Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self by Rachel Aviv

In a letter to the editor, Oates responded, “Since critics are constantly telling me to ‘slow down,’ I must say gently, very gently, that everything I have done so far is only preliminary to my most serious work.” She went on, “There is a sense in which ‘I’ do not exist at all, but am a process recording phases of American life.”

– Rachel Aviv quoting Joyce Carol Oates

This quote fits nicely into the theme of recent blog posts and Eastern Philosophy.

From my main man Alan Watts:

We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that ‘I myself’ is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which ‘confronts’ an ‘external’ world.

– Alan Watts

I thought I read something in Carl Jung’s introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower but something more directly applicable I must have come across somewhere else (or not noted…) I’ve got that book in front of me so… talking about “Wu Wei” (a.k.a “going with the flow”) and this quote about something that breaks one out of a psychological conflict:

In no case was it conjured into existence through purpose and conscious willing, but rather seemed to be born on the stream of time.

– Carl Jung in the introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower

Later Aviv quotes Oates:

She dragged herself to the typewriter each morning to “write it all out, somehow, anyway, thinking I might as well get some use out of going mad,” she told Godwin.

– Rachel Aviv quoting Joyce Carol Oates

The correct word to describe Oates’ career seems to be “prolific.” I will have to pick out one of her many books. She may still have questions about the self but… that’s good. I hope she keeps up her pursuit. Maybe times answers her questions but… I hope it takes some time.