{"id":850,"date":"2013-07-24T17:08:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T21:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/?p=850"},"modified":"2015-01-29T18:02:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T23:02:35","slug":"cp-book-club-tackles-oates-the-accursed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/2013\/07\/24\/cp-book-club-tackles-oates-the-accursed\/","title":{"rendered":"CP Book Club Tackles Oates’ The Accursed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Accursed, by Joyce Carol Oates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All honor and praise to Joyce Carol Oates. \u00a0We expect that if science can accomplish such things and she is willing, her brain will one day be among the most valuable relics to grace a Princeton University pickle jar.<\/p>\n

We are all glad that we read\u00a0The Accursed<\/em>. \u00a0One member even loved it (I consider it important to note that this particular member just finished writing a 450-page novel herself, and happily wallowed through Oates’ 600-plus pages within a week or so). \u00a0Some of us are just wired for gothic, labyrinthine sentences, language so rich it leaves a coating on your brain, and story so wildly crafted that you can’t see to the edges of its vast universe.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/em>Accursed <\/i>traces the lives of Princeton, New Jersey’s upper class during the reign of a bloody and unspeakable curse. \u00a0Is Annabelle Slade the victim of her own twisted appetites, or bewitched by a demon? \u00a0Was Professor Pearce Van Dyck cuckolded by the same demon,his child a changeling, or is he a madman, his child a bastard? \u00a0And why is it–Count English Von Gneist by some accounts favors the look of the sinister Axson Mayte, yet others see in him a saint or a god? \u00a0For good measure, Oates throws in the question of whether young author Upton Sinclair will starve himself and his new family to death in horror over the state of the meatpacking industry. See? \u00a0The Accursed<\/em> is not for the reader who likes to know, once and for all, what the heck is going on here.<\/p>\n

We all agreed that, in addition to being wild and rich and gothic-labarynthine, The Accursed<\/em>\u00a0is masterfully written. \u00a0Scary-masterful. \u00a0Oates is clearly in a class beyond even the gifted among us, and her work destined to outlive most.<\/p>\n

We also discovered, thanks to our attentive facilitator (we have been rotating facilitators so far–much more fun than having a single maven), that\u00a0The Accursed<\/em> is actually the fifth in a series of gothic novels by Oates. \u00a0This reassured me, as a reader, since the story did appear to take rather odd turns, which I now believe are resolutions of earlier plot-lines. \u00a0The rambling oddness was not out of place, but reading 600-plus pages of considerable oddness did make me scratch my head at times.<\/p>\n

The verdict: the beauty of this book is that you can read it either as a weird, fantastic tale, a literary gross-out of a thick summer read; or as a shape-shifting parable in which the upper class may be taking some deserved medicine for the horrors they and their monstrous appetites have visited upon others. \u00a0For sure,\u00a0The Accursed<\/em>\u00a0is huge, it’s dense, and it’s not for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n

FALL BOOK CLUB PICK: THE ROUND HOUSE BY LOUISE ERDRICH<\/span><\/a><\/span>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All honor and praise to Joyce Carol Oates. \u00a0We expect that if science can accomplish such things and she is willing, her brain will one day be among the most valuable relics to grace a Princeton University pickle jar. We are all glad that we read\u00a0The Accursed. \u00a0One member even loved it (I consider it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,19,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-events","category-book-reviews","category-homepage-topfeature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1273,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/1273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cuppapulp.com\/writers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}