Joyce Carol Oates

Silence rolled at me, in

For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?

The dilemma is, in the United States, each penniless citizen believes that, with luck, he might become a millionaire; and so doesn't want to put restraints on "robber barons"-he might become one one day!

...we so resented that asshole up there talking talking talking taking up the entire assembly expecting us to believe there isn't a special creation of God, or of man, to which we didn't belong, here in the shabby south end of Hammond in the worst damn public school in the district, we didn't belong and never would. And what the hell? ---Such truths, FOXFIRE made softer.

The theme of invisibility has haunted me for many years, since earliest girlhood. A woman often feels __nvisible_ in a public sense precisely because her physical being - her __isibility_ - figures so prominently in her identity. She is judged as a body, she is __ttractive_ or __nattractive_, while knowing that her deepest self is inward, and secret: knowing, hoping that her spiritual essence is a great deal more complex than the casual eye of the observer will allow_ it might be argued that all persons, defined to themselves rather more as what they think and dream than what they do, are __nvisible_.

And remember: you must not overwork your body, or your soul. You must not enslave yourself, as you would not enslave any other person. You must be the custodian of your self.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

In this way unwittingly the Widow-to-Be is assuring her husband__ death__is doom. Even as she believes she is behaving intelligently___hrewdly_ and __easonably___he is taking him to a teeming petri dish of lethal bacteria where within a week he will succumb to a virulent staph infection__ __ospital_ infection acquired in the course of his treatment for pneumonia. Even as she is fantasizing that he will be home for dinner she is assuring that he will never return home. How unwitting, all Widows-to-Be who imagine that they are doing the right thing, in innocence and ignorance!

There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.

This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash.

Once upon a time the fairy tales begin. But then they end and often you don't know really what has happened, what was meant to happen, you only know what you've been told, what the words suggest.

Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed.

I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound, advanced age; never can we anticipate being older than we are, or wiser; if we're exhausted, it's impossible to anticipate being strong; as, in the grip of a dream, we rarely understand that we're dreaming, and will escape by the simplest of methods, opening our eyes.

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of __laying_. A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which __eighborhoods_ have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of __eighbor childrens_ houses or play in __ackyards_. In the absence of sidewalks in newer __ated_ coummunities, children cannot __alk_ to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A __laydate_ is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you__e been awaiting.

Freaky kids like us can__ ever be normal- Tyler says smugly- Our generation is some new kind of __volutionary development_, my shrink says- __ormal_ is just __verage_, not cool. My latest diagnosis is __.P.M_, Acute Premature Melancholia_, usually an affliction of late middle age, they think is genetic since Ty Senoir has had it all his life, too.You look if you might be A.P.M, too, Sky: that kind of pissed-off mopey look in your face like you swallowed something really gross and can__ spit it out.

For in America this season is decreed __amily season_. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don__ have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year__ season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year__ season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life_ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie__ robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie__ frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: __kyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you__e just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you

For in America this season is decreed __amily season_. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don__ have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year__ season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year__ season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life_ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie__ robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie__ frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: __kyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you__e just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you_.