Joyce Carol Oates: A Body in the Service of Mind | movie | 2022 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

Prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates has remained intensely private. Until now. Through a long-standing friendship, and per | dG1fcGU3eVk3TnkwcUU

Transcript

00:00 [ Silence ]

00:05 >> When you open a book, you can be anybody

00:07 and you can be different nationality and different sex

00:11 and have a different age.

00:12 And so it's like a magic portal to another world.

00:17 It's a window into another world.

00:20 So I still feel that way.

00:21 >> Now Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most phenomenal

00:24 and brilliant writers of our time.

00:26 >> Joyce Carol Oates has published over 100 books

00:29 since 1963.

00:31 >> She is obviously one of the most prolific writers there are.

00:35 >> The 2010 National Humanities Medal to Joyce Carol Oates

00:39 for her contributions to American Letters.

00:42 >> I have often felt that in a sense I'm a very neutral being

00:45 and that I have almost no personality.

00:50 As if I'm a neutral or a transparent medium

00:53 where this one thing comes by way of the medium

00:56 and to being a book or some writing.

00:59 So I always felt that I could tell stories

01:05 that other people were not telling.

01:06 And I'm sort of looking at how some people are mistreated

01:10 and there is injustice, a social injustice in our society.

01:15 And one has to write about that.

01:20 >> You described the process of writing a novel as obsession,

01:24 excitement, anxiety, then melancholy when done and fear

01:30 that nothing will ever mean that much again.

01:32 >> Probably I was just being a little funny.

01:35 You know I do miss some novels that I really put a lot

01:38 of my life into.

01:39 And when I think back on them I sort of wish

01:42 that I was writing them again or that I could go back

01:44 and inhabit that time in my life again.

01:47 [ Music ]

01:55 >> The use of language is all we have

01:58 to pit against death and silence.

02:01 [ Silence ]