Oates' singular fix has been human emotion, often explored through the lens of emotionally weak and unstable characters. Her portraits are frequently of people you'd like to knock upside the head, but they're also the tales of bad decisions and worse consequences that make for guilty vicarious pleasure. With such diverse ruminations on human failure, it's easy to imagine the author's torturous life. But we're convinced no one who writes three books a year has time to be tortured by much of anything. It's all in the imagination, we hope.
Oates' most recent work, Blonde, is an experimental reinterpretation of the life of Marilyn Monroe. Gifted with the word and amazingly broad in her subject matter, Oates remains one of our country's most significant writers, though -- as if in a story someone else might write -- she'll probably have to die to be recognized for it.
