Completists' Club discussion

is she still well-regarded? i've read a lot of disdain towards her. ah well, she's a favorite.

loved:
Bellefleur
A Bloodsmoor Romance
Mysteries of Winterthurn
Them
Foxfire

mixed feelings:
Heat and Other Stories
Cybele
Black Water
Rape: A Love Story

loathed:
Zombie

as Rosamond Smith (mainly mixed feelings):
Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon
Nemesis
Soul/mate
You Can't Catch Me
Snake Eyes

Ah-hem, this is only a drop in the bucket of her collection. You will never, ever complete her collection. Her writing multiplies like Tribbles. Bwah, ha, ha, ha!!!!!!

Aloha, you clearly don't realize that i will live forever. when this metal body wears down, i will simply have it replaced. and besides, my consciousness is portable.

I suspect that JCO beat you in upgrade. Note how quickly she churns out those novels. Turing didn't know what he started.

Portable consciousness. Is that like a porta potty?

it is exactly like that. you know the inside of my consciousness so well!

What I Lived For is brilliant

We are the Mulvaneys is - not

them is tiresome

The Museum of Dr Moses is awful

Beasts is unspeakable

Zombie is uneatable

You never know what you're going to get with JCO.

Can we trouble you, Mark for a complete list of works? (Ha. Good luck!)

*snicker*

MJ wrote: "Can we trouble you, Mark for a complete list of works? (Ha. Good luck!)"

Novels

With Shuddering Fall (1964)
A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967)
Expensive People (1968)
them (1969)
Wonderland (1971)
Do With Me What You Will (1973)
The Assassins (1975)
Childwold (1976)
Son of the Morning (1978)
Cybele (1979)
Unholy Loves (1979)
Bellefleur (1980)
Angel of Light (1981)
A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982)
Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984)
Solstice (1985)
Marya: A Life (1986)
You Must Remember This (1987)
American Appetites (1989)
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990)
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993)
What I Lived For (1994)
Zombie (1995)
We Were the Mulvaneys (1996)
Man Crazy (1997)
My Heart Laid Bare (1998)
Broke Heart Blues (1999)
Blonde (2000)
Middle Age: A Romance (2001)
I'll Take You There (2002)
The Tattooed Girl (2003)
The Falls (2004)
Missing Mom (2005)
Black Girl / White Girl (2006)
The Gravedigger's Daughter (2007)
My Sister, My Love (2008)
Little Bird of Heaven (2009)
A Fair Maiden (2010)
Mudwoman (2012)
Carthage (2013)
The Accursed (2013)

Short story collections

By the North Gate (1963)
Upon the Sweeping Flood And Other Stories (1966)
The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970)
Marriages and Infidelities (1972)
The Goddess and Other Women (1974)
The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies (1974)
Night-Sides (1977)
The Assignation (1988)
Where is Here? (1992)
Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque (1994)
Demon and other tales (1996)
Will You Always Love Me? And Other Stories (1996)
The Collector of Hearts: New Tales of the Grotesque (1998)
Faithless: Tales of Transgression (2001)
I Am No One You Know: Stories (2004)
The Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2006)
High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories, 1966-2006 (2006)
The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2007)
Wild Nights! (2008)
Dear Husband (2009)
Sourland: Stories (2010)
Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense (2011)
The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (2011)
Black Dahlia & White Rose (2012)

Novels as "Rosamond Smith"

Lives of the Twins (1987) (U.K. title: Kindred Passions)
Soul/Mate (1989)
Nemesis (1990)
Snake Eyes (1992)
You Can't Catch Me (1995)
Double Delight (1997)
Starr Bright Will Be With you Soon (1999)
The Barrens (2001)

Novels as "Lauren Kelly"

Take Me, Take Me With You (2003)
The Stolen Heart (2005)
Blood Mask (2006)

Novellas

The Triumph of the Spider Monkey (1976)
I Lock My Door Upon Myself (1990)
The Rise of Life on Earth (1991)
Black Water (1992)
First Love: A Gothic Tale (1996)
Beasts (2002)
Rape: A Love Story (2003)
The Corn Maiden: A Love Story (2005)

Drama

Miracle Play (1974)
Three Plays (1980)
Tone Clusters (1990)
In Darkest America (1991)
I Stand Before You Naked (1991)
Twelve Plays (1991) (including Black)
The Perfectionist and Other Plays (1995)
New Plays (1998)
Dr. Magic: Six One Act Plays (2004)

Essays and Memoirs

The Edge of Impossibility: Tragic Forms in Literature (1972)
The Hostile Sun: The Poetry of D.H. Lawrence (1974)
New Heaven, New Earth: The Visionary Experience in Literature (1974)
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde’s Parable of the Fall (1980)
Contraries: Essays (1981)
The Profane Art: Essays & Reviews (1983)
On Boxing (1987)
(Woman) Writer: Occasions and Opportunities (1988)
George Bellows: American Artist (1995)
They Just Went Away 1995
Where I've Been, And Where I'm Going: Essays, Reviews, and Prose (1999)
The Faith of A Writer: Life, Craft, Art (2003)
Uncensored: Views & (Re)views (2005)
In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters (2009)
In Rough Country (2010)
A Widow's Story: A Memoir (2011)

Poetry

Women In Love and Other Poems (1968)
Anonymous Sins & Other Poems (1969)
Love and Its Derangements (1970)
Angel Fire (1973)
The Fabulous Beasts (1975)
Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose Lives Are Money (1978)
Invisible Woman: New and Selected Poems, 1970-1982 (1982)
The Time Traveler (1989)
Tenderness (1996)

Young adult fiction

Big Mouth & Ugly Girl (2002)
Small Avalanches and Other Stories (2003)
Freaky Green Eyes (2003)
Sexy (2005)
After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (2006)

Children's fiction

Come Meet Muffin! (1998)
Where Is Little Reynard? (2003)
Naughty Chérie! (2008)

Yikes! JCO will be at the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend.

I think I liked Zombie. It's been a long time since I read it, though. I definitely liked Black Water.

See you there, Dave! Anybody else going?

Childwold (1976) is an overlooked and under-read gem.

Oates may be too prolific and occasionally somewhat prosaic for me to consider attempting completion, but I'll be ever on the look-out for her high-points to grab at.

Have read just a few of this huge list! I remember loving 'I'll Take You There' and also liked 'The Falls' - must agree with Paul that 'We Were the Mulvaneys' was a disappointment, and I also didn't like 'Rape: A Love Story'.

I'm tempted by 'Blonde' and have 'Mother, Missing' (presumably the UK title for 'Missing Mom') waiting on my shelf, so may give that a try soon. I don't think I could imagine trying to read the complete works of this author, though!

Only read two so far "With Shuddering Fall" and "You Must Remember This". Similar themes interestingly enough but she sure is a superb writer, I'm hooked and have been grabbing as many of her works second-hand as I can but that's the joy of completism you just can't complete with prolific authors!

I read my first Oates today (aside from a New Yorker nonfiction piece), A Fair Maiden. Eh.

you should have picked a good one. it's like you don't want to like her!

mark wrote: "you should have picked a good one. it's like you don't want to like her!"

I know, but it's not a powerful urge to dislike her, it's just a faint one.

We must judge authors by the books we randomly pick off the library shelves, not just by their greatest works.

Unless it's someone like Thomas Mann, where we call him the greatest and erect a shrine to him next to our bed even though he has written some 3-star stuff.

Lobstergirl wrote: "We must judge authors by the books we randomly pick off the library shelves, not just by their greatest works...."

no way, not with books and not with anything! I'm going to judge Oates by her best work not her throwaways, just like I'm going to judge Hitchcock by Vertigo not Family Plot and my friends by what they've done that's awesome rather than what they do that they regret.

although I do see your point. I'm just resisting its logic!

Hmm, Family Plot?

::intrigued::

It's so ::shrug::

I actually started watching it on youtube. It was so bad it was bad-bad. And I even like William Devane. Fortunately for me youtube broke down 25 minutes in.