The Other weBlog

The Digital Painting collection has been updated with 10 new images. All images are available in 1024 and 2028 pixel widths/lengths.

These are the larger, original versions of some of the paintings uploaded to Beautifil Images 2010 on The Other Pages on Facebook.

This batch includes a Fish, a Dog (Buzz Lightyear,  who succeeded Woody, who succeeded Armstrong of "Alex and Army" fame, Flowers, Fireworkds, and Faraway Places. Thanks to Eric Way for the faraway places - three continents worth.

Posted by Steve at 10:13 PM | Permalink

You may know that the most famous writer of short stories in American literature was a gentleman named O Henry, who wrote great volumes of stories and poems while living in a microscopic stone house in the midst of what is now a parking lot in San Antonio, Texas. We'll save O Henry for another time. Today's article is on Joyce Carol Oates -- a very recognizable and very prolific figure in American literature. She is an author, poet, teacher, editor and publisher, a runner a diarist, and an essayist.

Over the last forty-seven years she has written fifty novels, dozens of plays, numerous books of poetry, and many, many short stories. She has won numerous writing awards, been nominated twice for a pulitzer, and for the last few years has taught creative writing at Princeton University. She is know for creating complex characters, and criticized somewhat for her tendency to steer into themes of sex and violence.

I must admit, that for the most part, I am not fond of her poetry. On the other hand, I have always been a fan of her short story writing. Oates is a master of developing characters, atmosphere, and the arc of a story in a dozen pages without ever seeming rushed. I also like the varied viewpoints she uses for narration.

Below are a collection of first lines from her books and short stories that will be added to Quotation collection #26, Good Starts: http://theotherpages.org/quote-26.html Here, too, she demonstrates a wide range of voices.

By the way, The O Henry Awards are given every year for the best short stories published in the U.S. Joyce Carol Oates won the award in 1967, and has remained a regular contender for decades.


--Steve


Innocently it began.
Joyce Carol Oates, A Fair Maiden, 2010

The yearning in my heart!
Joyce Carol Oates, Little Bird of Heaven, 2009

One afternoon in September 1919 a young woman factory worker was walking home on the towpath of the Erie barge Canal, east of the small city of Chautauqua Falls, when she began to notice that she was being followed, at a distance of about thirty feet, by a man in a panama hat.
Joyce Carol Oates, The Grave Digger's Daughter, 2007

Ohhh God.
Joyce Carol Oates, Black Girl/White Girl, 2006

At the time unknown, unnamed, the individual who was to throw himself into the Horseshoe Falls appeared to be the gatekeeper of the Goat Island Suspension Bridge at approximately 6:15 A.M.
Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls, 2004

He had known it must happen soon.
Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl, 2003

Where she'd died wasn't where she would be found.
Joyce Carol Oates, The Barrens, 2001

How death enters your life.
Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age: A Romance, 2001

This movie I've been seeing all my life, yet never to its completion.
Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde, 2000

There was a time in the village of Willowsville, New York, population 5,640, eleven miles east of Buffalo, when every girl between the ages of twelve and twenty (and many unacknowledged others besides) was in love with John Reddy Heart.
Joyce Carol Oates, Broke Heart Blues, 1999

We were the Mulvaneys, remember us?
Joyce Carol Oates, We were the Mulvaneys, 1996

God erupted in thunder and shattering glass.
Joyce Carol oates, What I Lived For, 1994

The rented Toyota, driven with such impatient exuberance by The Senator, was speeding along the unpaved unnamed road, taking the turns in giddy, skidding slides, and then, with no warning, somehow the car had gone off the road and had overturned in black rushing water, listing to its passenger's side, rapidly sinking.
Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water, 1992

She wanted very much to know why, yet she dreaded knowing why, her son, newly home after four months away, was avoiding her.
Joyce Carol Oates, Goose-Girl, 1991

The other day, it was a sunswept windy

Posted by Steve at 10:08 PM | Permalink