>> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization. board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected, and tested. also, by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith and she's a national book award-winning author whose productivity is famously approaching superhuman. in the last half century, she's published more than 40 novels, along with novellas, plays, poems, short fiction, and non-fiction. her latest book is a collection of stories called, "lovely, dark, deep. " she's joyce carol oates. this is "overheard.

[ cheering and applause ] >> i guess we can't fire him now. the night that i win the emmy. >> being on the supreme court was an improbable dream. >> it's hard work, and it's controversial. >> without information there is no freedom, and it's journalists who provide that information. >> window rolls down and this guy says, hey, it goes to 11. [ music playing ]. >> joyce carol oates, welcome. >> thank you. >> so nice to see you and congratulations on this collection. >> well, thank you. >> so if i'm doing my math right, it was 51 years ago that your first publication, also a collection of stories, came out. >> um-hmm. it may have been. >> may have been. >> yes. [laughter]. >> yeah. well, but i'm just so impressed with your commitment to your work and your dedication and you just kind of just go on and on and on and don't pay attention to what's to the left of you or to the right of you. you know, this work is as fresh, in many ways, as work that we would have read of yours years ago.

>> well, i hope so. i don't think i'm terribly different from other writers, but --. >> oh. but you are. [laughter]. no, but you are. >> well, my dear friend john updike, who's no longer living, was also a person who wrote a good deal. >> yeah. >> and steven king writes a good deal. >> isn't it annoying that people say, oh, that joyce carol oates is so prolific, as if somehow, they're saying by your quantity, you're diminishing your quality. that surely is the implication of some people who say that, don't you think? >> well, it may be. it seems -- it's a focus that seems irrelevant to the actual writer. if you met picasso and said, well, you've done 14 million, you know, little sketches -- >> right. >> -- he would have looked kind of blank. you know, that wasn't the point of his life. >> right. >> or his career, it wasn't in done to quantity, but he was -- he was doing things that were very revolutionary. >> right. >> i think that's the way writers and artists look upon their work. maybe in sort of clusters, like you have an era, an interlude. you're doing these different things. you're not thinking in terms of a quantity of days or hours --

>> you're not checking off boxes, right? >> not at all. >> you didn't start out with a number that you're aspiring to. >> no. it's like a person who makes -- who prepares -- lovingly prepares dinners for her family, let's say, for many years. >> right. >> and you wouldn't say, well you've done 51,000 dinners. [laughter]. you know, that somehow she would look at you, well, that wasn't the point. that wasn't the point of my life. >> right. >> somehow. >> yeah. i want to go back to the beginning in your art as a writer and the influence of your grandmother and many other things about you that got you to be who you are now, but i want to stay here, for a second. this is 13 stories. collection of 13 stories and the title -- and the title story are -- have a tie back to frost. >> yes. >> yes. would you say a word about that? >> it's an interview with robert frost. it's a fictitious interview with robert frost in 1951 by a young woman, poet, and she's interviewing this person who is this extraordinary archetypal, sort of dignitary. >> yep. >> and he's got this flowing white hair and so forth. and she's basically interviewing

him and then i'm creating a work in which he's speaking very much as he spoke in real life. >> yep. >> the comments he makes are taken from biographies and letters -- >> right. >> -- and poems and so forth. so it was a challenging and kind of exciting -- >> yep. >> -- story for me to write because there's basically nothing that the robert frost in the story says that he didn't actually say. >> and yet, it's been controversially received, or has it not? >> that's the funny part of it. >> yeah. because the picture of frost that comes out of the story is not a terribly flattering or positive -- >> well, i wouldn't say that. it's a --. >> you wouldn't say that. >> -- it's a complex portrait. a person of great genius --. >> yeah. >> -- who's playful, mischievous, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes body, unexpected. he's entertaining. he's a great -- he's a genius. you know. >> right. but the -- but my saying that is not so much my reading of it but the --. >> yeah. as i --. >> -- reading of it -- of others have said, you know, i think some of frost's descendants maybe have said. >> yes. >> well, this is not a reflection of who -- right. shame.

>> there are these archetypes out in the world like the image of einstein with his wild hair, you know. >> right. >> these lovable older men, like archetypal images. they are brand names like -- comparable to the marilyn monroe, you know, standing with her dress flowing up. >> dress going up. right. right. >> and marilyn monroe, the actual person was so much more complex and, you know, interesting than that image. >> right. >> and so, too, with these great men of genius, of course, they were extremely complex, and part of frost's personality was that he was very dark. he had -- he acknowledged he had a mean streak, but he was also a genius. it's like shakespeare. you know, there's a great complexity, here. >> yeah. >> so people were upset because i presented a human being in a kind of complex way rather than a simple way. >> right. well, i would imagine is that you have a certain amount of complexity, yourself. i mean, the fact is that when people perceive you, as we said, they talk often about how prolific you are. they only scratch the surface.

they don't understand the full you. >> well, that's another thing, too. but with robert frost, the biography sort of --. >> i like how you pivoted right back to frost. [laughter]. that's actually good. >> well, it's hard to talk about one's self and --. >> right. >> -- the actual --. >> that is kind of what this show is about, though, so--. [laughter]. we'll come back around. >> well, the personal life of any artist seems to that artist somewhat irrelevant, the way the scaffolding would seem -- >> i think that's said right. that sounds right. >> you're building a cathedral and you have scaffolding around it and then you take the scaffolding away. you know, that wasn't the point. >> right. >> but people seem to focus on this scaffolding. >> yeah. >> you know, and that seems -- it's baffling, i think, but with a great genius like robert frost, the poetry is extremely complex and dark and various, and you can see that whoever wrote it was -- you know, was not such a simple person. >> yeah. >> and so it's almost an homage to -- to genius to present -- >> right. >> -- him. and he did have a bawdy streak. he was a little -- >> yes.

famously -- yeah. >> he was -- he was vulgar. but he was also playful. he could be generous. i mean, there are many things about him. >> and it doesn't diminish his art. >> it has nothing to do with his art. i think, it literally has nothing. so the story ends with the artist triumphing -- >> right. >> -- and the interviewer, if you will excuse me, the interviewer is banished. >> no. i -- [laughter]. there have been many times when i thought probably better, actually, if that had happened. >> so she just disappears at the end. >> yeah. >> now, i assume that you read the story. >> of course, yes. >> you know, i have been interviewed by charlie rose and i can't always -- >> tell whether he reads the book? >> i can't assume anything. >> right. bet on me, is what i would say. >> no. i assume -- i'm 100% sure that -- >> yeah. >> -- that you read the story. but did you notice that actually, she was like a figment of his imagination? >> well, it's hard for me to inter -- >> yeah. >> -- to understand at the end basically, whether it was real or imagined. yeah. >> well, it's like his worst dream, that he was going to be interviewed and all his dark secrets. >> right. >> because his son did commit suicide and there was a very unhappy relationship and he did have his own daughter committed

to a psychiatric hospital when he might have done more for her. he just sort of, you know, got rid of her. >> right. >> and all these things came out, but that wasn't really the point of writing the story. the point was to look at the poet. >> but you raise a really great and, i think, timeless question about the connection between the art and the artist. >> yes. >> you know, there are an awful lot of people who -- >> yes. >> -- create magnificent art who are just not necessarily terrible people, but who are terribly difficult people to access or difficult people to like. >> exactly. that's -- yes. >> and the thing that people have wrestled with forever has been, do i have to embrace the artist if i embrace the art? >> well, it's a paradox. and i think it's a debatable question, it's an ethical question. >> right. >> i would come down on the side of the esthetic in that you have to have the art free of the person. >> yep. >> we don't know a lot about shakespeare, for instance. >> true. >> so the more we know about somebody, the more diminished he or she usually is. not always, but usually because -- >> right. >> -- it becomes mundane. >> yeah. >> so because we know so little

about [spelling]. aeschylus, euripides, or sophocles. >> right. >> there are these great essences, but if you were sophocles' daughter-in-law -- >> right. >> you know, [laughter]. he might not have been not much fun to live with. >> right. [laughter]. you know, a terrible dinner guest -- >> yeah. yeah. >> you know, not nice to the kids, you know. >> like -- and king lear is another example. >> yeah. that guy was a jerk. [laughter]. i agree. >> he was difficult -- he was a real difficult person. >> right. but i think that even in a contemporary sense, if you -- you know, you're talking about aeschylus. i'm thinking about george clooney, you know. the fact is that we always want to associate certain attributes to people we see making art. >> yes. >> and in some respects, what they do when they're not making art is none of my business -- >> yes. >> -- and none of my concern. >> well, the most controversial issue of recent years is the woody allen situation. >> oh. yes. indeed. >> and that was unfortunate -- >> okay. so where do you come down on that? [laughter]. since you brought it up. >> well, it became a whole twitter thing. no -- >> everything becomes a twitter thing.

[laughter]. that's right. >> no. some people, including myself, thought that there should be an objective, you know, look at this, but other people were almost like a lynch mob. they were immediately -- i mean, like in one day, they had condemned woody allen and it just went on like a fever. it was like a fire. >> yeah. >> and i've actually done some research. this is not related to the woody allen situation -- into lynch mobs, and you probably have also. you see in the archival photographs of lynch mobs in the united states and i'm sure there were some in texas, but there certainly were some elsewhere in the united states. and these lynch mobs, the photograph would be of a whole community. >> yep. >> like there were children and elderly women and nice looking people, and you know, they were all good christians, i suppose. and they're kind of all out there and then somebody's being lynched as a black person. and this went on for a long time in our history. >> yep. >> you know? and the people in the picture, i'm sure many of them were not really thinking

about what they were doing. >> well, they had no reason to believe that -- i mean, they may not of even had any knowledge of what the particular act was, right, that was -- >> no. they were just sort of there. like somebody says, let's go. you know, there's a lynching or something. >> right. >> i'll meet you at the lynching. >> right. [laughter]. >> you know? it just was sort of a communal thing. >> yeah. >> but that's the reason that we have law. >> right. >> we have law because law can be slow and it can be frustratingly so -- >> right. >> -- but by the time the court case comes along and a trial comes along, by that time, this initial hysteria has usually died down. >> so the guilt or innocence of woody allen in this instance was really not the issue at the initial telling of these events or these accusations because people rushed in and they said, well, we're oing to condemn -- >> they rushed in immediately with a restraint situation because the letter from this young woman appeared in nicholas krisof's column with -- seemingly with the imprimatur of the new york times. now, i'm not saying that the young woman did not tell the truth.

we don't really know that. >> right. >> but there are many people who make accusations -- >> right. >> -- especially against famous -- >> right. >> -- men and they could be sexual accusations. they could turn out to be completely made up. >> but again, the question, here is, made up or not, is it okay if i go see annie hall? >> that's a -- no. and then it had nothing to do with that. >> right. but i mean it ties back to frost. >> exactly. >> i mean, in some ways -- >> yeah. >> -- the question, again, becomes can you separate the artist from the art. >> well, i think you have to because you just don't know that much about some artists. >> right. >> and when you don't know anything about them, it seems that the artist is independent and autonomous. >> right. well, we know a little bit about you, and again, you would prefer that we focused on the art, rather than in your case, the artist, but i do want to ask you about one or two things, if that's all right. the influence of your paternal grandmother seems to have been significant in your life. >> yes. my jewish grandmother. yes. >> would you tell about her role in helping you get to books and think about writing? >> well, to talk about my grandmother for one moment, we

never knew that she was jewish. like some jewish people come fleeing europe basically -- >> yes. >> -- in about the 1890s. this family came, not to the populous areas of new york city or boston, where there are jewish communities, but they came all the way to up state new york, which is a very desolate area and the fact that they came all the way to up state new york where there are no jews at all, seems to suggest some measure of desperation. [laughter]. because why, otherwise, would one come there? so my grandmother and her family never acknowledged that they were jewish. they just wanted to assimilate and blend in. even my father who was her son didn't know. i mean, when you look at the photographs, if i show these photographs to my jewish friends, i say, well, of course these are jewish people. look at them. [laughter]. you know. and as soon as you know that, then you say, well, yeah, you can see that. and i suppose i look jewish in a way, too. but somehow, if you're not told that, you know, in psychology,

its perception is so much. >> indeed. >> and so we never knew that and as it turned out, it was something that came up after she had died. >> yeah. >> mbe a coue deca aftear not onlyh op, b many jewish people, she loved books and she loved the idea of education. sohen i was really young, she gave me a book for my birthday and for christmas. i always got a book from my grandmother. [laughter]. and fr the hungarian side of the family, i'm not sure what i would have gotten, but it would not have been a book. [laughter]. and then she bought me a -- my first typewriter was actually a toy typewriter. >> yeah. >> do you know what a toy typewriter is? you probably don't have them anymore because babies go immediatelyers, today. >> ids. right. >> so anyway, this toy typewriter had a carriage that you moved around and then you pressed and like for a and press around, b, you know.

and that way you would write war and peace laboriously. [laughter]. >> right. almost as long as it takes to readt. right. >> very -- very slowly. but for a young child like five or six or however old i was, this was so thrilling because it wasn't just my handwriting but an actual, you know, print. >> right. >> so that was the beginning of a lifelong -- >> yeah. >> -- obsession with thidea of this kind of creativity. >> and she gave you, i think, alicen -- >> "alice in wonderland.". >> "alice in wonderland," which was a very informative -- >> yes. i was about nine years -- >> -- experience for you. >> -- nine years old. so it's wonderful. wonderful novel. and that eventually, when i was 14, she gave me a real typewriter. [laughter]. a manual typewriter which don't exist anymore. so you're actually, you know, pressing these keys the way the old newspaper men used to do them, you know. >> right. very romantic. >> very macho, actually. >> yeah. yeah. >> very macho. but doing this little thing today, i don't think that's very macho. >> yeah. [laughter]. you don't think it is? >> no. i don't think hemingway would have done this little thing. >> hemingway would not have been texting? no? >> hemingway was doing this --

this macho thing. >> hadn't occurred to me whether hemingway would have texted but now i'm thinking about it. that's actually good. >> i think he might not have. >> might not of. >> yeah. >> so you went to syracuse university -- >> yes. >> -- as an undergraduate. and you wrote -- you began to write novels there. >> yes. >> yeah. that was the first place that you began to think, i'm going to write these sorts of big, sprawling stories. >> well, i was writing novels in high school. >> you were also writing in -- >> yes. i was influenced by faulkner. >> you were. >> and hemingway. i had a lot of wonderful influences. i mean, i really love the writing and so imitation is a form of love, you know. >> um-hmm. >> and so i was -- i would read f. scott fitzgerald and i would try to write in that style. >> yeah. kind of amazing. >> i remember those days, you know, when i was like 15-16 years old. i was sort of excited and the early hemingway stories i recommend to anyone. the early hemingway stories are so thrilling. they have so wonderfully written. he was very young. he was a young writer of genius. >> yeah. but the first publication was '60 -- i think it was '63 and that would have --

>> yes. >> -- that would have been once you were out of syracuse and at the university of wisconsin. >> yes. yes. i was actually teaching at the university of detroit, then. >> at the time. teaching. so you had been at princeton university, teaching since 1978. >> yes. >> thirty-six years. >> yes, i guess so. >> it's a remarkable amount of time. and actually, in that time, in some ways, the arc of your time at princeton has corresponded with so many changes in publishing, so many changes in writing. i asked you about this earlier and you said well, i'm not sure that things have changed more than superficially; but of course, i think about the introduction of technology as a means of producing work and as a means of distributing work as transformational, in terms of the way writers and writing have evolved. >> well, that's true in one sense, but the most profound spiritual and philosophical shifts in culture in the united states were the 1960s. >> right. >> that was profound and very

disorienting. >> right. >> these other changes that you're speaking of are much more superficial. for instance, if you're texting to your friend or sending an email to your friend, or writing a letter or telephoning your friend, the act of communication is probably not that different. >> yeah. but the immediacy of it is actually quite a bit different. i mean, i find -- >> well -- >> -- i find that that's something that it occurs to me now, to think back, you know, 20 years ago, when we didn't have cell phones as readily accessible. it didn't have texting or didn't have -- >> well, that's true. well, we had telephones. >> right. but it still seems like everything has been sped up. everything has been compressed in time. everything unfolds so much more quickly as a consequence of the ability to be connected at every second. >> well, but, this is not analogous to just the fact that you can speed more on a road. i mean, in the beginning, maybe you went 40-miles an hour, now you can go 90-miles an hour. >> yeah. >> but you behind the driver's -- in the driver's seat

are not probably a different person. >> and also, you have -- you also can control the speed with which you travel. >> yeah. >> and one imagines if you find the speed, today, of communication to be uncomfortable or off putting, you can just slow down. right? >> well, one of the consequences of this rapidity might be that we can't keep up intellectually. that there's a thinness and a superficiality to the communications that when people wrote letters to one another, with longhand -- >> yeah. >> -- it was kind of a loving thing that you might spend a whole evening writing this letter to your friend. it would be received in a loving way. >> right. >> now, you might just send a little text message and so there is a thinness there. >> well, and the fact is your papers are at syracuse, right? >> yes. >> i imagine the generations to come, when it's time for them to deposit their papers someplace -- >> oh, there won't be any papers. >> well, there won't be any papers. where are the letters to one's brother or mother or child -- >> yeah. >> -- or where are the notes? i mean -- >> yeah. >> -- it's all, now, electronic and i just think that the ability to archive somebody's

history is going to be diminished. right. >> that's a good point. but you raised this issue a few minutes ago whether there's some profound change. >> yeah. >> and i would argue that there is not an essential change -- >> right. >> -- in the human soul or in the human relationships. >> right. >> not essentially. maybe, you know -- >> right. >> -- in some -- >> well, let me try to direct it more specifically to the teaching that you do. so that the students who you would have taught back in the early '80s and the students that you teach now in the early to mid, you know, second decade of this century. do you view them as coming to you better or worse prepared? do you see them as having a different creative motivation than they might have 30 years ago? how different are they? >> well, i don't want to sound provocative or contradictory -- >> oh, go on. go ahead. >> they're almost like the same person. >> they are. >> the essential writing student of 1962 could be my -- in my

class next semester. >> yeah. >> there's just something about that personality that likes books, likes to read. i wouldn't -- i can't really say that they're very different. >> yeah. >> however, i get a self-selected and selected group of students. i've also taught at uc berkley, which is a huge state university -- >> yep. >> -- and a great university, and i've taught at nyu, which is a huge private university. i think the largest private university in the country in a very selective mfa program. >> yes. >> and i teach undergraduates at princeton. so that's so different -- different dimensions; but essentially, i'm not seeing -- i'm not seeing public school students or high school students or -- >> yeah. >> -- grade school students, you know, in oklahoma or montana or -- >> right. >> -- or northern maine. i'm not seeing a wide range of students. i'm seeing student who are interested in literature who have already demonstrated skills at writing.

>> and those students make you, today, as they might have in a previous decade, make you feel hopeful about the future of letters. >> well, of the humankind. i think anyone who is a teacher, especially university teachers -- >> yep. >> -- we have students who are so idealistic and really so wonderful and hardworking. their idealism is so touching because some of us feel that the world is such a fraught place, so fraught -- >> right. >> -- with more ambiguity and pain and suffering and so forth. but a young person of 20 can sort of look at you with these -- [laughter]. this look of idealism and it's just actually quite wonderful. >> but, of course, it is said that this generation, these college students are temperamentally very different than the previous generation. >> well, when you say it is said, isn't this some sort of cliche or stereotype that you're -- [laughter]. that you've gotten -- >> i think i just got an f from you, actually. [laughter]. well, but, you know, you hear all the time that millennials have a very different disposition --

>> i don't know. >> -- than the generation before. >> but i was called the silent generation. >> yeah. >> this is sort of a journalistic cliche that somebody made up. they were sitting at "time magazine" one day and thought, what's the word -- and they were kind of drinking, you know, and so forth, the silent generation. >> i think they cut drinking from the budget of "time" some time ago. [laughter]. but go on. >> no. no. this was a long time ago. >> oh, it would have been when they still had a drink cart, actually -- >> but the idea of the silent generation, well, why? >> yeah. >> i mean, if you actually looked at my generation, probably find all kinds of writers and -- >> not any more silent than anybody else. >> no. no. not at all. >> right. >> so the so called millennials, i just think that's a kind of a typical journalistic thing. >> we're just trying to characterize people, or classify them, but it doesn't mean anything. >> yeah. if you think about all the people you know, if i think about young people whom i know, not just my students, but -- >> yep. >> -- in my family and sons and daughters of friends, they are remarkable. >> yeah. >> i mean, they are really remarkable and i mean morally and ethically and intellectually in terms of energy.

i wouldn't be able to put one slogan that would confine them. they're very individual. >> yeah. >> so that's sort of my response as a person who actually works with young people. >> yeah. >> now, if you never see any young people and just say like college students, young people of today, some person's ranting and raving, it doesn't even know any young people. >> yeah. mostly. that's right. [laughter]. slam. i think you just got them, right. that's it. we have about a minute left. you're in the business among the many other things you do of reviewing books. >> yes. >> what's the last great book that you read? great book. truly great book that you would recommend without reservation to all of us and to all of them out there. >> you don't mean that i've reviewed. >> no -- well, one that you didn't review. i mean one that you did review and one that you didn't review. something that you -- you're -- >> well, since i have only one minute, i mean, i could just point to a great classic, that would be the collected poetry of emily dickinson -- >> right. >> -- which is in one book, you know, her whole -- >> i was thinking something that you might have read in a kind of

recent sense. recently published. but if that's the one thing you would send people back to, that's great. >> now, if i had like 40 minutes to think about it, i would come up with a title. >> right. >> well, i mentioned john updike who had been my friend -- >> yeah. >> -- and whom i very much miss and his short stories, there is a collection of john updike short stories that's quite large. and that's got great work in it. >> well, if you think of a book that came out recently that you like, tweet it. >> oh, yes. [laughter]. i do. >> we'll follow you on twitter and then that's how that goes. >> oh, yeah. >> it's a pleasure to meet you and even more of a pleasure to get to talk to you about these -- >> well, thank you. >> -- many subjects. >> joyce carol oates. >> thank you. >> thanks so much and congratulations on the book. very well. thank you. [ applause ]. [music playing]. we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. [music playing]. [www.captionsource.com]

>> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization. board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected, and tested. also, by hillco partners. texas government affairs consultancy and its global healthcare consulting business unit, hillco health. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you.sssssssw?????????????