The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies by Joyce Carol Oates
Black Sparrow Press (hardback), 1975
200 Pages
BLURB FROM THE COVER
A collection of stories from the award winning writer: DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS, UP FROM SLAVERY, A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE, THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY, REWARDS OF FAME and ANGST.
EXTRACT
He scanned the list of names by the mail slots, saw that that name Dietrich and ignored it, and pressed the button beside the name Novak. It was Dr Novak’s wife he was supposed to contact. No response. For the fourth or fifth time in the last several minutes he checked his watch – it was 10:30 now, time for their meeting. He had taken a bus across town and, as usual, had started out far too early, so that he arrived at the Novak’s apartment building twenty minutes ahead of time. A nervous habit of his, left over from his student days; horribly, he was always early for everything. In spite of the drizzle he had walked around the block several times. Now he was wet, self-conscious, already a little intimidated by Mrs Novak. He pressed the white plastic button again and this time, thank God, a loud buzzer sounded and the lock of the heavy front door was released. A female voice said, ‘Come in’ without requiring him to identify himself. He seized the oversized brass doorknob and shoved the door open. Yet still the voice spoke to him out of a device overhead, as if doubting his ability to maneuver himself into the foyer. ‘Come in.. Come in please’.
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
REVIEW
This is my first time reading The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies. I’m working my way through JCO’s back catalog. There’s a lot I haven’t read.
I really enjoyed the stories in The Hungry Ghosts. They were much better than her collection Upon The Sweeping Flood but not as good as The Wheel of Love or Marriages and Infidelities. The stories in The Hungry Ghosts are thematically connected and deal with academia and in particular poetry. Two of the stories really stand out. In Democracy In America a man goes to the home of a recently deceased copywriter in search of his manuscript that the man was editing. The deceased’s home is like something out of the TV show hoarders and the man searches the mess and finds bits of his manuscript all over the place. In, A Descriptive Catalogue, a poet with more than 300 published poems to his name and a successful academic career is exposed as a fraud who’s plagiarized the greats. The other stories are all good just slightly below these two. I liked the thematic connections between the stores. The Hungry Ghosts reminded me of her novel, Unholy Loves which I really liked.
RATING