The lost landscape : a writer's coming of age

Item Detail Information

Copies

1 Total copies, 1 Copies are in, 0 Copies are out.

"Joyce Carol Oates' vivid chronicle of her hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State. From memories of her relatives, to those of a charming bond with a special red hen on her family farm; from her first friendships to her earliest experiences with death, a powerful evocation of the romance of childhood, and its indelible influence on the woman and the writer she would become. Oates explores the world through the eyes of her younger self, an imaginative girl eager to tell stories about the world and the people she meets. While reading Alice in Wonderland changed a young Joyce forever and inspired her to view life as a series of endless adventures, growing up on a farm taught her harsh lessons about sacrifice, hard work, and loss. With searing detail and an acutely perceptive eye, Oates renders her memories and emotions with exquisite precision, transporting us to a forgotten place and time -- the lost landscape of her youth, reminding us of the forgotten landscapes of our own earliest lives. Joyce Carol Oates has written over forty novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has taught at Princeton University since 1978"--Provided by publisher.

Share It:

Availability Summary MARC Reviews Additional Info

Summary Note

"Joyce Carol Oates' vivid chronicle of her hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State. From memories of her relatives, to those of a charming bond with a special red hen on her family farm; from her first friendships to her earliest experiences with death, a powerful evocation of the romance of childhood, and its indelible influence on the woman and the writer she would become. Oates explores the world through the eyes of her younger self, an imaginative girl eager to tell stories about the world and the people she meets. While reading Alice in Wonderland changed a young Joyce forever and inspired her to view life as a series of endless adventures, growing up on a farm taught her harsh lessons about sacrifice, hard work, and loss. With searing detail and an acutely perceptive eye, Oates renders her memories and emotions with exquisite precision, transporting us to a forgotten place and time -- the lost landscape of her youth, reminding us of the forgotten landscapes of our own earliest lives. Joyce Carol Oates has written over forty novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has taught at Princeton University since 1978"--Provided by publisher.

Content Note

Author's note -- We Begin -- Mommy & Me -- Happy Chicken: 1942-1944 -- Discovering Alice: 1947 -- District School #7, Niagara County, New York -- Piper Cub -- After Black Rock -- Sunday Drive -- Fred's Signs -- "They All Just Went Away" -- "Where Had God Gone" -- Headlights: The First Death -- "The Brush" -- An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend -- "Start Your Own Business!" -- The Lost Sister: An Elegy -- Nighthawk: Recollections of a Lost Time -- Detroit: Lost City 1962-1968 -- Story Into Film: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" and Smooth Talk -- Photo Shoot: West Eleventh Street, NYC, March 6, 1970 -- Food Mysteries -- Facts, Visions, Mysteries: My Father Frederic Oates, November 1988 -- A Letter to My Mother Carolina on Here Seventy-Eighth Birthday, November 8, 1994 -- "When I Was a Little Girl And My Mother Didn't Want Me" -- Excerpt, Telephone Conversation with My Father Frederic Oates, May 1999 -- The Long Romance -- My Mother's Quilts -- Afterword.