i am sassa

Joyce Carol Oates has written over one hundred books. She’s probably published another one since I started painting her today. My sister Alison nominated her as a Badass Woman, and she has always been the most avid reader I know, so I was intrigued.

Before today, I don’t think I had read anything by JCO. Technically, I still haven’t, but a lovely woman on You Tube read me her short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been while I painted. I picked it because I read that it was her most famous short story. It was so good it was completely distracting.

Obviously the sheer volume of work JCO has published is pretty badass. As is her list of awards, which is utterly ridiculous. The reasons I found her to be worthy of the title today are slightly different, beginning with a quote from an article about her by the New Yorker:

“In an era that fetishizes form, Joyce Carol Oates has become America’s preëminent fiction writer by doing everything you’re not supposed to do.”

She also said in an interview I watched that she doesn’t care about money, and has so much of it that it makes her sad. Watch two minutes of any interview and I guarantee you’ll notice that she doesn’t seem to give a flying crap about what anyone thinks of her. She is, by all my personal measures, an odd bird, and completely fascinating to me. She speaks completely openly about how emotionally tumultuous writing can be, and she gives me ZERO bubble pipe/elbow patch vibes.

So we have in JCO an artist who is fueled by her own intrinsic motivation, and goes forth even when she’s not quite sure what that motivation is all about. She just trusts it, enough to write up an unholy 100+ book storm. She rejects not only the “rules” of writing, but apparently also modern social conventions. Check, check, check. JCO is a total badass, and I am so ready to dig in to her work.

Thank you, Joyce Carol Oates.