What I Lived For (novel)
First edition | |
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | E. P. Dutton |
Publication date | 1994 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 624 |
| ISBN | 978-0525938361 |
What I Lived For is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates published in 1994 by E. P. Dutton. The work is a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 and a 1995 finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Plot
Reception
Kirkus Reviews deems What I Lived For “a dazzling novel, brilliant both stylistically and in its depiction of a man running desperately for his life.”[2]
Theme
“My process as a writer is to “build” a character simply by inhabiting him or her obsessively; during the course of writing a novel, I am immersed in my protagonists’ souls virtually all my waking life. (And perhaps much of my dream life as well.) I see my own world, which I move through as myself, through 'fictitious' eyes, and note what my characters would think, do, in similar situations.—Joyce Carol Oates, 1996 interview with biographer Greg Johnson[3]
New York Times literary critic James Carroll provides this thematic compendium:
In What I Lived For, Joyce Carol Oates has written a vivid and continuous nightmare: a savage dissection of our national myths of manhood and success, a bitter portrait of our futile effort to flee the weight of the past, a cold-eyed look at our loss of community and family, a shriek at the monsters men and women have become to each other and a revelation of our desolate inner lives. What I Lived For is an American "Inferno."[4]
Footnotes
- ^ Carroll, 2000: Plot summary
- ^ "Bookshelf: What I Live For". Kirkus Reviews.
- ^ Johnson, 1996
- ^ Carroll, 2000
Sources
- Carroll, James. He Could Not Tell a Lie. New York Times, April 2, 2000.https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/04/02/specials/oates-livedfor.html Accessed 12 April, 2025.
- Johnson, Greg. 1996. A Reader’s Guide to the Recent Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. E. P. Dutton, New York. in Celestial Timepiece: https://celestialtimepiece.com/2016/01/24/what-i-lived-for/ Accessed 10 April 2025.
- Oates, Joyce Carol. What I Lived For. E. P. Dutton, New York. ISBN 978-0525938361