Read Our Art of Fiction Interview with Joyce Carol Oates

Our Art of Fiction Interview with Joyce Carol Oates

The Paris Review Redux: free interviews, stories, poems, and art from the archives of The Paris Review. View this email in your browser Joyce Carol Oates. Photograph by Dustin Cohen, courtesy of Ecco Press. "Dear Greg," Joyce Carol Oates wrote in one of a series of letters to her biographer Greg Johnson, a selection of which we published on our website last week. "Actually, you would love e-mail. It's probably better for you that you don't explore it; you might become addicted … I certainly could be, but stay away from the computer, preferring to type out letters, as I type out prose." This week, we're unlocking our Art of Fiction interview with Joyce Carol Oates, which was published in issue no. 74 of the Review. INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 72 Joyce Carol Oates INTERVIEWER Returning to the matter of your "productivity": Have you ever dictated into a machine? OATES No, oddly enough I've written my last several novels in longhand first. I had an enormous, rather frightening stack of pages and notes for The Assassins, probably eight hundred pages—or was it closer to a thousand? It alarms me to remember. Childwold needed to be written in longhand, of course. And now everything finds its initial expression in longhand and the typewriter has become a rather alien thing—a thing of formality and impersonality. My first novels were all written on a typewriter: first draft straight through, then revisions, then final draft. But I can't do that any longer.   From issue no. 74 (Fall–Winter 1978) Copyright © 2024 The Paris Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Paris Review 544 West 27th Street 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe, if you must.