She Keeps Getting Better

It’s tempting to conclude that at 84, Joyce Carol Oates is at the apex of her career. But as with her latest, Babysitter, Oates keeps breaking through her own glass ceiling.

- MEREDITH MARAN

An article about literary maestro Joyce Carol Oates begs to begin with her renowned productivity. Between her first novel, published at age 26, and her newest, Babysitter, published 58 years later, Oates has written 60 novels—an average of two per year. The books’ subjects, structures, métiers vary. But they all push, slyly or overtly or both, hot cultural buttons: class, gender, race, Chappaquiddick, sexual assault, Marilyn Monroe, abortion, infidelity, cancer, suicide.

What's most astonishing about her oeuvre, though, isn't volume. It's craft. Turn to page one of any JCO novel and be carried away by its imaginative story arc, its right-on-time social critique, its distinctive protagonists. And, oh, the writing. Take Babysitter's first chapter, "She Asks Herself Why," reproduced here in its entirety.

Because he'd touched her. Just her wrist.