Article published April 27, 2008
Joyce Carol Oates takes license with writers' life stories
She imagines the final days of Hemingway and other literary giants
By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
WILD NIGHTS!: STORIES ABOUT THE LAST DAYS OF POE, DICKINSON, TWAIN, JAMES AND HEMINGWAY. By Joyce Carol Oates. Ecco. 238 pages. $24.95
The incredible Joyce Carol Oates is on top of her game in this breezy collection of short stories in which she creates imaginary endings for the lives of five literary giants while emulating their writing styles.
There are moments of humor, horror, and suspense as Oates probes Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Ernest Hemingway with a credible examination of their inner turmoil and angst.
Poe's madness is examined through a diary he maintains as the keeper of a lighthouse, so alone he convinces himself that he's the last human on Earth. He seeks companionship from his beloved terrier, Mercury, though his insanity builds with each entry.
Dickinson is resurrected for a futuristic story in which figures from the past have been made into robots. This story is the one exception to Oates' probing the psyche of a famous writer, because the Dickinson robot lacks the human feelings that its owner craves.
Oates takes perhaps the greatest risk with her treatment of Twain, reducing the charming, affable Samuel Clemens to a manipulative, grandfatherly figure indifferent toward his adult daughter and obsessed with certain young girls - especially one he calls his "Angelfish." He feels they are the right age to fit his perception of sweetness and innocence.
Henry James is portrayed as a determined volunteer in a British hospital during World War I, someone addicted to helping patients. And Hemingway's mind is poked and prodded, with Oates dreaming up the possibilities of what he went through during his last days in Ketchum, Idaho.This book is a bold project, one few writers could have pulled off with this level of success.
Oates is one of them. Her keen insight into her subjects comes through, but so does her love for literary mischief in a slightly dark and macabre way.
The finales she has conceived for this fivesome has the potential to ignite some controversy, yet Oates is simply doing a great job of what the most gifted writers do best: Use their imagination.
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.
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