rosary or reading The Book of Common Prayer might be for another." The results of those meditations are the essays of In Rough Country-balanced and illuminating investigations that demonstrate an artist working at the top of her form.
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[The 'rough country' of my title has a double meaning: it refers to both the treacherous geographical / psychological terrains of the writers who are my subjects - Flannery O'Connor, Shirley Jackson, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood among others, and also the emotional terrain of my life following the unexpected death of my husband Raymond Smith in February 2008 after forty-eight years of marriage]***
(HarperCollins, 17 June 2010, ebook, 418 pages, Around the Year in 52 Books 2019, a book not written in a traditional novel format, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I really enjoyed this collection of essays and reviews by one of my favourite writers. I've never read a collection of non-fiction essays and reviews before so wasn't sure what to expect. The writers JCO discusses within these pages are wide and far ranging from Shirley Jackson and Sharon Olds to Cormac McCarthy and Margaret Atwood. Many of the writers discussed are writers I rate highly which made these particular essays/reviews a bit more enjoyable. This book would not suit everyone as it caters to specific tastes but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
