Joyce Carol Oates Interview

When was it that you first realized what you wanted to do?

Joyce Carol Oates: I began writing when I was very young. Even before I could write, I was emulating adult handwriting. So I began writing, in a sense, before I was able to write. But I didn't think about being a writer. I think, like many children, I was just exploring different kinds of creativity, drawing and painting. I was making up little songs and singing and so forth. Writing happened to be something that I stayed with.

Did adults notice that you had this proclivity?

Joyce Carol Oates: Yes, I think they did. I was always encouraged. We were living on a small farm in upstate New York, and it wasn't really an environment that was particularly receptive to children being creative. I went to a one-room schoolhouse. So I more or less just found my own way. But the adults in my family were very supportive and very warm.

What impact do you think your family and early environment had on your work?

Joyce Carol Oates: I've always been so interested in personal history. I'm very fascinated by my parents' and my grandparents' generations. I seem to think that they had a resilience and an integrity that may be somewhat deficient in my own generation, and in subsequent generations as well, because America has been rather easy to live in since the Depression. So, I've been so interested in my parents' generation. And probably out of that respect -- a curiosity for what they lived through -- grew my fascination with subject matter.
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What was the first thing you wanted to write about?

Joyce Carol Oates: The first things I ever wrote about were the animals and the farm. I love animals. I'm very close to animals, and I've lived with animals for quite a while. That goes back to childhood. I was writing about cats and writing about horses.

When did it become clear that you were going to pursue writing? Did you set a course for yourself?

Joyce Carol Oates: I was so interested in acquiring a voice or a sensibility. I was 14 years old when I was started to read William Faulkner. I was walking through a small library in Lockport, New York, and I saw some books on display. I picked up this book, which was a critical biography of Faulkner. I had vaguely heard of him because he had won the Nobel prize. I looked at it, and I got very drawn into it. So I began reading Faulkner when I was 14 or 15 years old, and then emulating him in my writing.

I was also drawn to Hemingway who is, in some respects, the polar opposite of Faulkner. So I began a kind of apprentice life, I think, without knowing what I was doing.

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