Beautiful Days audiobook

For all the daring stylistic variations and rich diversity of subject matter found in Beautiful Days, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest collection of short stories, there is a common theme throughout of disruptively close encounters with the “other.” At the Key West Literary Seminar in 2012, Oates gave a talk titled ‘Close Encounters with the Other’ and in this session she describes how “There comes a time in our lives when we realize that other people are not projections of ourselves - that we can’t really identify with them. We might sympathize or empathize with them, but we can’t really know them fully. They are other and they are opaque.” So in these stories characters strive for connections which often tragically break down. These encounters document the awkward or sometimes violent clashes that occur between individuals who are so dissimilar there is an unbreachable rupture in understanding. The factors that divide these characters include issues such as romantic intention, gender, age, race, class, education and nationality. Oates creates a wide array of situations and richly complex characters to show the intense drama that arises from clashes surrounding these subjects.Read my full review of Beautiful Days by Joyce Carol Oates on LonesomeReader

Perspektiv som med en van författarhand skiftas, knappt märkbart. Läsaren följer naturligt med i vändningarna. Oates för läsaren tryggt mellan nutid och minnen, lika naturligt som det vore ebb och flod. Det är livfulla dialoger, och precis som allt annat Oates skriver känns det angeläget. Hon undersöker karaktärernas gränser – moraliska och sociala – utan att en enda gång falla ner från den lina hon balanserar.

Joyce Carol Oates is a celebrated writer who looks deep into the lives of people as if the reader is looking through a window at the intimate details off the people inside who assert themselves in defiance with acts that open up the secret lives they had so desperately tried to hide. The first story is "Fleuve Blue"and in it the intimacy of lovers who are married to other people in a way that opens up the honesty behind the façade of a marriage which shows the reader the complicated detail that end in shocking results, The second story is "Big Burnt" set in the lush landscape of Lake George in in the Adirondacks. A cunningly manipulative university professor exploits of a too-trusting women in a way she could never have anticipated. The third story "Les beauxex jours" examines the erotic exploitive relationship between an artist and his adoring young female model. And the tragic "Undocumented Alien" depicts a young Africa student in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage. Joyce has mastered the art of delving into the secret lives of her characters in such a way that the reader feels as if they understand the motives for their actions. Gillian Flynn , author of Gone Girl claims Joyce is, "Simply the most consistently Inventive, brilliant, curious , and creative writer going"

This is a remarkably effective and intense collection, so I would suggest reading it when you’re in a good state of mind. Joyce Carol Oates’ words cut sharp and deep; there’s nothing gentle about her prose. One story in particular, Fractal, completely destroyed me.Some other reviewers claim that these are not Oates’ best stories. This is actually the only Oates I’ve read, and I can’t even imagine how her work could get any better than this. Now, I’m beyond excited to read more of her stories!

First off I read many of Joyce Carol Oates writing yearly. This has some amazing stories. Where does she get the thoughts for what she creates? Her writing Her characters the circumstances the relationships between the people...... When you read one of her stories you do not have everything resolved with all the pieces of the puzzle still in some disarray. There are some amazing stories here. How about the woman who drives her very strange son to the Fractal Museum in Portland and then he disappears inside the maze.... The woman who was madly in love w her husband who is 20 y older and she inherited his very disturbed and disconnected daughter who dies in a bizarre suicidal accident and then travels with him on cruise to south america. Or the woman in her 40s who goes on a trip w man she hadnt seen in years who is suicidal. Excellent book! judy

Eclectic is the only way to describe this collection of 11 very different stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. Some are absolutely riveting to read, while others are…well, kind of weird. But this IS Joyce Carol Oates, so each one is a little literary masterpiece.My favorite is the first story, "Fleuve Bleu" in which a couple having a secret adulterous affair vow to be totally honest with each other in a way they aren't in their respective marriages. The outcome is heartbreaking. "Except You Bless Me," about a young college instructor and a particularly difficult and obstinate student is by turns frightening and enlightening. "Fractal" was one of the stories I found incredibly riveting, but I'm not sure I fully understood it. One thing each story has in common: They delve into the souls and psyches of the characters, sometimes in mundane ways and other times in deeply startling ways but always in a way that elucidates what it means to be fully human. Chances are, you will learn something about yourself in at least one of the stories.These erudite short stories are not easy reads. All require the reader to think, pay attention, and continue thinking when the book is closed. But then again, that's classic Joyce Carol Oates.

Still savoring the words and imagination of Joyce Carol Oates. At one time in my life, I wrote and realized how difficult and emotionally draining it was. What really brought it home to me was reading my first book of short stories by JCO. She is what I wanted to be and didn’t have the talent to be.So I became a reader, and the world certainly needs readers, so I tell myself.This is a book of short and hypnotic stories. Reading along, I imagine the ending...but she fools me every time and I love it! She is the master of the short story! She is also equally a perfectionist at novel writing...WE WERE THE MULVANEYS, etc.I hope my enthusiasm will lure someone into reading the lady who, in my mind, is the finest writer of our century.

"...he didn't like irony unless it was his own." (location 370, "Fleuve Bleu")"He wanted to breathe the knife-sharp winter air, wanted to feel his senses quiver with life and with yearning. Overhead the night sky pulsed with its own mysterious life. Futile to point out that the stars you see are long extinct -- their light was not extinct, dazzling the eyes." (location 462, "Fleuve Blue")"Love is what can't be helped. When it waxes, and when it wanes.Love is what happens when you're looking another way.Love is that sensation of something on the back of your neck, tell yourself it's nothing, a strand of hair, at last you touch it and discover it's an insect -- you cast off with a curse." (locations 760-762, "Fleuve Bleu")"...the weakness of the man is the strength of the woman." (location 1076, "Big Burnt")"...she seemed to open herself to such hurt, and to recoil from it belatedly, like a kind of sea anemone that is exquisitely beautiful but fragile." (location 1321, "Big Burnt")"You want a record, a commemoration of an interlude so intensely lived. You believe that you do." (location 1379, "Big Burnt")"The great drama of nature scarcely involved humankind at all. The great drama was evolution in which human effort -- 'civilization' -- was but recent, and fleeting. There should have been a grim satisfaction in the knowledge that the primitive creatures of these islands -- lizards, snakes, sea turtles, crabs, insects, iguanas -- shorebirds perched on rocks amid pyramids of whitish droppings -- would outlive Homo sapiens; but of course, there was not.The wife thought -- Each of us thinks, I will be spared! I am someone, something special.Even thinking such a thought, the thinker is seduced, and deceived." (location 3007, "The Bereaved")"''Why me?'' because there is no one else.'Very solemnly the child spoke as if issuing a decree. In his voice which the mother worried was too thin, too soprano for one soon to enter the maelstrom of middle school.'What do you mean, 'no one else?' I don't understand.''From the beginning of the universe. Determined to be you. It could not be anyone else in the driver's seat, because it is you.'In his solemn methodical way Oliver spoke to the mother as one might speak to a classmate who is having difficulty with a homework assignment. Sweetly patient, not condescending.'That doesn't make sense, Olly. Of course it could be someone else, and I could be somewhere else. Why on earth not?''It isn't like that, Mom. Because if the person driving this vehicle is you that is all the proof you need that there is no one else it could have been, and there is nowhere else you could be except here. And the same is true for me.'" (locations 3869-3876, "Fractal")"For each house designed by an architect, Oliver explained, was actually two houses: the one people lived in, and were meant to see; and the other, which they were not meant to see but which was preserved in the architect's plans." (location 3980, "Fractal")"'What you think is a straight line,' Oliver says, 'actually isn't. There are all these little breaks and creases, that go on forever.' The child speaks with a sort of grim glee as if forever were not a terrifying prospect.'Oh. But -- why?''Just is, Mom.''I mean, why pursue it? Why would you want to know so much that has no use?'Oliver retorts that most of science is 'useless' -- plus math, fractal geometry. That something is useless is not a description of its essential properties but is irrelevant. Useful is also irrelevant." (location 4199, "Fractal")"The mother wonders: is there such a thing as fractal-time? She feels a thrill of dread that this must be so. Each hour, each minute, each second broken down into its components, to infinity; and in each, an alternative fate of which she knows nothing.Up close, life is but life. At a little distance, life is fate." (location 4215, "Fractal")"The fear that our likenesses will outlive us. The image of a being in a (future) time in which the being has ceased to exist." (location 4250, "Fractal")"'An architect is the one looking down, and in.'" (location 4608, "Fractal")Edward Hopper, Eleven A.M., 1926

This is one of the more bizarre and challenging of Oates’s short story collections that I have encountered, especially the stories in Section II. The Section I stories are more typical Oates: these stories examine relationships and the interior lives of the characters, which is typical of Oates’s work. From the inner sleeve: “‘Fleuve Bleu’ exemplifies the rich sensuousness of Oates’s prose as lovers married to other persons vow to establish, in their intimacy, a ruthlessly honest, truth-telling authenticity missing elsewhere in their complicated lives, with unexpected results. In ‘Big Burnt,’ set on lushly rendered Lake George in the Adirondacks, a cunningly manipulative university professor exploits a too-trusting woman in a way she could never have anticipated.” In “Owl Eyes” a precocious eleven-year-old taking a college math class runs into a man who claims to be a former lover of his mother. “Except You Bless Me” is about an adjunct professor who fears that one of her students coming in for a conference has been sending her disturbing and hateful anonymous letters. In “The Quiet Car,” first published in Harper’s (so this was my second read), a college professor encounters a woman at the train station who attended one of his seminars some 25 years earlier. His reminiscences of her vary significantly from her own. In “The Bereaved,” the final story in Section I, a married couple struggles with intimacy after the death of a child. The stories in Section II have far more unconventional structures. From the inner sleeve: “In a more experimental but no less intimate mode, ‘Les beaux jours’ examines the amibiguities of an intensely erotic, exploitative relationship between a ‘master’ artist and his adoring young female model.” The story is inspired by a painting of the same name (“The Beautiful Days”) by the controversial painter Balthus. “Fractal” is hallucinogenic and surreal and is about a mother who takes her precocious son to the Fractal Museum in Maine--or does she? “Undocumented Alien” recounts the tragic story of a young African student enrolled in an American university who becomes a research subject for a secretive project. “Donald Barthelme saved from Oblivion” can only be appreciated by those familiar with Barthelme’s life and work; otherwise, the allusions to both Barthelme’s life and style will make no sense to the reader. The final story, “The Memorial Field at Hazard, Minnesota”--the shortest in the collection at only seven pages--is also surreal and symbolic. In this story the president of the United States is forced to dig up the graves of thousands of dead soldiers who lost their lives due to the president’s decisions. What an imagination!

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is one of my all-time favorite stories. So. I decided to seek out more of her stories, and can see here, with these different kinds of stories, why she is the master. In this collection, she knows the world of academia (trust me) and the egos, ambitions, and insecurities in that world, and as always she knows people and relationships--what they want, what they withhold. "Owl Eyes" and "The Quiet Car," hit the perfect notes of that academic world. Many of the stories resist closure (such as "The Bereaved") but then so does life. Included is her 2017 Pushcart-winning "Undocumented Alien"--so disturbing, topical that turns into a dark speculative tale. Another standout is the Gothic, "Les beaux jour," about a girl inside a painting. The story reads like Angela Carter and Donna Tart cast from Coppola's Dracula. Definitely a creepy and compelling read. But, my favorite, by far, in the collection (and recent reads outside the collection), is her speculative story "Fractals." What begins as a story of a mother and her smart-but-distant young son taking a trip to a museum morphs into an ouroboros story that builds in its creeping dread--Stephen King's Maine reflected in an episode of BLACK MIRROR. This story is a new favorite of mine. A few of her stories in the latter half of the book are (even more) experimental and read more like interesting academic exercises (something like a story I might've read in a graduate seminar on postmodernism), rather than stories that touch me on an emotional level. Still, after recent reads of Shirley Jackson's and Raymond Carver's collections, Oates is a great finish. I'm looking forward to going back into her catalog and reading one of her much older collections. If you want your mind stretched, this is a great trip.

JCO is inspiring. I especially liked the way she handled the speculative elements of Fractal. Here are a few additional notes:P. 28: “Darling is such a cheap word. Worn like a copper penny, that smells in the hand.” Wow.Pg. 85-86. Jerald is going to give his university course a more specific name than “advanced calculus,” and Mr. Edelman wouldn’t tell his high school student that he was “beyond” him. Jerald might have a broader zone of proximal development than his teacher, but if Edelman didn’t have an adequate appreciation for whatever coursework he was recommending, why would he recommend it? The indication of Jerald's brilliance is not in what he knows, but what he is able to comprehend.P. 105: Composition 101 sounds like standard Freshman Comp. Remedial English would have some (at least locally) pejorative designation.P. 166: I love it that Becca is reading about a soon to be extinct, Central American frog while she describes the “Diane Arbus” preadolescent: “his toad-like lower face seemed to have melted into a succession of chins but his eyes, small in the fatty ridges of his face, were alert and attentive, fixed on the tiny screen of his iPhone, which he took care to hold below the father’s sight.”

What wonderful characters in this collection. Of course like most good stories these people are not sunny easily relatable. I think if I had to pick a favorite it would probably be "The Bereaved". The story intersects a step-mother's grief with her husband's. Not only is grief of a father who simply could not reach his troubled young adult daughter but, it carefully unravels the regrets. The step mother's guilt of a last call (possibly a cry for help) which she never told her husband about. The father's guilt of possibly giving up, or not really ever being in touch with his daughter. It seems his secret of telling her that her real mother was dead without really ever knowing if that was true. This seems to be one sore spot with the father which he refuses to acknowledge with his wife. The trip and the characters which they encounter, the wife's obsession with an odd ball family, as she seems unable to take her eyes off of what she views as mentally unstable. This story alone, left so much to be pondered. These stories are written with the type of depth which make literature worth embracing .

P for Pain. It was almost as painful as Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tail." Why do I choose books with more distress than my own life? It's a collection of diverse short stories with diverse voices. "Fleuve Blue" is about a haphazard affair between a New York aristocrat dude and this middle-class woman; both have families and lust and love and in the end, well, I don't want to ruin it for you, but there is an end nonetheless. "Undocumented Alien" is the best and most relevant story about an immigrant from Africa, who was a student, at an American university, fails out, and becomes abused as a worker and then as a lab rat for an American spy organization that does scientific experiments on humans. Pre-Trump short story, but now, I suppose, it's post-Trump. "Big Burnt" is about a passive-aggressive professor female who pursues a psychotic, openly psychotic, professor male. The entire short story collection is largely tragic and there's even a genius youngster who wants to be an architect. Oates is a master of torture and in this collection--her literary S&M is nonstop.