Joyce Carol Oates is/and Little Me

Two things to report: listening to Joyce Carol Oates Tuesday night at Politics and Prose, and seeing Little Me on Wednesday on the campus of Shenandoah University in Winchester VA.

Oates has just published her 36th book, The Gravedigger's Daughter, a novel set in upstate New York and based (loosely) on the experience of her grandmother, whose German Jewish parents had come to this country in the 1890s. Oates knew her grandmother well, but until someone had decided to write a biography of Oates and discovered that her great grandparents were Jewish immigrants, Oates was totally unaware of this heritage.

Politics and Prose was very crowded for her appearance, and getting there twenty minutes early (unheard of for me) did not get me a seat. So I took a book and sat on the floor in a corner, where at least I could lean my back against something. I read about twenty pages, and could have kept going.

I listed to Oates' opening comments, but when she began to read, I went outside, coming back about twenty minutes later to hear the Q and A. I did not want to hear the excerpts Oates was reading. I wanted to be surprised.

How do you write? This is one of the questions that she was asked. She said that she knew that she wrote idiosyncratically. She does a lot of solitary walking and running, and while she is on the move, she is visualizing scenes. Not writing them, she says, visualizing them, almost like cinematography. When she gets back, she writes the scenes, as best as she can remember them, in longhand. Then she stores them and then, when she thinks she has enough scenes, she goes back to them, shuffles them around, and puts them together. She now types up a general plot outline composed of these scenes. Her writing embellishes this outline.

You published your first novel at 26? Yes, but I wrote my first novel at 6. Even before I could write. I just scribbled and scribbled.

Are you going to publish your memoirs? My memoirs? I am so uninteresting. I don't think I have led an interesting life. There really is nothing to read about. Even when I am being interviewed, I don't have much to say. I always wind up interviewing the interviewer. They have all led more interesting lives than I have.

What advice for a young writer who doesn't know how to start? First, talk to the older people in your family. The ones who came here, if they are still alive, or ones who knew them. That's the generation with the stories. And then, join a writers' group. That is the way you learn what part of your writing attracts others.

It was a very interesting hour.

Yesterday afternoon, I drove to Winchester on my way to Tennessee, and stayed at a Best Western (wi-fi in each room and free)across the street from Shenandoah University. They have a four play musical theater season each summer, with students from the conservatory program and what they call "guest artists", although these seem by and large to be faculty.

I saw that Little Me was playing and went across to the large theater's box office and bought a ticket. It was opening night.

I had never seen Little Me, and it was not high on my list of wants. But it is a lot of fun. As a play (Neil Simon)it is the ultimate in corn, and does not hang together particularly well. Based on a book by Patrick Dennis (he had something to do with Auntie Mame, too? Or am I mixing things up?), it tells a rags to riches story of Belle Schlumpfert (rhymes with comfort, in one of the songs), who is a combination Candide and Zelig. And Forest Gump. Always in the middle of things, always winding up worse for the wear, and in the end coming out ahead. Pure corn. A few songs you know ("I love you, as far as I am able" and "I've never been kissed, by a real live girl") and a bunch of novelty songs. The young Belle was excellent, and the male lead (who plays 5 different comic roles) was an absolute kick. (I was sitting next to a good friend of his, who was rolling on the floor)

You never know what you will find, I guess, in small town America.

Oh, yes, and "Little Me": could be the motto for Joyce Carol Oates, no?