SpoilersJoyce Carol Oates' 'Them' is a dark yet beautiful piece of with. At times, it reminds me of Flannery O'Connor, or McCullers southern gothic style—'Them', although considered a work of 'realistic fiction', is just slightly insane, like someone chatty Cathy waiting at a lonely bus stop with you at 2am. Its imbalance is betrayed rather in the lines of its face than any suspect reasoning.This story runs across two generations in a white working class family. 'Them''s characters carry all the acrid prejudice one may have towards a world which, while providing a standard of living never known before, is crumbling at their feet. As we read through this 540-odd pages book, we see the younger generation as it fights to adapt to the demands of their ever-changing circumstances--in this case, adaptation means a complete reinvention. '[...] and the essence of it was that they had all come very close to the edge of something, their parents especially, and some of the older people had breathed this in and turned terrified and helpless for life, but they, the young, they with their new babies and their new husbands were on their way up and never would the bottom fall out again. The government in Washington was like a net set up not ten feet below them, to save them.'By and large, Jules and Maureen are symbols of the male-female dichotomy of 40s-60s America. Jules mind is constantly going back to the broad plains of his early youth which yawned with possibilities. '"Someday I will change all this [thought Jules]He thought of a wilderness, land out West; a golden sky or perhaps a golden field of wheat... mountains... rivers... something unmapped...' Detroit offers Jules no solace in this regard. His aggressive response? Let 'fire do its duty' and burn the whole lot! Start over, and forget the past with it. Jules is a character constantly reinventing himself (much like his namesake, Julien Sorel, of The Red and the Black) but Detroit can only offer so much... his striving to do right by people, to fulfill the roles past down to the American male only provide for troubles. And America's role models? Movie actors, gangsters, and sorry saps like Bernard, the strange nouveau riche poser.Maureen is takes a different tack to reinvention. She, like Jules, is absolute in her determination to forget her past. But rather than loudly drown out the past with fire she wishes to silence it, to stifle it. She wants nothing more than security, peace and quiet, everything that was lacking in the noisy Wendell household (the Library is her only escape...). She wants nothing more than a comfortable seat safe from the hardship of her youth, the abyss of the lower classes. Her paranoia on this count ran deep...'She would not grow up to into a normal woman:something would catch her and hold her back, some snag, some failure to have dreamed her way out of childhood.'Maureen makes a symbolic decision to enter into prostitution--there is no love in the life of Maureen, only security. She sells her body for the dull comforts of mere mental well-being. This well being comes in only one form, money. When beaten by her stepfather for taking money for sex, her crusade becomes a sentient one. She becomes the famle architype, waiting to be rescued from her 'situation'.'We are the ones who leaf through magazines with colored pictures and spend long heavy hours sunk in our bodies, thinking, remembering dreaming, waiting for something to come to us and give a shape to so much pain.'While Jules and Maureen wish to accomplish similar goals, that is, to reinvent themselves, Jules is the more obviously aggressive approach. But the particular violence of Maureens approach was incredibly interesting. Not only does she do violence to herself, but she bears a hatred for disorder. She imagines her attitude towards what might one day be her children when thinking on her rambunctious younger sister, Betty... 'As she walked she muttered to herself about what she would do if she was old enough to be a mother: how she would take care of all those kids, punish them when they needed it, give them a good slap and a good spanking even, for the worst of her kids like her sister Betty, find some dark wet place—the "dungeon" under the veranda and nail her up into it until she was good.'Who is Betty? The criminal younger sister. The 'youth'. Oates pays less attention to Betty, and in effect she remains a sort of newspaper headline--*YOUTH ROBS ELDERLY* type thing.Jules' salvation eventually comes by way of removing himself from Detroit and reinventing himself completely in California under the wing of someone else's revolution. Maureen's comes from marriage (what else?) to a married man. In both cases, they persevered, in both cases, their success to escape their past resulted in a life that was somewhat not their own...I'm not going to be able to convince you of this book's brilliance in a simple little review, so just read the damn thing! That's good enough for now. I highly highly highly highly recommend this book!
As a stranger in the World According to Joyce Carol Oates, I established one essential fact in reading them: The woman is indeed a superb writer. From page one, this novel (published when Oates was 31), pulls you in with its confident rhythms, sharp dialogue, and natural storytelling ease. It's the sordid and surreal chronicle of a "white trash" family in Detroit, spanning the years 1937 to 1967. Loretta Wendall is the family's crude, optimistic matriarch; her children Maureen and Jules struggle to fashion lives for themselves, against the odds, in a rapidly changing America.them is not a for readers seeking warm, sympathetic characters or spiritual uplift; it's quite an ugly book, though a fascinating and compelling one. You never exactly care for Loretta, Maureen, or Jules, but you sure want to see what happens to them.And oh the things that happen. In the first 60 pages Loretta loses her virginity, wakes up to find her boyfriend shot by her brother, and marries a policeman who helps cover up the crime. There are plane crashes, fires, prostitution, rapes, throat-slittings, mental breakdowns, shootings, and, in a bravura set-piece finale, the ’67 Detroit race riots. It's a catalogue of modern Gothic horrors that grows increasingly bizarre as the story progresses.Not all of it works. A sequence where Jules drives to Texas with Nadine, an upper-middle-class teenager from the suburb of Grosse Pointe, bogs down in the psychodynamics of their twisted relationship. The portrait of ’60s campus revolutionaries feels like social parody long past its expiry date. But Oates taps into so many highly charged currents—the violence of American life, the powerlessness of women in society, the inevitable disillusionments of growing up—that the reader can never quite write them off as just a crackpot soap opera. The book is disturbing, and it's unforgettable.
What do You think about Them (2006)?
Very close to 5 stars for me. A few favorite passages (among many):"She drifted down to the library whenever she was free. Growing up and moving away from home was somehow linked in her mind with the library--the library at night, with its silence and openness. Anything might happen. Nothing happened but anything might.""She stared at these pictures, aware of having failed though she was still young; her failure was tied up somehow with her being unable to sleep. She would not grow up into a normal woman: something would catch her and hold her back, some snag, some failure to have dreamed her way out of childhood.""'. . . [T]here's something sympathetic about you. You have an intelligent victim's face.'" "It was like the rifle shot that had been fired through the window of a friend of Loretta's, in August. A shot had rung out, a bullet had crashed through the window and gone into a wall, and nothing else--some screaming, some alarm, but nothing else. A rifle is fired, but most of the time a rifle is not fired. Nothing follows.""He was perpetually waiting for something to happen--anxious that it might happen and that it might not happen. He had no idea what it could be."And in closing, you know what they say: "Fire burns and does its duty."
—Parenthetical Grin
I'm not really sure what I thought of this book - I didn't quite like it, but it was better than just OK (I'd prefer to give it 2.5 stars). Part of this is probably because I read most of it while I was a little out of it over the weekend, due to my poor (nonexistent?) ability to deal with the humidity & heat down here. I probably owe it a re-read someday.Anyway, this is the third book in Oates' Wonderland series. This one follows members of the Wendall family -- mom Loretta, daughter Maureen and son Jules -- in Detroit in the 50s and 60s. There is lots of abuse and questionable behavior from all parties. Here, as in many of her books and stories, most of the women seem to be unable or unwilling to take control of their lives. The women especially are constantly making connections with men because that is the only way they can see a way forward in life, and naturally they make mostly bad choices. A lot of the book reads like a fever dream (which is heightened if you are kind of out of it due to the heat & humidity and need of a good night's sleep -- very weird experience), especially passages from Jules' point of view. I was never quite sure if it was caused because he was high or if it was just the way he thought (sometimes it was clear that it was because he hadn't eaten that day, so maybe this was the case a lot of the time?).I don't think I would necessarily recommend this to people who aren't already fans of Oates, but if you like something that is occasionally a little bit surreal, and features characters whose main personality traits are magnified to caricature, you might like this.
—Alison
Joyce Carol Oates is an author I have come to love. I start to read one of her books and I cannot stop. I fall into her stories, her characters, her narrative. This book is no different. It is an epic tale of a family plagued by murder, death, spousal beatings, child abuse, prostitution and fire. Oh, and a riot. This is not even including the dashed hopes, lowered expectations, poverty and general sanity. The author gives us a lot of inner dialogue, and I wonder, does she think everyone is insane? Is everyone insane? It's juicy, that's for sure. Lurid and gothic, but oh so tasty and compelling. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is that the love stuff was a little ick, but that could be me. I am often made sick by literary explanations of new love.
—Rachel
