USA : The world of a widow

Article by: The Culture Trip

J.P. O’Malley speaks to one of the most prolific writers of the last 50 years about her latest work, an honest account of becoming a widow … and marrying again. (For more from J.P. O’Malley, follow him on Twitter @johnpaulomalleyz)

THERE are famous writers in America, and then there are writers that become almost like national institutions, such is the interest, consistency, longevity and prolific nature of their writing.
Over the second half of the 20th Century, John Updike and Philip Roth fell into that category.

Joyce Carol Oates would certainly not be out of company with them and at 72, it seemed she had little left to surprise the literary world with. Having written over 50 novels, 22 short story collections, several works of drama, myriad critiques for the likes of the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker and a plethora of awards she could be — along with the late John Updike — one of the most prolific American writers of the last 50 years.

Her latest release: A Widow’s Story, A Memoir, is perhaps the closest fans will ever get to know the real Carol Oates — who has kept her private life very private.

This memoir is an honest account of becoming a widow. Her husband of 47 years, Raymond Smith, with whom she founded the literary magazine, The Ontario Review, died in February 2008.

Written from a series of journals, the memoir reads as a sort of traumatic stream of consciousness cry for help, from someone who appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It seems strange that a novelist would find spending time alone so arduous but Carol Oates says that up until the death of her husband, she was never used to complete solitude.

“The strange fact of my life is that until my husband died, I had never lived alone.

“This is not all that uncommon, there are many women in the same situation, we sort of move from one set of living to another, so I’ve never really had that experience. I have solitude at my house, but I was always working at the university, and I’m not sure that I would have wanted to be alone for long periods of time, I just felt very uncomfortable. I’m much better now, losing someone is like a physical shock, and you start to mend, to convalesce.”

Does she feel in anyway like she was betraying her husband in the memoir, by discussing their 47 years of marriage?

“One of the motives was to enshrine and preserve a way of life, you know: a marriage, my husband, his work, without that I just felt Ray would just be forgotten, so traditionally I think the memoir is something that preserves memory, so that seemed like a positive thing, but then in the more particulars, everybody feels sort of exposed or self conscious, if too much is said.

“The book was written in a very emotional state, I didn’t want to coldly edit it, or rewrite it, I didn’t want to write a book that was looking bad, or looking coldly at that time in my life, I wanted to be faithful to the expression of being a widow. I mean there are a lot of things that are embarrassing, and maybe even now, I wouldn’t write, I wouldn’t put in, and some things I think I’ve said too much, and people will see themselves in the pages, and I wouldn’t do that now, but it’s 2011, and I wrote this in 2008/09, so time has gone by, but I think it would be really dishonest to go back and rewrite it. Because basically when I started writing it, I didn’t know how the story would end, I thought at the start that maybe my husband would live, but now when I think of it, he was going to die anyway, and I know that now, and it’s kind of ironic and bitter, but at the time I had such hope, and the hope is what is pathetic, and so I wanted to preserve that naivety or ignorance.”

About her marriage with Raymond Smith, Carol Oates says that communication in many ways was limited, and that they discussed very little to each other, including the decision not to have children.

“With my husband, I never wanted to tell him anything that would upset him. I don’t see any point in that. I never tell friends any bad news, I don’t rush up to people to tell them something to disturb them, and I never tell anything bad that I have heard about them, because I don’t see any purpose in that. Ray and I also never really talked about having children, we just weren’t that interested in having any really.”

“I guess I’m not that maternal, I mean I like my students, and I like children, and I like animals, but I just don’t have that instinct, and my husband certainly didn’t ever have it. I have many friends who don’t have children, and some of them are very open and calculated about it, where as Ray and I never really talked about it much.”

Despite having anti-depressants prescribed for her after Ray’s death and writing about suicide and self-hatred in the memoir, the concept of suicide is discussed more from a philosophical perspective she says.

“I think part of the memoir is a meditation on suicide, thinking about the possibilities, the ramifications, the consequences, and you know sort of thinking it through. It’s not a rational act, suicide. I think people who are suicidal, they are trying to remedy something that is really wrong, and they don’t know how to deal with it.

“Some people become alcoholics and take drugs to self medicate — which can be a form of suicide — other people are so healthy they don’t even contemplate suicide, we’re all different, and Albert Camus and others who have thought about suicide in a very philosophical way, well that was something that interested me.”

These days, Joyce Carol Oates says she has a new-found happiness and is re-discovering the joyful traits in her personality since finding a new companion, Charles Gross, a semi-retired professor of Psychology at Princeton University whom she met at the end of 2008 and married in 2009.

“My new husband is a wonderful companion. When you’re really alone, you need a companion to talk to: it’s a very deep human need I think, it’s also very wonderful.”