Re: RARA-AVIS: Man Crazy

From: Karin Montin ( kmontin@sympatico.ca)
Date: 23 Jan 2007


I've only read one book by JCO, With Shuddering Fall, and that was enough for me.

I also read a short story that was pretty good but very creepy, something about a girl in a trailer park.

Karin

At 05:57 PM 22/01/2007 -0800, Mike Robison wrote:

>Just finished this short novel by Joyce Oates. It was
>recommended a long time ago on the list and I've had
>it for several years. If memory serves me correct, it
>was recommended by Jim Blue. Does anybody hear from
>Jim? I always liked his posts.
>
>Man Crazy is a white trash novel about a low-rent
>woman addicted to a violent and deadly Vietnam
>veteran, and how she passes this addiction onto her
>daughter with less than desirable results. The mood
>is deep melancholy, similar to Didion's Play It As It
>Lays or Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man. The story is
>told by daughter Ingrid, and the world she describes
>seems muddled and lacking in detail unless she's
>talking about clothing. If this was purposeful, it
>was less than successful. I eventually got tired of
>her obsessive and continuous description of her
>scratching at herself. The ending was hopeful. And
>more than a little bit doubtful. Also, a novel that
>was as strongly negative about women as this was about
>men would be condemned as misogynistic.



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