Book Review: JCO as Rosamond Smith

Joyce Carol Oats is unequivocally one of the world's most prolific writers. With over 45 novels, 26 short story collections, 8 volumes of poetry, 5 collections of plays, 10 non-fiction works, 16 edited collections, and 5 works for children and young adults. I imagine her mind writing constantly as her body goes through the routine of its day.

Double Delight is one of eight mystery/suspense novels penned by Oates under the pseudonym "Rosalind Smith". In an article published in the NYT Book Review in 1987 she discusses the draw of the "Psyeduenm Self".

It may be that, after a certain age, our instinct for anonymity is as powerful as that for identity; or, more precisely, for an erasure of the primary self in that another (hitherto undiscovered?) self may be released.…

She draws on the views and works of numerous pseudonymic writers such as Romain Gary (Emile Ajar), Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Jonathan Swift (Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq), Charlotte Bronte (Currer Bell), Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Doris Lessing (Jane Somers), Gore Vidal (Edgar Box).

Choosing a pseudonym as the work's formal author simply takes the mysterious process a step or two further, erasing the author's social identity and supplanting it with the pseudonymous identity. For who among us, identified with such confidence by others, has not felt uneasy, if not an impostor, knowing that, whatever they know of us, we do not somehow share in that knowledge? Fame's carapace does not allow for easy breathing.

In the "fast-paced" mystery vein, it is a skillful work. Rich in character exploration and threading a common theme (duality) throughout. There is something of a pattern in much of Oate's work. An adult traumatized as a child and lives in constant pursuit of righting what has been left undone. Voices from the past float through the text, and without explanation we recognize it to be the character's subconscious mind. Much of Terence can be seen in the striving to please "Corky" from Oates' 19-- novel What I Lived For A violent trauma as a child, a step up by marriage from blue collar into the well-ordered circles of old money, and a man out-of-synch with his inner motivations and in the constant, desperate attempt to compensate for perceived childhood inadequacies...

And yet she does so with such fluidity and insight that the reader hardly recognizes the formula. It was not her most impressive work and yet still JCO is a writer I highly admire and respect and hope to, in many ways, emulate in my future writing career...