Clueless: Joel Conarroe, Emily Fox Gordon, and NYTimes Book Review Editor on why Joyce Carol Oates omitted 47-year marriage from her memoir

In his letter to the editor (Oct. 4), Joel Conarroe supports Joyce Carol Oates against Emily Fox Gordon’s book review (Sept. 20) of Oates’ memoir, “The Lost Landscape” (2015). Gordon had felt that it was wrong for Oates to omit her 47-year marriage. Conarroe feels that the memoir is “a generous gift” and that Gordon should have been more “thoughtful.” Meanwhile, the editor of the Book Review evidently thinks that Gordon and Conarroe each have a point. But all of them are clueless.

The key to understanding why Oates left her 47-year marriage out of her memoir is found in her previous memoir, “A Widow’s Story” (1), where Oates’ wife/widow personality (the main narrator) distinguishes herself from the other “Joyce Carol Oates” writing personalities as follows:

“In our marriage…I walled off from my husband the part of my life that is ‘Joyce Carol Oates’—which is to say, my writing career [he never even read her novels]…but then, I [the wife/widow personality] have walled myself off from ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ as well.” (1, pp. 123-125).

 “ ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ doesn’t exist [to the wife personality, who has amnesia for the ‘Joyce Carol Oates’ writer personalities], except as an author-identification” (p. 170) and “I’ve come to think of my ‘self’—my ‘personality’—as an entity that collapses when I am alone and unperceived by others; but then, as if by magic, when I am with other people, my ‘personality’ reassembles itself” (p. 233).

That is, her wife/widow/social personality is distinct and walled off from her “Joyce Carol Oates” writing personalities. Her social personality vanishes when her writing personalities take over in private, but then comes back when she is with other people. The personality who lived the marriage wrote “A Widow’s Story,” but “The Lost Landscape” was written by her other “Joyce Carol Oates” writer personalities, who live the writing life and are not involved in the social life and marriage.

If these were just two roles, then they would have a common memory bank and would know each other’s business. But since they are distinct personalities, they are separated by a wall of amnesia.

This is easier to understand if you read my post from last month on Oates’ multiple personality. Just search Oates in this blog.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. A Widow’s Story: A Memoir. New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2011.