I Stand Before You Naked

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is, of course, best-known as a novelist, almost as well for her short stories. You'll find the occasional non-hardcore fan who's aware she writes criticism. But get to the level of the poetry or the drama, and the legions of Oprah zombies who joined the cult after the success of We Were the Mulvaneys will give you long blank stares. So be it.

I Stand Before You Naked is a play of sorts; it is better classed as a series of vignettes for the stage, tied (very, very loosely) together by the opening and closing scenes. If you've read a Joyce Carol Oates work previous to this, you're going to recognize the archetypes of the characters to be found here; Oates is not well-known for straying off in vastly different directions with the characters she examines. What makes each work fresh and immediate is that those characters always seem like they're new people suffering from the same ailments (which gives rise to a whole new analysis of Oates' work that is, obviously, well beyond the capacity of a one thousand word review to contain). As it has been so many times, so it is here. Oates gives us characters, puts them in situations, and then writes scenes that will mess with us. It's a formula, of course, but unlike such formula writers as Dame Barbara Cartland, Oates is never content to stick within the dead center; even formula has its boundaries, and Oates is intent on exploring them. I Stand Before You Naked is another entry that takes a few fine pokes.