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melkelsey's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
Book 90
I listened to A Widow's Story, a memoir by Joyce Carol Oates. It's a lengthy elucidation of, primarily, the first month after becoming a widow. The vocabulary is deliciously palatable, and envisaging this eventuality is easy because of the exquisite writing. Listening to this book was laborious and depressing, so I took breaks to listen to other novels. Her experience feels identifiable, but I would like to know how she is now. Definitely not for all readers.
I listened to A Widow's Story, a memoir by Joyce Carol Oates. It's a lengthy elucidation of, primarily, the first month after becoming a widow. The vocabulary is deliciously palatable, and envisaging this eventuality is easy because of the exquisite writing. Listening to this book was laborious and depressing, so I took breaks to listen to other novels. Her experience feels identifiable, but I would like to know how she is now. Definitely not for all readers.
lola425's review against another edition
4.0
At first I could not imagine why I was reading this book. It made me uncomfortable. It was not pleasant to read, though well-written (obviously) and thoughtful. I will say that for me it was head and shoulders above Year of Magical Thinking which left me cold.
dougbrun's review against another edition
5.0
“I think with horror of the future, in which Ray will not exist.”
This is perhaps the bravest book I’ve ever read. It is searingly personal, raw and and stark. It portrays its creator, the author, in a relief, almost without exception, that is equally painful and tragic. There is no turning away, no place the writer hides--and consequently little relief afforded the reader. There she is, the new widow, Joyce Carol Smith--the persona behind the writer Joyce Carol Oats--struggling to stay alive amidst blinding grief, as revealed in a journey the destination of which is unsure. We know of her because the widely acclaimed writer, Joyce Carol Oats, tell us of her. (I will set aside, for the moment, the alter-ego artifact that is the dualistic structure of this book.) We cannot divert our eyes. A book that is brave, like A Widow’s Story is brave, is in my scheme of things, worthy. It is worthy simply because whenever truth is revealed so unapologetically, without reservation--hence bravely composed--one must simply recognize it as such and deem it of consequence. It simply has, consequently, an intrinsic worth. What would we make of existence if it were otherwise? If art is, in any manner a refection of experience, then we must salute it when it is created without deference to the consequences--no matter how uncomfortable it might make us feel.
Joyce Carol Smith lost her husband Ray Smith on February 18, 2008. The cause of death: cardiopulmonary arrest--pneumonia. The time of death: 12:50 a.m. His wife of 48 years had left the hospital, gone home to rest, her husband seemingly on the mend. “Ray is said to be improving,” Oats wrote a friend the night before his death. But twenty-four hours later, at 12:38 a.m. (details permeate the narrative) the call comes--”a phone ringing at the wrong time.” It is the call the author has “been dreading since the nightmare vigil began--informing me that ‘your husband’--‘Raymond Smith’--is in ‘critical condition’--his blood pressure has ‘plummeted’--his heartbeat has ‘accelerated’--the voice is asking if I want ‘extraordinary measures’ in the event that my husband’s heart stops--I am crying, ‘Yes!...Save him! Do anything you can!”
I quote at length because in this one passage the reader can sense the shock, the terror, the frustration and panic that infuses almost every page of the book. Raymond dies before Joyce returns to him at the hospital. Leaving his side is the first of what she deems to be her many missteps--missteps that will haunt her throughout the ensuing weeks and months. It is the first instance of what she will reflect upon to torture herself. She will likewise resolve that she should have taken him into Manhattan, where his care might have been of a higher order, rather than Princeton where they live; that she should have been home and not out of town when he presumably caught the chill that presaged the illness; that she should have long-ago challenged her husband’s general practitioner and his casual prescriptions for antibiotics over the years. Surely they weakened Raymond’s immune system. And so on.
The Smiths are a couple, who, without children and sharing complementary careers--she the writer, he an editor and publisher--wove their lives together into a tight and resilient singular fabric. Ms. Oats relates that the number of nights spent apart in the decades of marriage can be counted on a couple of hands. So, when the separation of death is made manifest, a vacuum of seemingly horrid proportions descends. “I am thinking that never have I been alone so much,” she writes a couple weeks following the death. “...so starkly unmitigatedly alone , as I have been since Ray has died….There is a terror in aloneness. Beyond even loneliness.”
The exploration of “a terror in aloneness” is relentless--and exhausting. To Ms. Oats suicide becomes a option worthy of consideration. She hoards pills, and considers methods. Indeed, this book is equal parts grief and survival. Her grief transports her into a world where the continuation of (her) existence becomes a matter of objective consideration. Mid-way through the book, Ms. Oats experiences a hallucination, a metaphor for suicide, in a “reptile-thing--the basilisk” which haunts and dogs her, intoning words of existential doubt: “You know you can end this at any time. Your ridiculous trash-soul. Why should you outlive your husband? If you love him as you claim...Outliving your husband is a low vile vulgar thing and you do not deserve to live an hour longer…” The basilisk, a mythic creature, who according to Pliny the Elder will render dead on the spot anyone who beholds its eyes, chases Ms. Oats through the latter half of the book. We obviously know the outcome, that she survives, lives to write the book, but we are left with the impression that she does not master the beast. It would be a delightful literary nuance, the beast’s survival, if the implication were not so tragic.
Like a finely constructed novel, a theme is developed mid-book which shines a light into the corners of the narration. It is, in these dark corners, revealed that despite the longing, the horror of loss, the basilisk’s threats, something has not settled properly in the reflection of this long marriage. We got a hint of this earlier. “In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious--unless it was unavoidable.” It is a phrase that will catch the eye of anyone who has experienced a long and successful marriage. “For what,” she concludes, “is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too?” Given that all long marriages are possibly successful for reasons particular to each, we can look past this polite practice of insulating the troublesome aspects of experience from loved ones. But there is more: Her husband did not read her work. “In this way, I walled off from my husband the part of my life that is ‘Joyce Carol Oats’--which is to say, my writing career.” There are secrets here too. There is Raymond’s sister whom she has never met--and the in-laws she hardly knows. (“Where Ray became very fond of my parents...I scarcely knew Ray’s parents.”) And his experience in seminary? “Exactly what happened at the seminary, I don’t know--Ray didn’t speak of it except generally, obliquely--Things didn’t work out. I dropped out after a few months.”
This theme, that of the gaps in the marriage, runs parallel to those of grief and existential doubt. It is a deeper current and we must dive down to it. And that is precisely what Ms. Oats does. She is a master story teller and even here, here in this most brave of narrations, she controls the pace, she works and develops a theme, exercising her considerable talent and rendering (her) experience into a fashion of art. The marriage gaps are best symbolized in the discovery of a novel, long-ago set aside and abandoned by Raymond. She knew of it’s existence previously, but had not read it. Like other things in the marriage, it had been respected by the other as off-limits. She had not asked to read it, had not inquired about it. “As a wife, I had never wanted to upset my husband. I had never wanted to quarrel, to disagree or to be disagreeable. To be not loved seemed to me the risk, if a wife confronted her husband against his wishes.” She reads the novel--but the mysteries between them only seem to deepen.
I mentioned above the dual nature of this searingly self-reflective memoir. There is the writer, Ms. Oats, writing about the widow, Mrs. Smith, who dons the cloak of Ms. Oats, transforming herself into a master of the literary arts, who turns back and writes about Mrs. Smith. It is a curious “meta” relationship. It is too, obviously, the method the widow must employ to protect herself, to survive the terror of aloneness. Mrs. Smith is, in other words, the subject matter of Ms. Oats, the observer and scribe. Curiously, the grief of Mrs. Smith is the rough marble by which Ms. Oats chisels her craft into art. The book is plainly a success on this level, but as a memoir one almost wonders, oddly, if Mrs. Smith, the widow, is not being exploited by Ms. Oats the artist? That question alone brings a prism of complexity to the book that, in my experience, the typical memoir typically lacks. Ultimately the reader experiences a fashion of classic Aristotelian catharsis, pain transcended through art, through this literary device. We hope the widow to be as fortunate.
This is perhaps the bravest book I’ve ever read. It is searingly personal, raw and and stark. It portrays its creator, the author, in a relief, almost without exception, that is equally painful and tragic. There is no turning away, no place the writer hides--and consequently little relief afforded the reader. There she is, the new widow, Joyce Carol Smith--the persona behind the writer Joyce Carol Oats--struggling to stay alive amidst blinding grief, as revealed in a journey the destination of which is unsure. We know of her because the widely acclaimed writer, Joyce Carol Oats, tell us of her. (I will set aside, for the moment, the alter-ego artifact that is the dualistic structure of this book.) We cannot divert our eyes. A book that is brave, like A Widow’s Story is brave, is in my scheme of things, worthy. It is worthy simply because whenever truth is revealed so unapologetically, without reservation--hence bravely composed--one must simply recognize it as such and deem it of consequence. It simply has, consequently, an intrinsic worth. What would we make of existence if it were otherwise? If art is, in any manner a refection of experience, then we must salute it when it is created without deference to the consequences--no matter how uncomfortable it might make us feel.
Joyce Carol Smith lost her husband Ray Smith on February 18, 2008. The cause of death: cardiopulmonary arrest--pneumonia. The time of death: 12:50 a.m. His wife of 48 years had left the hospital, gone home to rest, her husband seemingly on the mend. “Ray is said to be improving,” Oats wrote a friend the night before his death. But twenty-four hours later, at 12:38 a.m. (details permeate the narrative) the call comes--”a phone ringing at the wrong time.” It is the call the author has “been dreading since the nightmare vigil began--informing me that ‘your husband’--‘Raymond Smith’--is in ‘critical condition’--his blood pressure has ‘plummeted’--his heartbeat has ‘accelerated’--the voice is asking if I want ‘extraordinary measures’ in the event that my husband’s heart stops--I am crying, ‘Yes!...Save him! Do anything you can!”
I quote at length because in this one passage the reader can sense the shock, the terror, the frustration and panic that infuses almost every page of the book. Raymond dies before Joyce returns to him at the hospital. Leaving his side is the first of what she deems to be her many missteps--missteps that will haunt her throughout the ensuing weeks and months. It is the first instance of what she will reflect upon to torture herself. She will likewise resolve that she should have taken him into Manhattan, where his care might have been of a higher order, rather than Princeton where they live; that she should have been home and not out of town when he presumably caught the chill that presaged the illness; that she should have long-ago challenged her husband’s general practitioner and his casual prescriptions for antibiotics over the years. Surely they weakened Raymond’s immune system. And so on.
The Smiths are a couple, who, without children and sharing complementary careers--she the writer, he an editor and publisher--wove their lives together into a tight and resilient singular fabric. Ms. Oats relates that the number of nights spent apart in the decades of marriage can be counted on a couple of hands. So, when the separation of death is made manifest, a vacuum of seemingly horrid proportions descends. “I am thinking that never have I been alone so much,” she writes a couple weeks following the death. “...so starkly unmitigatedly alone , as I have been since Ray has died….There is a terror in aloneness. Beyond even loneliness.”
The exploration of “a terror in aloneness” is relentless--and exhausting. To Ms. Oats suicide becomes a option worthy of consideration. She hoards pills, and considers methods. Indeed, this book is equal parts grief and survival. Her grief transports her into a world where the continuation of (her) existence becomes a matter of objective consideration. Mid-way through the book, Ms. Oats experiences a hallucination, a metaphor for suicide, in a “reptile-thing--the basilisk” which haunts and dogs her, intoning words of existential doubt: “You know you can end this at any time. Your ridiculous trash-soul. Why should you outlive your husband? If you love him as you claim...Outliving your husband is a low vile vulgar thing and you do not deserve to live an hour longer…” The basilisk, a mythic creature, who according to Pliny the Elder will render dead on the spot anyone who beholds its eyes, chases Ms. Oats through the latter half of the book. We obviously know the outcome, that she survives, lives to write the book, but we are left with the impression that she does not master the beast. It would be a delightful literary nuance, the beast’s survival, if the implication were not so tragic.
Like a finely constructed novel, a theme is developed mid-book which shines a light into the corners of the narration. It is, in these dark corners, revealed that despite the longing, the horror of loss, the basilisk’s threats, something has not settled properly in the reflection of this long marriage. We got a hint of this earlier. “In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious--unless it was unavoidable.” It is a phrase that will catch the eye of anyone who has experienced a long and successful marriage. “For what,” she concludes, “is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too?” Given that all long marriages are possibly successful for reasons particular to each, we can look past this polite practice of insulating the troublesome aspects of experience from loved ones. But there is more: Her husband did not read her work. “In this way, I walled off from my husband the part of my life that is ‘Joyce Carol Oats’--which is to say, my writing career.” There are secrets here too. There is Raymond’s sister whom she has never met--and the in-laws she hardly knows. (“Where Ray became very fond of my parents...I scarcely knew Ray’s parents.”) And his experience in seminary? “Exactly what happened at the seminary, I don’t know--Ray didn’t speak of it except generally, obliquely--Things didn’t work out. I dropped out after a few months.”
This theme, that of the gaps in the marriage, runs parallel to those of grief and existential doubt. It is a deeper current and we must dive down to it. And that is precisely what Ms. Oats does. She is a master story teller and even here, here in this most brave of narrations, she controls the pace, she works and develops a theme, exercising her considerable talent and rendering (her) experience into a fashion of art. The marriage gaps are best symbolized in the discovery of a novel, long-ago set aside and abandoned by Raymond. She knew of it’s existence previously, but had not read it. Like other things in the marriage, it had been respected by the other as off-limits. She had not asked to read it, had not inquired about it. “As a wife, I had never wanted to upset my husband. I had never wanted to quarrel, to disagree or to be disagreeable. To be not loved seemed to me the risk, if a wife confronted her husband against his wishes.” She reads the novel--but the mysteries between them only seem to deepen.
I mentioned above the dual nature of this searingly self-reflective memoir. There is the writer, Ms. Oats, writing about the widow, Mrs. Smith, who dons the cloak of Ms. Oats, transforming herself into a master of the literary arts, who turns back and writes about Mrs. Smith. It is a curious “meta” relationship. It is too, obviously, the method the widow must employ to protect herself, to survive the terror of aloneness. Mrs. Smith is, in other words, the subject matter of Ms. Oats, the observer and scribe. Curiously, the grief of Mrs. Smith is the rough marble by which Ms. Oats chisels her craft into art. The book is plainly a success on this level, but as a memoir one almost wonders, oddly, if Mrs. Smith, the widow, is not being exploited by Ms. Oats the artist? That question alone brings a prism of complexity to the book that, in my experience, the typical memoir typically lacks. Ultimately the reader experiences a fashion of classic Aristotelian catharsis, pain transcended through art, through this literary device. We hope the widow to be as fortunate.
taratuulikki's review against another edition
4.0
For the genre that it is, this is 4.5 stars in that it thoroughly recounts each step of the beginning stages of grief and recognition of loss.
This is an exceptionally detailed and artful exploration of grief and loss and identity particularly as a widow. I found myself endeared to the neurotic and honest and vulnerable Oats. Her impeccable storytelling also frightened and sickened and overwhelmed me, yet it also intrigued and amused me. The absurdity of a widow’s life. In contrast to Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, this book not only intellectually describes the grieving process but also immerses us in the emotional experience of it without resorting to vague generalities or becoming too saccharine. The more particular her experience, the more universal it becomes. Her particular loss becomes my loss even tho I have not yet lost a husband. I imagine this book being extremely relatable to widows on a deep, bodily level. It describes what I have observed.
Some of my favorite passages:
** “I am trying to carry too many things. So frequently lately I’ve been dropping things, surely I will drop something now. I am in dread of calling attention to myself. I am in dread of losing control in a public place. Suddenly it seems to me—I’ve left my handbag behind—I can’t quite see what I am carrying, in my arms. A wave of panic sweeps over me—though how trivial is this!—how ridiculous—at the possibility of losing my handbag, my car key, house key.
This is the terror: I will lose crucial keys. I will be stranded, marooned. I see myself at the side of a highway—in the dark—frantically signaling for—what?—headlights rush past, blinding. Or maybe this is a dream. Recurring dreams of being lost from my husband are my most frightening dreams but this too is very frightening, for it is so very plausible. Ray is likely to be in charge of keys—to know where a spare key might be kept, outdoors—but now I am obsessed with keys, searching through my handbag for keys a dozen times daily. The relief of finding a key, which might have been lost!
*** “I tell one of the nurses that my husband is in room 539, and he has died, and what do I do now? It is the height of naivete, or absurdity, to imagine that the nurses are not well aware of the fact that a patient has just died in Telemetry, a few yards away; yet, I am trying to be helpful, I am even asking with a faint smile, “Do I—call a funeral home? Can you recommend a funeral home?”
... This is so shocking to me—so stunning it’s as if the woman has reached over the counter and slapped my face.
It! So quickly Raymond has ceased being he, now is it.”
*** “Hurriedly I’d dressed and left the house, I am not even sure what shoes these are—my vision is blurred—could be, I am wearing two left shoes—or have switched right and left shoes—recall that, in the history of civilization, the designation right and left shoe is relatively recent, not so very long ago individuals counted themselves fortunate to wear just shoes—this is the sort of random, pointless and yet intriguing information Ray would tell me, or read out to me from a magazine—Did you know this? Not so very long ago . . .
The impulse comes over me, to rush into the other room, to tell whoever it is, or was—a woman—a stranger to me, as to Ray—about shoes, the history of right and left—except I understand that this is not the time; and that Ray, in any case, for whose benefit I might have mentioned it, will not hear.”
This is an exceptionally detailed and artful exploration of grief and loss and identity particularly as a widow. I found myself endeared to the neurotic and honest and vulnerable Oats. Her impeccable storytelling also frightened and sickened and overwhelmed me, yet it also intrigued and amused me. The absurdity of a widow’s life. In contrast to Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, this book not only intellectually describes the grieving process but also immerses us in the emotional experience of it without resorting to vague generalities or becoming too saccharine. The more particular her experience, the more universal it becomes. Her particular loss becomes my loss even tho I have not yet lost a husband. I imagine this book being extremely relatable to widows on a deep, bodily level. It describes what I have observed.
Some of my favorite passages:
** “I am trying to carry too many things. So frequently lately I’ve been dropping things, surely I will drop something now. I am in dread of calling attention to myself. I am in dread of losing control in a public place. Suddenly it seems to me—I’ve left my handbag behind—I can’t quite see what I am carrying, in my arms. A wave of panic sweeps over me—though how trivial is this!—how ridiculous—at the possibility of losing my handbag, my car key, house key.
This is the terror: I will lose crucial keys. I will be stranded, marooned. I see myself at the side of a highway—in the dark—frantically signaling for—what?—headlights rush past, blinding. Or maybe this is a dream. Recurring dreams of being lost from my husband are my most frightening dreams but this too is very frightening, for it is so very plausible. Ray is likely to be in charge of keys—to know where a spare key might be kept, outdoors—but now I am obsessed with keys, searching through my handbag for keys a dozen times daily. The relief of finding a key, which might have been lost!
*** “I tell one of the nurses that my husband is in room 539, and he has died, and what do I do now? It is the height of naivete, or absurdity, to imagine that the nurses are not well aware of the fact that a patient has just died in Telemetry, a few yards away; yet, I am trying to be helpful, I am even asking with a faint smile, “Do I—call a funeral home? Can you recommend a funeral home?”
... This is so shocking to me—so stunning it’s as if the woman has reached over the counter and slapped my face.
It! So quickly Raymond has ceased being he, now is it.”
*** “Hurriedly I’d dressed and left the house, I am not even sure what shoes these are—my vision is blurred—could be, I am wearing two left shoes—or have switched right and left shoes—recall that, in the history of civilization, the designation right and left shoe is relatively recent, not so very long ago individuals counted themselves fortunate to wear just shoes—this is the sort of random, pointless and yet intriguing information Ray would tell me, or read out to me from a magazine—Did you know this? Not so very long ago . . .
The impulse comes over me, to rush into the other room, to tell whoever it is, or was—a woman—a stranger to me, as to Ray—about shoes, the history of right and left—except I understand that this is not the time; and that Ray, in any case, for whose benefit I might have mentioned it, will not hear.”
cinephilegirl_'s review against another edition
No le voy a poner puntaje. Joyce es una maestra y se nota. Fue doloroso leer esto y me ha sacado la energía para enfocarme en varias lecturas a la vez así que no se que decirles más que prepárense para el ordeal.
silodear's review against another edition
3.0
I was so drawn in by the first half of this novel. JCO writes with raw, palpable grief about the unexpected death of her husband. I couldn't help but draw parallels between this book and Joan Didion's My Year of Magical Thinking, though Didion's novel was better suited for me. I decided to stop reading about 3/4 through because I felt too weighed down by the pain and redundancy of this story. I know that this pain and redundancy is likely very real for JCO and reflective of what it feels like to be a new widow, but I've had enough. There are also several moments of overt racism in this book, and an odd moment of trans/homophobia. Plus, JCOs unexamined privilege is nauseating at times. Still, this is an often beautifully written and heart rending book about the pain of losing someone you love. Despite its flaws, there remains something to be gained from this book - particularly for those who love someone who is grieving as JCO has woven into her story some good advice about how to care for a grieving loved one.
kcmc59's review against another edition
5.0
moving, honest, heartbreaking. enlightening if you have never lost a partner. painfully true, yet positive and empowering if you have. i wouldn't recommend you read it soon after a loss - but after some time when you are better able to absorb the memories and regrets it might revive.
perednia's review against another edition
4.0
For 48 years and 25 days, Joyce Carol Oates thought of herself not as the author Joyce Carol Oates, but as Joyce Smith, wife of Raymond Smith, professor and editor of The Ontario Review. That thinking, that life, is abruptly shattered in the middle of a February night in 2008 when she receives a call from the hospital where she had taken her pneumonia-stricken husband a few days earlier, summoning her to get there quicky because her husband was still alive.
When she got there, he wasn't.
The guilt, the grief, the bewilderment, the anger and the depression of those first few hours, days and weeks are chronicled in A Widow's Story. The anguish is unrelenting and the chronicling deal with both the minutiae and large-scale ramifications to daily living and to one's sense of self and value of living.
Reaction to the memoir has centered on comparing this work to Joan Didion's brilliant memoir when she lost both her husband and daughter, and to Oates's remarrying soon after her first husband's death. It's been uniformly negative, with a level of disdain puzzling to someone who has only read a few short stories and one novel of the author's. They had macabre elements but also poignant moments. It's possible to see the curiosity of the author behind the stories, wondering how people would feel if placed in such a situation or how different characteristics would produce different reactions. Those explorations are legitimate reasons to write fiction and should certainly be welcome within the scope of a major reason for fiction to exist: To explore the human condition in its myriad complicated, glorious forms. Oates displays the same kind of intellectual curiosity to her own reactions when her husband dies.
Oates may well be bringing up Didion when she writes late in her book about another well-known writer, a friend, whose husband died and who wrote a best-selling memoir about the experience. The friend writes a letter to Oates about being stunned and how getting over that was a huge obstacle. Oates uses that as a springboard to wonder how much of grief is vanity. She returns to a trope she uses time and again throughout the book: That the widow should be punished, should be ridiculed, should be made miserable by the judgment of others.
While many other writers would stick with the original idea about being stunned, and a few others might take that as the foundation for a treatise on guilt, Oates instead goes into the territory of her insomnia, the medication she is fitfully taking for it and how taking it takes away discernment. Perhaps this is the basis for much criticism of Oates's writing. She certainly piles it on in this book, one idea going to another to another to another in non-linear fashion. Some readers may want to let each idea have its own space and time.
But just as Oates's story is not Didion's, neither are they going to view their experiences in the same way or write about them in the same way. So to criticize Oates for not writing like Didion is to criticize her for not being another person.
Even more major has been the criticism that Oates does not reveal in her memoir that she remarried 11 months after her husband's death. In the final pages, this man is mentioned obliquely as an unexpected guest to a dinner party in her home, that her life will be altered after that evening and that anything which is a gift is given not because it is deserved but because it is a gift.
Oates gives the reason why she would remarry earlier on, though, quoting a letter she wrote to a friend two months after her husband's death. She writes about how hard it is to live alone, that she cannot concentrate and that she worries about being able to keep on living this way. She also writes that she would likely still not be alive if not for her friends. So it's no wonder she sought solace by marrying again. Some people thrive on solitude, some do not. Some honor their late spouses by craving the continuance of the kind of life they led with their spouse.
For other people to condemn Oates because she didn't react the same way that Didion did, or that they think she should react, is a petty reaction. To be condemned for not being someone else or for not seeing things with the same perspective as the person doing the judging is to deny the humanity of the person condemned. Oates, with her insistence on the widow being punished, appears to know in advance she would be judged harshly. And she includes events that do not put her in a good light, such as one concerning one of their cats who preferred Ray over her, but which a good novelist would include in a book about a flawed character.
Yes, Oates's memoir is bloated and repetitive. But it also is a chronicle of a very low point in someone's life and how she has chosen to recount it. She does honor her late husband by conveying what a kind and gentle man he was, by writing about his garden, his work and his unfinished, unpublished novel that she reads after his death. In writing about that novel, Oates also shows how she begins to come to terms with her husband's death by answering for herself questions she has about him after he dies. Writers interested in the process of creating fiction should be drawn to the story of Raymond Smith's lifelong work in progress and how a prolific novelist looks at that work.
A Widow's Story may be far from a "perfect" representation, no matter how a reader defines perfection, but it is a worthwhile testament to what the experience of sudden widowhood meant in the early going to one woman.
When she got there, he wasn't.
The guilt, the grief, the bewilderment, the anger and the depression of those first few hours, days and weeks are chronicled in A Widow's Story. The anguish is unrelenting and the chronicling deal with both the minutiae and large-scale ramifications to daily living and to one's sense of self and value of living.
Reaction to the memoir has centered on comparing this work to Joan Didion's brilliant memoir when she lost both her husband and daughter, and to Oates's remarrying soon after her first husband's death. It's been uniformly negative, with a level of disdain puzzling to someone who has only read a few short stories and one novel of the author's. They had macabre elements but also poignant moments. It's possible to see the curiosity of the author behind the stories, wondering how people would feel if placed in such a situation or how different characteristics would produce different reactions. Those explorations are legitimate reasons to write fiction and should certainly be welcome within the scope of a major reason for fiction to exist: To explore the human condition in its myriad complicated, glorious forms. Oates displays the same kind of intellectual curiosity to her own reactions when her husband dies.
Oates may well be bringing up Didion when she writes late in her book about another well-known writer, a friend, whose husband died and who wrote a best-selling memoir about the experience. The friend writes a letter to Oates about being stunned and how getting over that was a huge obstacle. Oates uses that as a springboard to wonder how much of grief is vanity. She returns to a trope she uses time and again throughout the book: That the widow should be punished, should be ridiculed, should be made miserable by the judgment of others.
While many other writers would stick with the original idea about being stunned, and a few others might take that as the foundation for a treatise on guilt, Oates instead goes into the territory of her insomnia, the medication she is fitfully taking for it and how taking it takes away discernment. Perhaps this is the basis for much criticism of Oates's writing. She certainly piles it on in this book, one idea going to another to another to another in non-linear fashion. Some readers may want to let each idea have its own space and time.
But just as Oates's story is not Didion's, neither are they going to view their experiences in the same way or write about them in the same way. So to criticize Oates for not writing like Didion is to criticize her for not being another person.
Even more major has been the criticism that Oates does not reveal in her memoir that she remarried 11 months after her husband's death. In the final pages, this man is mentioned obliquely as an unexpected guest to a dinner party in her home, that her life will be altered after that evening and that anything which is a gift is given not because it is deserved but because it is a gift.
Oates gives the reason why she would remarry earlier on, though, quoting a letter she wrote to a friend two months after her husband's death. She writes about how hard it is to live alone, that she cannot concentrate and that she worries about being able to keep on living this way. She also writes that she would likely still not be alive if not for her friends. So it's no wonder she sought solace by marrying again. Some people thrive on solitude, some do not. Some honor their late spouses by craving the continuance of the kind of life they led with their spouse.
For other people to condemn Oates because she didn't react the same way that Didion did, or that they think she should react, is a petty reaction. To be condemned for not being someone else or for not seeing things with the same perspective as the person doing the judging is to deny the humanity of the person condemned. Oates, with her insistence on the widow being punished, appears to know in advance she would be judged harshly. And she includes events that do not put her in a good light, such as one concerning one of their cats who preferred Ray over her, but which a good novelist would include in a book about a flawed character.
Yes, Oates's memoir is bloated and repetitive. But it also is a chronicle of a very low point in someone's life and how she has chosen to recount it. She does honor her late husband by conveying what a kind and gentle man he was, by writing about his garden, his work and his unfinished, unpublished novel that she reads after his death. In writing about that novel, Oates also shows how she begins to come to terms with her husband's death by answering for herself questions she has about him after he dies. Writers interested in the process of creating fiction should be drawn to the story of Raymond Smith's lifelong work in progress and how a prolific novelist looks at that work.
A Widow's Story may be far from a "perfect" representation, no matter how a reader defines perfection, but it is a worthwhile testament to what the experience of sudden widowhood meant in the early going to one woman.