Joyce Carol Oates speaks (and writes) what’s on her mind

Credit: Akashic Books

Credit: Akashic Books

In the past decade, media coverage of Oates has increasingly involved her characteristically prolific, often-messy presence on X. Since joining in 2012 at the behest of her publisher, she has written more than 165,000 posts, ranging from innocuous to political to gross-out, strange and occasionally offensive.

Much has been made of Oates’ sometimes-incongruous musings on the platform, where she has 255,000 followers. There’s a sense of cognitive dissonance that comes with reading an oddball tweet from a person widely considered to have a brilliant mind. Why, observers ask, does a literary figure of such prestige feel the need to wade into the social media muck on such a regular basis?

Oates herself has expressed ambivalence about the platform, telling Salon, “I could easily just quit right now and never look at it ever again — never think of it again.”

But the tweets continue, perhaps originating in that famous prolificity that bounces her from essay to libretto to novel in search of a new outlet. “There’s just nothing you can do with little tiny straight thoughts and fragments that go on Twitter and are sort of lost — you couldn’t do anything else with,” she said in the same Salon interview.

There’s something humanizing about watching a respected intellectual share controversial takes on the internet, in the same way that it’s fun to see pictures of celebrities swallowing bugs or spilling coffee. Just like us, Oates seems to spend hours online, scrolling and clicking and idly sharing whatever comes to her. Just like us, she’s fallen into the vortex and doesn’t seem quite able to extricate herself.

In the end, Oates’ X feed is a distraction, a pale imitation of her powerful literary skill. Like many of her tweets, Oates’ novels tend toward the dark and strange. They often pull from real life, as in “Black Water” (1992), about the Chappaquiddick scandal; “Blonde” (2000), a fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe; and her most recent novel, “Butcher” (2024), inspired by 19th-century gynecologist J. Marion Sims. Though she often puts her characters in predicaments appropriate for a thriller or horror story, she tends to write less about plot than ideas, forming a through line with her famous X feed.

Oates will participate in a keynote conversation with author, philanthropist, former NBA All-Star and DBF benefactor Joe Barry Carroll on Oct. 4 at First Baptist Church of Decatur. They are expected to discuss the three books Oates will publish this year: “Butcher,” along with “Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer” (edited by Greg Johnson, the titular biographer) and a reissue of her 1999 novel “Broke Heart Blues,” slated for release in October. Free tickets will be available through Eventbrite, and organizers expect seats to fill quickly.

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Rachel Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University and an MA from University College Dublin, both in creative writing. Her work has appeared in the Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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