Joyce Carol Oates is a master at examining tension in relationships
I had never read any works by Joyce Carol Oates, but “The Frenzy” appeared in the March 24, 2025 issue of The New Yorker and it displays an 86-year-old writing very compellingly about young love.
The short story is about a couple having an affair and making their way to an inn at Cape May, New Jersey. The man is married in his mid-40s and the woman is 20 and a former acquaintance of the man’s daughter. She is impulsive, a bit of a druggie, and living freely in New York City and he wants her to fall for him. After an episode in which he ends up throwing her iPhone into the ocean, (spoiler alert) she abandons the hotel room with all of his belongings, including his Subaru Forester, leaving him naked and alone. I didn’t see that ending coming and, as well as Oates is able to develop these characters over the course of a few pages, it made me want to get to know them more, which in turn told me, if that wasn’t possible, that I want to read more of the acclaimed author’s work. 4.5 out of 5 stars
Oates has 60 novels, well over 100 short stories, tons of literary criticism (where to even start?), is considered one of the world’s most prolific authors, and has been a finalist for the Nobel Prize for Fiction a whopping five times. My research told me to head towards her 2009 collection High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966-2006. The first story in it is:
“Spider Boy (2009)” is about a boy named Phillip whose family has had to move to the other side of New Jersey and change their surname because his well-known politician father has been sentenced to prison for financial crimes. Before all that, Phillip and his dad had often gone on drives and would pick up young boys hitchhiking. It is later discovered that his dad may have done much worse than his other crimes with these victims. At the end, Phillip runs away from his mother and it appears he may soon be similar to those wayward homeless teens. 4 out of 5 stars
I’ll plan to come back to High Lonesome, but first I looked into two stories that are considered among her best.
“The Lady with the Pet Dog (1972)” is about a blonde named Anna who is in her early 30s. She meets a neighbor three houses down from her family’s beach house. We only discover how they met halfway through the story after already finding out about some of their meetups and the eventual end of their affair. This man, who works at a Long Island newspaper and is in his 40s—the same age roughly as Anna’s husband—draws artwork of her and one is called “Lady with Pet Dog.” Anna begins to hate herself more and more because she’s having an affair and also that her marriage is so loveless. She begins cutting her arm. But then one day while meeting up with the man at a hotel, the realization comes over her that she should embrace her life and that it’s like she has two husbands. The story ends rather abruptly, but the way Oates tells and retells the story from all different angles in Anna’s head is very creative and she gets at the anxiety that must be felt when having an extramarital affair. 4.5 out of 5 stars
“Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? (1966)” is the best of this bunch and is a terrifying cross between American Graffiti or Grease and a Stephen King supernatural horror story. Connie is a pretty 15-year-old who gets dropped off at the mall and movies by her friend’s dad. They like boys and one sees her, from a distance in a drive-in parking lot and stares and gestures at her. The next Sunday, the rest of her family goes to a BBQ but she stays home and that boy—who turns out to be a much older man named Arnold Friend—comes to her house in his jalopy with a creepy friend and demands that she go out on a drive with them. The tension builds as to whether she will or won’t go with them and it’s a masterpiece on the rightful fear people have about the possibility of losing their virginity or, as the fascinating origin story of how Oates came up with the idea for the story would have us believe, the possibility of losing much more. 5 out of 5 stars
Oates has definitely jumped high onto my list of writers to read more. Thanks to The New Yorker for doing such a great job of—once again—introducing me to the best of the best in fiction.