All language subtitles for Masterclass Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story - 06.Ideas Writing the Familiar

I think the motives for art are very

general and they have much to do with

commemoration.

Like telling a story is a way of

embodying

uh some facts, some history. You want to

tell the story of your ancestors. If

you're you're an immigrant family, so

you came to to North America, let's say,

you know, 1850, there's a whole family

story. So many writers want to write

about that story and they're

commemorating their own ancestors and

commemorating the generation. So I think

that instinct is very strong.

When I first read Alice in Wonderland

and Alice in the Looking Glass, I was

only about eight or nine. They were the

great gifts of my grandmother,

um, really the great gifts of my of my

whole childhood as it as it seems in

retrospect. I have the my original copy

at home and it's all dogeared. It's a

nice book with illustrations, beautiful

illustrations. And as soon as I open it,

I've just memorized everything. I can

remember all these passages and I

remember the little drawings on the top

of the page and so forth. So, it's it's

one of the uh works of art that I've

memorized because it's very deeply

imprinted in my brain. Those classic

children's books have really been deeply

imprinted in my soul. And so, I probably

think of Alice in Wonderland

every day of my life. And Lewis Carol

became a writer with whom I identified

in different ways. He was very very

playful

and very funny and subversive and some

of the humor is dark. It's a shockingly

dark humor for children's books and some

of it's whimsical and childlike. So I

like to think that I embody all those

traits in my own writing that Lewis

Carol obviously had. There are many

things we can take away from Alice in

Wonderland. of the looking glass. But

one of the primary

thoughts that I came away as a little

girl, I think, is that a little girl,

Alice is about 10, a little girl can

have wild adventures in the world that

are actually pretty nightmarish. And

yet, the little girl doesn't panic. She

doesn't run away screaming. She doesn't

burst into tears. She sometimes is

concerned and she may be a little cons

little worried but she doesn't

become hysterical. So it's an example of

a children's book in which a child who

happens to be a girl and that was

important. A little girl sees all sorts

of adults behaving very badly. I mean

they're calling for one another's heads

to be cut off. They're doing really

awful things. But the little girl comes

away from it with some degree of

maturity

and it sends a signal of control that a

child can have some control over her

environment and she doesn't have to

panic. So I think because Alice is a

maybe a typical upper middle class

British girl of the 19th century, those

qualities maybe are very attractive that

one doesn't become hysterical.

One always keeps control and Alice is

always thinking to herself in a very

logical and rational way. So I think I

inherited some of that for my own

personal life.

Oprah magazine had a feature some years

ago for women writers to interview their

own mothers.

And I thought it was maybe a little

silly idea and but I interviewed my

mother and I was totally astounded and

that gave me the idea not not just for

one novel but for more than one. I mean

my mother had so many adventures and

experiences

uh we never knew the children never knew

she never talked about herself. My

grandmother who was Jewish and

repudiated Judaism.

Uh I never asked her any questions. I I

didn't I was too young. I didn't know.

If I had asked her, she might have

answered. But I'm so sorry that never

happened. But my mother said,

she said, "I'm so ashamed because my

mother gave me away when I was 9 months

old." And so my mother started crying

and I I had never heard my mother talk

that way. And she and I was stunned. She

said, "I was given away because we were

too poor and they didn't they couldn't

take care of me. So I was given away to

an aunt and uncle." But there were there

were eight children in the family and

she was given away. So she said I cried

about it every day. And I couldn't

believe my mother. She never talked

about that. So So I wrote a novel. I

wrote a couple of novels. One is called

Missing Mom. It's basically about my

mother and been other experiences. The

idea of being given away and being

ashamed and crying.

and she said how she used to go back to

the old household and she would come

down the road and they would say go back

home you don't belong here and she said

I cried all the time she started crying

she was like 81 years old so to me that

was fantastic so if anyone has any

experiences like that interviewing a

grandparent could it change your life

really I never knew my mother I never

knew my mother had that experience so to

me that was is an eye openener.

If you're writing about real people, of

course, you you might want to

transferography it so it's not not so

obvious. I mean, obviously people change

names, they change descriptions, they

change places. The idea of somebody

giving a baby away is not that unusual

in fairy tales, you know. So, one of the

archetypes is a baby's found in the bull

rushes. You know, a baby's given away.

Um, Heathcliffe and Weathering Heights

is an infant who just sort of shows up

and nobody knows who the mother is or

the father is. So, my mother had an

experience that was somewhat universal.

So, you you can always write about a

universal experience, but of course, I

would not write about my actual mother.

And if I tried to in a memoir, I would

make sure that that she read it or she,

you know, it was all right. Cuz as

people get older, they get less they

care less about these things. The people

she would have been embarrassed about

were all dead. I mean, everybody, she

was the last in her family. There were

nine children in her family and they all

died. So, by the time she talked about

this, they were gone, you know. So there

are many things you can do. I think that

one out not to exploit other people and

never hurt anybody. I never use your

writing to hurt anybody. That's that's

not a good motive. Some people use

writing to settle scores. You do see

that in Philip Roth sometime he's

writing about women he knew. But I don't

think that's the best motive for

writing.

Throughout my life, I've been really

captivated by mystery and I've written a

number of mystery suspense novels. I I

really think that at the heart of our

experience as pe as human beings, as

adults, we have a memory of mysteries in

childhood. And I think that the the

great mystery writers like like uh

Raymond Chandler and Earl Stanley

Gardner and Agatha Christie, I really

think those people

Patricia Highmith definitely that

something happened to them in their

childhoods that they really were very

very in the grip of of mystery and

bewilderment.

And so they keep writing mystery,

detective fiction and pursuing some some

narrative that comes to an ending

because the detective mystery form

always has an ending. It the last

chapter always has a an ending. It's a

it's a resolution that you don't always

find in in literature. And so when I

think about my own life, I think there

are many mysteries. And I had this idea

at some point maybe 20 years ago. An

unsolved mystery is a thorn in the

heart. That'll be the first line of a

memoir, a story, or an essay. So I

actually wrote something with that. It's

it's it's a memory of something that

happened to a girlfriend of mine, a

classmate in high school. It didn't

really happen to me, but it happened to

her. She was the first girl. She was the

first person in my whole life who

committed suicide. Now, we didn't really

know at the time. It was kept secret

that she had committed suicide, but she

died. She was only 18. So, why did she

die? And her parents maybe covered it

up, you know, they didn't want to talk

about it. So, an unsolved mystery is a

thorn in the heart. So, it was like 40

years before I wrote it. I suggest to

any emerging writer whether young or old

or whatever that you think of some

mystery in your life and you certainly

may have that first line which I've

given to writing students an unsolved

mystery is a thorn in the heart and that

is your first line of your story an

unsolved mystery is a thorn in the heart

and just think about it you may think

about it for several days or weeks or

months but something will come to you

and like what's the second line? I would

suggest that's the first paragraph and

then you have another paragraph. I

wouldn't make it all one paragraph. I

would have that just by itself and then

like when I was 10 years old, you know,

when I was in college, when my father

moved out, when my mother got ill, you

know, that next paragraph is the thorn

in your heart that you've never been

able to to deal with.

Well, another assignment is to revisit a

place that you that means a lot to you

in your in your memory. Deep in our

brains, really deep in the deepest part

of our brains are the memories very

powerfully encoded of our the first room

you ever lived in, the first house you

lived in, the first people you saw, your

your maybe your young parents, they were

young maybe when you were born, and then

your grandparents. All those memories

are deep in your brain. So if you can

evoke them by a certain smell, for me it

was the smell of lilac. It was a lilac

bush right outside my window when I was

a little girl. And the smell of a farm

of barns, a hay barn, the sight of

chickens or cats or something in a farm

that evokes a whole lot of memory for

me. So the assignment is to take a

memory, the earliest memory you have and

to try to evoke it and write about it

very powerfully. And if you write about

it powerfully, when you finish it, you

may have the beginning of a