Reading 10

Joyce Carol Oates published her first collection of short stories. By The Gate, in 1963, two years after she had received her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and become an instructor of English at the University of Detroit. Her productivity since then has been prodigious, accumulating in less than two decades to nearly thirty titles, including novels, collections of short stories and verse, plays, and literary criticism. In the meantime, she has continued to teach, moving in 1967 from the University of Detroit to the University of Windsor, in Ontario, and, in 1978, to Princeton University. Reviewers have admired her enormous energy, but find a productivity of such magnitude difficult to assess.

In a period characterized by the abandonment of so much of the realistic tradition by authors such as John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and Thomas Pynchon, Joyce Carol Oates has seemed at times determinedly old-fashioned in her insistence on the essentially mimetic quality of her fiction. Hers is a world of violence, insanity, fractured love, and hopeless loneliness. Although some of it appears to come from her own direct observations, her dreams, and her fears, much more is clearly from the experiences of others. Her first novel, With Shuddering Fall (1964), dealt with stock car racing, though she had never seen a race. In them (1969) she focused on Detroit from the Depression through the riots of 1967, drawing much of her material from the deep impression made on her by the problems of one of her students. Whatever the source and however shocking the events or the motivations, however, her fictive world remains strikingly akin to that real one reflected in the daily newspapers, the television news and talk shows, and the popular magazines of our day.

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Joyce Carol Oates menerbitkan kumpulan cerpen pertamanya, By The Gate, pada tahun 1963, dua tahun setelah ia memperoleh gelar magister dari University of Wisconsin dan menjadi pengajar Bahasa Inggris di University of Detroit. Produktivitasnya sejak saat itu sangat luar biasa, dalam waktu kurang dari dua dekade ia telah menghasilkan hampir tiga puluh karya, termasuk novel, kumpulan cerpen dan puisi, drama, serta kritik sastra. Sementara itu, ia tetap mengajar, pindah pada tahun 1967 dari University of Detroit ke University of Windsor di Ontario, dan pada tahun 1978 ke Princeton University. Para pengulas mengagumi energinya yang luar biasa, namun menganggap produktivitas sebesar itu sulit untuk dinilai.

Pada masa yang ditandai oleh penolakan terhadap tradisi realistik oleh penulis-penulis seperti John Barth, Donald Barthelme, dan Thomas Pynchon, Joyce Carol Oates kadang-kadang tampak sangat kuno karena tetap bersikukuh pada kualitas mimetik (peniruan realitas) dalam fiksi-fiksinya. Dunia yang ia gambarkan adalah dunia kekerasan, kegilaan, cinta yang retak, dan kesepian yang putus asa. Meskipun sebagian darinya tampak berasal dari pengamatannya sendiri, mimpinya, dan ketakutannya, sebagian besar dengan jelas berasal dari pengalaman orang lain. Novel pertamanya, With Shuddering Fall (1964), membahas tentang balap mobil stok, meskipun ia sendiri belum pernah menyaksikan perlombaan itu. Dalam karya them (1969), ia berfokus pada Detroit dari masa Depresi hingga kerusuhan tahun 1967, mengambil banyak bahan dari kesan mendalam yang ia dapatkan atas masalah salah satu muridnya. Apa pun sumbernya dan seberapa pun mengejutkannya peristiwa atau motifnya, dunia fiksinya tetap mencerminkan dunia nyata yang terlihat dalam surat kabar harian, berita televisi dan acara bincang-bincang, serta majalah populer zaman kita.