Dark Eyes on America

Joyce Carol Oates's unhesitating and prodigious exploration of genre, topic, and style has made her an inevitable but elusive subject for critics and scholars. Though Oates's national reputation has fluctuated since her first work appeared in the 1960s, one thing can be agreed: Oates is not just America's most extraordinary woman of letters but as significant an American writer as any of her contemporaries. In this comprehensive and accessible study, Gavin Cologne-Brookes traces in Oates's novels evidence of an evolving consciousness that ultimately forgoes abstract introspection and the philosophical pursuit of certainty in favor of a more practical approach to art as a tool for understanding personal and social problems and possibilities.