Oates's latest novel is a big, breathless, complex, and sometimes painfully intense tale relating one man's every thought and move during the 1992 Memorial Day weekend. Corky Corcoran is a cocky, Irish Catholic, alcoholic, self-made millionaire as well as a city council member in Union City, New York. The turning point for Corky comes with the suicide of Marilee Plummer, a beautiful, politically ambitious black woman who had recently accused a black city council member of raping her. Even in his befuddled, alcoholic state, Corky wonders if his political friends had orchestrated Marilee's death and calls for a full investigation that antagonizes city government. Despite a somewhat contrived climax, Oates has created a remarkably detailed portrait of a man's life; however, Corky, an essentially stupid man whose actions are usually governed by his sexual or violent impulses, doesn't seem to merit such concentrated scrutiny.
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[God erupted in thunder and shattering glass] ***(Picador, 1 December 1995 (first published 1994, paperback, 608 pages, bought from Amazon)
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Oh dear, I didn't get on very well with this one. What I Lived For starts of really well. The opening is great, intense, dramatic, gripping. I thought this was a sign I was in for a treat. Sadly, this impression did not last. By the time Part II gets going I was just praying for this doorstop of a mess to end. There is too much in this book and not in a good way. The prose is so dense it's almost suffocating. The repetition did my nut in. Corky Corcoran is a crap name for a character and the endless regurgitation of both words started to wear me down after a few chapters. I'm not a huge fan of stream-of-consciousness style and JCO uses it in What I Lived For. I hated it. I was disinterested with the book after less than halfway but slogged through until the end. I only have a few titles of JCO's back-catalogue to read and I hope they fare better.
