Joyce Carol Oates reveals the real reason her writing is so dark — rebellious roosters

Writers and Company52:11Prolific and daring author Joyce Carol Oates on her childhood, widowhood and concerns about American society

Born during the Depression in Lockport, New York, Joyce Carol Oates started writing as a teen and has since written more than one hundred books, many of them portraying the darkness of American society. Her writing has earned her virtually every major American literary prize, as well as Montreal’s Blue Metropolis Grand Prix in 2012. After accepting that prize, she joined Eleanor Wachtel on stage to talk about her life, her work and her latest novel, Mudwoman.

As Writers & Company wraps up after a remarkable 33-year run, we're revisiting episodes selected from the show's archive. 

Novelist, short story writer, essayist, poet, playwright, editor and teacher, Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most daring and prolific contemporary authors. Her most recent works include the collection of four decades worth of correspondence, Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer, the short story collection Zero-Sum: Stories and the novel Butcher.

Now 86 years old, Oates was a child of the Depression and grew up in Millersport, New York. When she was 15, she submitted a manuscript to a publisher, a novel about an addict who recovers by looking after a black stallion. It was rejected as too depressing for the market of young readers at the time. 

At 19, she won the Mademoiselle College Fiction Award and since then she's won virtually every major American literary prize, increasingly for lifetime achievement, such as the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, honorary degrees and the 2012 Blue Metropolis Grand Prix in Montreal. 

Eleanor Wacthel spoke with her on stage at the festival after her win — and the two discussed the need to forget part of the past, Oates' love of animals and the lessons they've taught her.  

The importance of forgetting

"I get very excited and sort of emotionally overwhelmed by some visual sights and some smells, like a lilac can just cast me back into a deep past and I feel helpless and broken in the spell of that past. It's like I've transfixed or I'm mesmerized. In that state, which is not unlike a dream state in which we're sort of paralyzed, you're not really moving. You're moving in your dream consciousness, but you're not actually moving. I feel that some revelation will come, but I don't know what it is. 

"Much of Mudwoman is based upon that kind of going back and into some clause, a forbidden part of the past. We have all forgotten things in our pasts and it may be a good thing. It's good. Maybe amnesia is therapeutic and so if you're bringing these memories back, they may be very disturbing. 

"We all have told ourselves narratives about our childhoods and about our parents and our grandparents and we don't really want those disturbed by an actual memory or historic fact.

These emotions are best dealt with through the prism of art.- Joyce Carol Oates

"I think that these emotions are best dealt with through the prism of art. It's like the image of Medusa with the snakes on her head. You can approach Medusa with a mirror and you see the image of Medusa in the mirror.

"That's a symbol of art. But you don't look directly at Medusa because then you're struck dumb or you turn to stone or you're destroyed or something. That's a very good parable."

Life as a succession of cats

"Animals are a very important part of my life, especially cats. There's always been a succession of cats in my life, and one could say, as in a fairy tale, that my life has been a succession of cats, of overlapping cats, sometimes as many as four and now only one. 

"I may be under a spell or a curse or something that I have to have a cat and if I don't have a cat in my life, then my life's over. I mean, it's like a fairy tale."

What she learned from roosters

"I have strong memories of taking care of the chickens. I think it's very important for children to be responsible for something, maybe a pet, feeding them, taking care of them. I took care of the cats and I took care of the chickens. 

"I would go out, when I was quite little, and I would scatter the seed and call the chickens. They would all come running, they're flapping their wings and they're very excited and they start pecking. I think it gives one a false sense of importance. 'Oh, well, look how popular I am!' 

"They don't care about you at all. They just start pecking right away. I'd stay there looking at this and feel sort of happy. Then, the rooster would come running and would peck me in the knee and hurt me.

People say, 'Why is your writing so dark?' It's because of the rooster.- Joyce Carol Oates

"I'd cry and I thought, 'Well, why does the rooster peck me when I've been feeding him?' That question, why does the rooster affect the little girl who's been feeding him? That's the most profound question.

"Why is there evil in the world? People say, 'Why is your writing so dark?' It's because of the rooster."

Joyce Carol Oates' comments have been edited for length and clarity.