Quote of the Day

I've never been particularly fond of Joyce Carol Oates's writing, but she hits the nail solidly in this letter about her recent memoir A Widow's Story:

[N]othing seems to arouse reproach in reviewers quite so much as the possibility that the memoirist is less miserable at the time of the writing and afterward than she was at the time of the experience about which she is writing[.]

Update: My, what a stuck-up little prick I can be if I don't watch out for myself. "I've never been particularly fond," indeed! JCO has been an important, major writer since before I was born. I've only read a few of her short stories, though I do have to admit that I couldn't stand any of them. There may well exist the JCO novel that I would absolutely adore, since she's written approximately 900 of them. But I haven't found it, and I probably won't.