The promised improvement report: I am feeling a good bit better about the world today, owing in large part to have found somewhere else to sleep last night where I didn't have to wear a hood to bed. This is not a permanent solution, I know, but I'll work on one of those next week. It may involve an oil drum; stay tuned.
In keeping with my theme of devastating literature, yesterday I read Joyce Carol Oates's Where are you going, where have you been? and may never get over it. What she achieves in this story is amazingly harrowing, and then you pull out of the story and feel like you've gone so far from reality, but really you haven't at all. Bizarre, amazing, and not for the timid--you were warned.
Warmly,
RR
Rebecca Rosenblum...
is a writer and editor who likes a lot of stuff. This is a blog about that stuff, and also her writing. Rebecca is the writer-in-residence at Jean Vanier High School, and was a juror for The Journey Prize 21. Her work has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the Danuta Gleed Award and the National Magazine Award. Her first book of short stories, Once, was published by Biblioasis and was one of Quill & Quire's 15 Books That Mattered in 2008. Rebecca's stories are occasionally seen in Canadian periodicals and her second collection, *The Big Dream,* is forthcoming from Biblioasis.
2 comments:
Oh, I know that story--read it over and over years ago. I found it in a collection called Best American Stories that was edited by Raymond Carver (ie. it's a few decades old). Worth finding, if you can. There are a bunch of amazing stories in there.
I feel the need to comment on this because I'm always hearing grumpy things about Joyce Carol Oates. Her selected (or collected?) stories, "High Lonesome," is amazing. I was blown away by several stories. If I had my copy on hand, I could list them.
If you like JCA, look up Rebecca Brown -- "The Terrible Girls."
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