Bibliograph

Them, Joyce Carol Oates ; introduction by Elaine Showalter ; afterword by the author

Type

Label

Them, Joyce Carol Oates ; introduction by Elaine Showalter ; afterword by the author

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

novels

Main title

Them

Oclc number

71313928

Responsibility statement

Joyce Carol Oates ; introduction by Elaine Showalter ; afterword by the author

Summary

"A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates' vision of the American fam-ily--broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The novel's title, pointedly uncapitalized, refers to those Americans who inhabit the outskirts of society--men and women, mothers and children--whose lives many authors in the 1960s had left unexamined. Alfred Kazin called her subject 'the sheer rich chaos of American life.' The Nation wrote, 'When Miss Oates' potent, life-gripping imagination and her skill at narrative are conjoined, as they are preeminently in them, she is a prodigious writer.'" --, Publisher discription (September 2006)

Contributor