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A review by pattireadsalot
The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates
4.0
I'm always intrigued by prolific writers. Joyce Carol Oates is also prominently featured on Eric's YouTube channel, The Lonesome Reader (you should check it out- he reviews mostly literary fiction). The woman is clearly brilliant at crafting a sentence. "The artist, perhaps more than most people, inhabits failure, degrees of failure and accommodation and compromise; but the terms of his failure are generally secret. It seems reasonable to believe that failure may be truth, or at any rate a negotiable fact, while success is a temporary illusion of some intoxicating sort, a bubble soon to be pricked, a flower whose petals will quickly drop." Basically, do the honest work and don't get fixated on any particular fleeting success.
She notes many examples of writers throughout the ages that experienced different reactions to success and failure. She uses James Joyce as an example, with his brother Stanislaus observing that Joyce seemed almost protected by the unpopularity of his work and that "inflexibility firmly rooted in failure" allowed him to actually accomplish a great deal.
I struggled to understand many of her literary references, but sped through this rather quickly due to the beauty and conviction of her prose. I have We Were The Mulvaneys upstairs and hope to get to it later this year. I've heard more talk of Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing and Stephen King's On Writing, but I thought this made a great addition into my books on writers, and was a lovely glimpse into the inspiring dedication of a beloved favorite.
She notes many examples of writers throughout the ages that experienced different reactions to success and failure. She uses James Joyce as an example, with his brother Stanislaus observing that Joyce seemed almost protected by the unpopularity of his work and that "inflexibility firmly rooted in failure" allowed him to actually accomplish a great deal.
I struggled to understand many of her literary references, but sped through this rather quickly due to the beauty and conviction of her prose. I have We Were The Mulvaneys upstairs and hope to get to it later this year. I've heard more talk of Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing and Stephen King's On Writing, but I thought this made a great addition into my books on writers, and was a lovely glimpse into the inspiring dedication of a beloved favorite.