Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories

Literary critic Charles Finch at the New York Times describes the collection as "a fatally slack enterprise, a makeshift heap of first drafts, blighted by shallow emotion. I winced again and again as I read it." Finch adds: "Wallace Stegner liked to say hard writing makes for easy reading; this feels like easy writing, and it makes for hard reading."^[3]

Remarking on the scope of Oates's fiction, Alan Cheuse at NPR radio compares her to the 19th century novelist Honoré de Balzac: "Where Balzac wanted to give his readers Paris in its entirety, Joyce Carol Oates has dared to give her readers an entire country — our own."^[4]

Kirkus Reviews writes: "As unsympathetic as many of Oates' mordant and quasi-anonymous characters may appear at first, en masse their fears and anxieties in the face of death and decline epitomize universal recognition of hard facts: We're all in this together, and nobody gets out alive."^[5]

The title of the titular story of the collection "Lovely, Dark, Deep" is based on a verse from the famous poem by Robert Frost (1874–1963) entitled "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1922). The final stanza reads:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

In Oates's story, a fictional female journalist, Evangeline Fife, goes to interview Frost in the summer of 1951, then at the height of his prestige. Oates depicts the former Vermont poet laureate as a sexist and a racist, according to Liz Bury at The Guardian.^[6][7]

Bury notes: "Frost's wife, Elinor, his sister, Jeanie, and his children Irma, Lesley, Marjorie, and Carol all feature in the fiction, with Oates making no attempt to disguise the identity of her subjects."^[8] Kirkus Reviews writes: "The collection's titular story delivers a skewering of Robert Frost in its unsympathetic riff on the facts of the poet's life as well as a testimonial to the role of the poet's craft as a hedge against mortality."

Oates provided a caveat in a footnote to opening page of the story which reads: "This is a work of fiction, though based on (selected) historical research," adding "See Robert Frost: A Biography (1996) by Jeffrey Meyers."^[9][10]

• Bury, Liz. 2013. Joyce Carol Oates attacked for 'distasteful' portrayal of Robert Frost. The Guardian, November 1, 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/01/joyce-carol-oates-robert-frost-lovely-dark-deep Accessed 5 March 2025.
• Cheuse, Alan. 2014. "Oates' Latest Story Collection Is 'Dark, Deep' And Marvelous." National Public Radio. September 10, 1014. https://www.npr.org/2014/09/10/343144939/oates-latest-story-collection-is-dark-deep-and-marvelous Accessed 5 March 2025.
• Finch, Charles. 2014, "Mortal Coil." New York Times, October 3, 2014.https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/lovely-dark-deep-by-joyce-carol-oates.html Accessed 5 March 2025.
• Oates, Joyce Carol. 2014. Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories. Ecco/HarperCollins, New York. ISBN 978-0-06-235694-9