Heat and Other Stories
First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | E. P. Dutton |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 416 |
| ISBN | 978-0525933304 |
Heat and Other Stories is a collection of 25 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by E. P. Dutton in 1991.[1]
This volume serves as "a postmodernist allegory of contemporary America" in which Oates returns to the settings of her early fiction in rural western New York state.[2]
The story "Yarrow" won the O. Henry Award in 1991.[3]
Stories
Heat and Other Stories is divided into three parts, and includes the following stories. All were previously published, as indicated:[4]
I
- "House Hunting" (The Kenyon Review, Fall 1987)
- "The Knife" (Redbook, May 1987, as "The Double-Edged Knife")
- "The Hair" (Partisan Review, Summer 1990)
- "Shopping" (Ms., March 1987)
- "The Boyfriend" (The Massachusetts Review, Spring 1988)
- "Passion" (GQ, March 1990)
- "Morning" (Arete, January/February 1990)
- "Naked" (Witness, Winter 1988)
II
- "Heat" (The Paris Review, Spring 1989)
- "The Buck" (Story, Winter 1991)
- "Yarrow" (TriQuarterly, Winter 1987)
- "Sundays in Summer" (Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 1987)
- "Leila Lee" (Northwest Review, 1989)
- "The Swimmers" (Playboy, December 1989)
- "Getting to Know All About You" (The Southern Review, Summer 1988)
- "Capital Punishment" (The Southern Review, Autumn 1987)
- "Hostage" (anthology Louder Than Words, 1989)
- "Craps" (Boulevard, 1989)
- "Death Valley" (Esquire, July 1988)
- "White Trash" (anthology Lord John Ten: A Celebration, 1988)
III
- "Twins" (The Ohio Review, 1987)
- "The Crying Baby" (New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, Winter 1989)
- "Why Don't You Come Live With Me It's Time" (Tikkun, July/August 1990)
- "Ladies and Gentlemen:" (Harper's Magazine, December 1990)
- "Family" (Omni, December 1989)
Reception and analysis
Literary critic Wendy Lesser in The New York Times reports that Oates's "own enormous body of work" has become a burden that the author carries into her collection Heat and Other Stories, which deal largely with "parent-child struggles."[5] Lesser offers the story "Shopping" as an example of Oates's thematic concerns in this volume: the story is not a Gothic horror reminiscent of Poe, but "transcends" that genre to present normality "in all its terrifying nakedness."[6] She compares Oates's handling of violence in stories with that of fiction writer Paul Bowles:
Mr. Bowles hinges his plots on inevitable violation, and he also aims to shock us...Behind his gruesome tales is a stern moralist, a person who trusts that we readers (if not his characters) are still capable of sharing his disapproval and disgust. Ms. Oates, on the other hand, is as cavalierly cynical as a teen-ager. Her stock in trade is precisely not to seem shocked, and she pretends to be equally, mildly, analytically interested in all forms of human behavior, however grotesque.[6]
Biographer and critic Greg Johnson offered this praise for the collection:"Heat and Other Stories represent Oates's full maturity as a writer of short fiction, the genre that best exploits the versatility and intensity of her narrative gifts."[7]
Booklist also reviewed the collection.[8]
References
- ^ Johnson, 1994 p. 218-221: Selected Bibliography, Primary Works
- ^ Johnson, 1994 p. 94, p. 99
- ^ Johnson, 1994 p. 99
- ^ Johnson, 1994 p. 219 in Selected Bibliography
- ^ Lesser, 1991: "Heat: And Other Stories," are about bad parents—or, at the very least, about misunderstandings between parent and child."
- ^ a b Lesser, 1991
- ^ Johnson, 1994 p. 106
- ^ Booklist
Sources
- Johnson, Greg (1994). Joyce Carol Oates: a study of the short fiction. Twayne's studies in short fiction. New York: Twayne publ. ISBN 978-0-8057-0857-8.
- Lesser, Wendy (August 4, 1991). "The Shopping Mall Wars". The New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
- "Heat and Other Stories". Booklist. August 1991. Retrieved November 10, 2023.