Her writing is fine. Just hated the story and it's cruelty. ( )

Hedonism Goes Off Page

Hedonism, defined in its more vernacular sense as personal gratification regardless of its effect on others, forms the center of Joyce Carol Oates’ novella of young, naive college women falling prey to a pair of svengalis. You might think of it as a modern incarnation of the age old tales, with painfully real consequences for those accused, of demonic possession for sexual purposes, sort of like seventeenth-century Urbain Grandier and the Ursuline nuns of Loudun, France.

An adult Gillian Brauer strolls through the Louvre when she encounters a grotesque totem portraying a maternal figure. She recognizes it as one of the only surviving works of artist/sculptor Dorcas (meant as ironic?) Harrow, wife of her old literature teacher Andre Harrow (harrow, as in a tool to break apart and lay open the soil for seeding; quite clever, given the story). The recognition hurtles her back to her days at a Catamount, a small New England women’s college. She relates in vivid detail how she and many of the women living in her cottage taking Andre’s course in poetry writing come under his spell and how the high purpose he and his wife appear to espouse proves in its extremity to be said hedonism and for the women descent into traumatic degradation. Surfeit to say that the end result of turning oneself over to the pair exhibits in self-destructive behavior and destructive acting out (the fires) as Andre encourages the women to expose all their insecurities, which he mines for his own and Dorcas’ own purposes. And, even as was with poor old Grandier, immolation proves something of a just evening up of the score.

This Oates excursion into the vulnerabilities of lithe young women searching for identity and acceptance is for readers curious about the darker side of humanity and those who stumble into its clutches. ( )

Hedonism Goes Off Page

Hedonism, defined in its more vernacular sense as personal gratification regardless of its effect on others, forms the center of Joyce Carol Oates’ novella of young, naive college women falling prey to a pair of svengalis. You might think of it as a modern incarnation of the age old tales, with painfully real consequences for those accused, of demonic possession for sexual purposes, sort of like seventeenth-century Urbain Grandier and the Ursuline nuns of Loudun, France.

An adult Gillian Brauer strolls through the Louvre when she encounters a grotesque totem portraying a maternal figure. She recognizes it as one of the only surviving works of artist/sculptor Dorcas (meant as ironic?) Harrow, wife of her old literature teacher Andre Harrow (harrow, as in a tool to break apart and lay open the soil for seeding; quite clever, given the story). The recognition hurtles her back to her days at a Catamount, a small New England women’s college. She relates in vivid detail how she and many of the women living in her cottage taking Andre’s course in poetry writing come under his spell and how the high purpose he and his wife appear to espouse proves in its extremity to be said hedonism and for the women descent into traumatic degradation. Surfeit to say that the end result of turning oneself over to the pair exhibits in self-destructive behavior and destructive acting out (the fires) as Andre encourages the women to expose all their insecurities, which he mines for his own and Dorcas’ own purposes. And, even as was with poor old Grandier, immolation proves something of a just evening up of the score.

This Oates excursion into the vulnerabilities of lithe young women searching for identity and acceptance is for readers curious about the darker side of humanity and those who stumble into its clutches. ( )

"But I thought that was what poetry is, Mr. Harrow: circumspect. If it wasn't it would be just talk."

I thought I would enjoy this, and for the first few chapters I found the familiarity of it encouraging. Consider the premise: a young woman at a Bennington-like college, her literary aspirations, the lecherous married professor into whose circle she drifts, the peculiar roommates, her sense of alienation, and the suggestion of something darker lurking at the edges. Because I've had the good fortune to have read Ms. Jackson's (Don't call her Shirley) brilliant, hypnotic, disturbing [b:Hangsaman|131177|Hangsaman|Shirley Jackson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302734503s/131177.jpg|1825944], reading Beasts filled me with a powerful sense of deja vu.

Admittedly, the part of Hangsaman where the heroine, Natalie Waite, befriends and is charmed by a youngish professor and his somewhat unhinged wife makes up only a small part of the novel. It's as if Oates had decided to rewrite the older novel by concentrating only on the relationship with the professor and turning all of the subtext into text.

It might have worked. Oates is definitely a talented enough author to pull it off. Still, I found myself approaching its violent conclusion not with tension or glee but a sense of indifference, a lazy shrug. Maybe it is just the comparison with Hangsaman. Jackson knows how to zig when you think she'll zag, knows how to pull you into her protagonist's headspace as if the text had magic properties.

For all of its modern Gothic gestures, Beasts feels disappointingly linear, it's characters surprisingly flat. When it finally brings on its lurid revelations, they felt like the punchlines to jokes I had already heard.

Interestingly, circumspect means "cautious, prudent, or discreet." I'm still asking myself whether the novel was too cautious or if it would have benefited from some discretion. ( )

This was a short novella of JCO’s that follows college girls and their lust for a poetry professor. Simple enough plot, this was a little hard to get into at first but the ending was where Oates shined. I would recommend it, especially since it’s such a short read… however, not if it’s your first encounter with Oates (or even your 2nd or 3rd). I would wait until you start to understand Oates a little more, giving you more empathy towards her point of view.

The following is just a funny observation I made after reading the book, might only pertain to someone who has read the book.

After I finish reading a book, I like to research the book/Author on google, just one of my many quirky habits. Sometimes this can reveal very interesting things and sometimes it can be a waste of time. With “Beasts” the former is true, extremely true. I've read quite my fair share of Joyce Carol Oates, so after reading this book I was looking for something SHE had written about this book. After meeting JCO at a book reading/signing I really came to appreciate HER explanation of her own work and the process she goes through. I couldn't find anything close to this (however, if you come across it… please share with me).
What I did come across was disturbingly funny. My search was simple, “joyce carol oates beats” right into google search. If you’d like to recreate this search, the result I’ll be writing about comes from page three. I’m sure everyone knows of the site OKCupid, right? My search resulted in this result:



After reading this book, come back to this review and tell me how disturbing and funny this seems? Let’s just say that I wouldn't want to be promoting my interest in a book that had dysfunctional love as the main theme!
( )