The Tragic Vision of Joyce Carol Oates by Mary Kathryn Grant, R.S.M. (review)

Studies in American Fiction247 But the fiction involved is just not that uniformly poor. Rereading Berzon's disappointing sections on Faulkner—she trips over the fact that Joe Christmas may in fact not be a mulatto, for instance—convinces me that the limits are less those dictated by the works themselves than those of the critic. Berzon prefers a procedure which permits a reliance on reductive generalities and plot summaries suggesting a flatness of tone in every work, an absence of artistic consciousness, no interest in structure, and no tension between authorial intention and execution. And the procedure sometimes causes internal trouble in her discussion whenever the works and her better instincts conspire against her method; for example, she objects (mistakenly, I believe) to one critic's observation that in The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man the protagonist's weakness stems from his own character and not essentially from society, only to agree later with the same critic that the protagonist suffers from an avoidance of decisions which would give substance to his life (pp. 157, 158). There are several other matters, mostly irritating tics, padding, repetition, and inconsistencies in presentation that good copy-editing could have eliminated. But enough of this; I have already come down harder on the book than I had hoped. I should also note the occasional moments when Berzon succeeds, such as her suggestion of how William Dean Howells' An Imperative Duty reverses the conventional fictional pattern of the tragic mulatto and her discussion, albeit anticipated by previous studies, of Robert Penn Warren's Band of Angels. As I said earlier, the book provides a useful synthesis. If it lacks sufficient critical sophistication to be a distinctive act of literary scholarship, it is something of a pioneer study. Others will come along and explore more rigorously the territory roughly mapped by Berzon. And for that incentive we can be appreciative. University of Texas at AustinWilliam J. Scheick Grant, Mary Kathryn, R.S.M. The Tragic Vision ofJoyce Carol Oates. Durham: Duke University Press, 1978. 164 pp. Cloth: $9.75. Since 1963, when her first volume of short stories appeared, Joyce Carol Oates has published nine novels, nine volumes of short stories, two volumes of critical essays, and several books of poetry. Her short stories have appeared in both scholarly and popular periodicals and in numerous anthologies, and, since 1963, have been included regularly in the annual volume Best American Short Stories. Oates's honors include the O'Henry Award, which she received in 1967 and 1970, and the National Book Award for them in 1970. In view of her awesome productivity and the plaudits she has received, it is somewhat surprising that her work has received relatively little scholarly attention. Although Oates has been the subject of a number of recent doctoral dissertations, and although several articles about her fiction have appeared in scholarly periodicals, Mary Kathryn Grant's book is the first full-length study on Oates. Grant's thematic study deals with Oates's first six novels and her short stories, poetry, and criticism that were published between 1963 and 1973. The book is divided into five chapters, the first examining Oates's theory of art; the second her vision of violence; the third her notions concerning the loss of community; the fourth her language of tragedy and violence; and the fifth her tragic vision. Focusing throughout the study on Oates's 248Reviews preoccupation with the despair and violence of contemporary life, Grant concludes nevertheless that Oates's view of existence ultimately is affirmative: "If there is one overriding concern throughout her works, it is this: to bring to the awareness of her readers her belief that life, however chaotic and tragic, yields a meaning finally not only to be perceived but to be embraced" (p. 137). Although Grant's book provides an adequate overview of Oates's writing, I believe that neither the casual reader nor the scholar will find this study very satisfying: the former no doubt will be bewildered by Grant's numerous plot summaries and sketches of characters from a multitude of novels and short stories; and the latter will discover that the categories Grant has established to...