Joyce Carol Oates Interview (page: 6 / 9) National Book Award	Print Interview

How could you explain to somebody who knows nothing about your field what makes it so exciting?

Joyce Carol Oates: Writing? The field of writing is filled with tension. Any kind of artistic activity is. It's not, I think, psychologically healthy in some ways. It's very agitating and turbulent. I spoke of teaching, which I find very restful and peaceful and rewarding and invigorating. Teaching is a social activity. Creating out of one's imagination is solitary. And I find that it's fraught with anxiety much of the time. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I think people who are artists will be artists. And some of them will have tremendous psychological strain. I can't look in the mirror and say to myself that it will be worth the ordeal. Because we don't really know till we're all finished whether the ordeal was worth it.

For you, is the teaching kind of a balance to the writing? A balance between extroversion and introversion?

Joyce Carol Oates: That may be. I do like writing., it's just that I feel it isn't very easy. I don't have children, but if I had a child who went into a creative field I would be worried.

How do you deal with criticism?

Joyce Carol Oates: I don't know. I've been writing since 1963. I've gotten a lot of criticism.

Most people don't get criticism. They don't know what others are saying about them behind their backs. Politicians, film makers, actors, people on television, writers -- anyone in the public eye gets a lot of criticism. And much of it is somewhat ill-spirited, or it's mean. So how can one divide the spiteful criticism from what might be a constructive criticism? Many writers don't read the critics, and I sometimes don't read criticism. Even if it's a good review. I may get a stack of reviews and some of them are maybe wonderful. I find that I may not read them right at the moment because they're very distracting.
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I'm sort of enthralled with what I'm working on, caught up in this activity that I'm trying to wrestle with. And sometimes I'm given a literary award in the midst of a crisis of writing. And I feel that I don't deserve the award. There's a profound irony. People are saying nice things about me, but I know that back home I'm having such a problem that I don't feel I deserve the award. I have to be very careful what I say. I'm polite and discreet, and I sort of go along with this ceremony. Ultimately, we measure ourselves against our own ideas of idealism and perfection, and we don't always come very close to them.

Have you ever been truly afraid? Afraid that something was going to throw you irreparably?

Joyce Carol Oates: Well, there's psychological fear and physical fear. I've had some physical frights, but I've probably never had a panic reaction in my whole life. I'm sure I will some day. I've been on airplanes in very turbulent weather and sometimes had to turn around and go back to the airport. I should have felt some panic then, but I felt a kind of resignation which doesn't seem very normal somehow. I'm sure that under the right circumstances I feel a lot of panic and adrenaline.

Fear of another nature is more intellectual. I know there are abysses that lie ahead. Maybe I've had fearful episodes and I've denied them. The human mind can't bear much reality, so we're often in a state of denial and amnesia about things that we've experienced. I tend to be very hard on myself and very self-critical so I'm not sure if I can really credit that.

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