The Assignation: Stories
by Joyce Carol Oates
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Description
"A woman's lover seems not to recognize her on the street. A teenage girl accepts a ride from a stranger in a rust-speckled Cadillac. An old man is obsessed by the memory of his innocent childhood intrusion on a half-dressed aunt. In forty-four very short, very powerful stories, Joyce Carol Oates fashions brief, intensely compact dramas out of the unwieldy material of human experience."--Back cover.Tags
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Member Reviews
I could drown in Joyce Carol Oates writing, and The Assignation is no exception. It's hard to rate a collection of stories because inevitably some strike a louder chord than others. Based on the lingering chills from Shelter and Visitation Rights, the book is absolutely five stars.
Every single story evoked some form of yearning, melancholy, anxiety, fear, beauty, loss, or obsession. Brilliant.
Every single story evoked some form of yearning, melancholy, anxiety, fear, beauty, loss, or obsession. Brilliant.
An excellent collection of very short stories. Also a great starter book if you don't know where to start with Oates' vast collection of novels, short story collections, and essays.
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Author Information
476+ Works 62,287 Members
Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Syracuse University and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of numerous novels and collections of short stories. Her works include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Bellefleur, You Must show more Remember This, Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is My Heart, Solstice, Marya : A Life, and Give Me Your Heart. She has received numerous awards including the National Book Award for Them, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. She was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her title Lovely, Dark, Deep. She also wrote a series of suspense novels under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. In 2015, her novel The Accursed became listed as a bestseller on the iBooks chart. She worked as a professor of English at the University of Windsor, before becoming the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She and her late husband Raymond J. Smith operated a small press and published a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. (Bowker Author Biography) Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most eminent and prolific literary figures and social critics of our times. She has won the National Book Award and several O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. Among her other awards are an NEA grant, a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Lifetime Achievement Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature. (Publisher Provided) show less
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1988
- Epigraph
- It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
--Italo Calvino "Invisible Cities" - Dedication
- for Russell Banks
- First words
- They are sitting at opposite ends of the old horsehair sofa waiting for something to happen.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A small, solitary figure, he ran.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 217
- Popularity
- 149,865
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.79)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
