'The Accursed' is very much a novel about social injustice as the consequence of the terrible, tragic division of classes - the exploitation not only of poor and immigrant workers but of their young children in factories and mills - and as the consequence of race hatred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves.
Joyce Carol OatesI don't think that any 'ism' is higher than literature or art. So I'm a formalist. I greatly honor and respect the form of a work.
Joyce Carol OatesYou don't have to understand why anything that has happened nor do you even have to understand what it is that has happened. You have only to live with the remains.
Joyce Carol Oates