https://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-joyce-carol-oates-20160405-story.html

G

Yet our tendency to forget the haunting brilliance displayed in the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” in the novel “Them,” the novella “Black Water,” the Marilyn Monroe novel “Blonde,” and to focus instead on her tweets or the sheer volume of her catalog seems fitting, because her latest novel, “The Man Without a Shadow” (Ecco: 384 pp., $27.99), is preoccupied with the act of forgetting. It tells the story of a charismatic amnesiac, Elihu Hoopes, whose short-term memory has been destroyed by encephalitis. Though Eli, his ailment and an image he can’t seem to shake — the disturbing anamnesis of a girl’s body floating just below the surface of a stream — are at its center, the book is as much the story of Margot Sharpe, a neuroscientist who enters Eli’s life as a graduate student but over time becomes much more entangled with her patient’s world. The novel wrestles with our complicated acts of remembrance and the various ways memory constructs and colors our emotions and ethics — our entire identity. After all, it’s memory that allows you to discern where you are going, where you have been.

Oates will appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 9. This phone interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What carries you from one book to the next? Does an image come to you or a character or an idea you want to explore?

In a long work like a novel, a number of elements have to come together. It’s like a river into which many tributaries are flowing. The river builds with different smaller streams. You have one idea and then another and then another. I always start with characters about whom I care. I like to work with characters who are representational. I am interested in the personal, but I also want to write something that has a larger significance in terms of society.

“The Man Without a Shadow” is not only a fascinating portrait of its two main characters, Margot and Eli, but an examination of memory as the very bedrock of the edifices of our identities, our personalities.

I’m interested in how we fashion our personalities out of somewhat selective memory. We forget much. It is both very natural and very normal to forget a good deal. Things that we remember may have a certain cast. As in a movie, there’s a certain tone, of lighting, of music, of sound, so with our memories some people have a natural tone of melancholy and others have a more optimistic or cheerful tone. We all know people who are determined to be upbeat and other people who seem to be looking over their shoulders all the time, wounded and complaining. Personality to me is the ultimate fascination — how we’re all so different, and yet we’re very much alike in many ways.

How did the function of memory determine the book’s structural and aesthetic choices?

The novel is constructed as if it were notes on an amnesiac. A neuroscientist is keeping a personal journal and part of that is the novel, but then we’re also in Eli’s memory and imagination too. We see what he’s remembering of his past. He’s haunted by his past. That’s true of many people. There are seminal incidents in people’s lives that they keep returning to and thinking about. He’s tormented by something that happened when he was very small and didn’t have any ability to comprehend. He’s trying to comprehend it with his art.

Author Joyce Carol Oates talks with Michael Silverblatt during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC on April 19, 2015.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Are there similarities between comprehension through art and science? You write of Margot, “She has always asked questions for which there are not ready answers. To be a scientist, Margot thinks, is to know which questions to ask.” Is that also in some way the definition of a writer?

A scientist is someone who is really looking at the causality of things. If you were a political scientist, let’s say, you would look at the current political situation with Donald Trump and the others in a very analytical way, seeing it maybe as part of a cycle of American politics. A scientist is always looking at the context, whereas most people just read the newspaper and throw it out. “Does this thing have consequences?” “What does it mean?” “Is there a precedent in history?” These are questions that a scientist would ask, and a novelist asks these questions as well.

calendar@latimes.com

Malone is a writer and professor of English. He is the founder and editor in chief of the Scofield and a contributing editor for Literary Hub.

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He said he had got dizzy and he thinks he saw the Light
It was mainly migraine but I recognise his plight

He didn’t want to drive me to the bitter end
So I called a cab and went there ;I met some lovely friends

He carved the joint on Sunday and then he left me here
I’ve finished all the brandy and I’m starting on the beer

I will lose my mind on purpose and write from my own heart
If I act like crazy, take me to the park

We had a cat from Tottenham,I preferred him to a man
I didn’t have to cook at all, he ate straight from a can

The cat we had much later, we thought he was a girl
The vet burst into laughter so I scratched him with my nails

Then we had a black cat, very small and round
She got bored and went to Mass. Jesus was her friend

Now the cat has cancer and I am feeling gloom
Put a first class stamp on me and send me to the moon

The vet is getting friendly but I have got no dog
I’ll have to get a virtual one but will it keep me snug?

When Mary went to bed she wanted to put her phone on the charger but she could not find it

First she thought shall I ring 999 and she asked Emile for his opinion but he didn’t know what to say

She ran the number and she could hear it ringing but it was downstairs and she was feeling tired so she thought to herself I will get it in the morning mlll

MotherI want an i-mssk Emile whispered into her ear she lay on the bed

So she said her night’s prayers and got into bed wearing a long cotton night dress with blue flowers all over it and the silk eye mask that she liked very much

Mother I want an eye mask cried Emile

Well you can’t have mine because it will be too big for you and it will drop off ot it might even strangle yo will surely in a world as large as this one must be somewhere someplace where they make eye masks for cats to wear at night.

We’ll have to look on Google he thought to himself it will give Mary something to do tomorrow apart from trying to find her phone.

The next day Mary went downstairs and she rankg the landline with the number of her mobile and it began to ring but it wasn’t in the living room and then before she could walk across the room it stopped ringing

Oh what a bloody nuisance she thought to herself she tried again

I’ve heard of lies done lies and statistics she said to herself but that is a decent sort of lie m I am the owner of the phone and I am not turned it off it must have run out of batter don’t worry mother Emile cried

It must be here somewhere but not the bedroom or the living room

Do you remember fractal geometry she asked the cat nervously

I don’t believe I ever heard of that

Well what a PS2 was in ordinary geometry is a short distance like between thrill and Colin bay if you follow all the internets of the coastline an infinite distance. Oh god sort the cat I hope she’s not going to go on to infinity and different levels of infinity and so on because to be honest cats are not interested in infinity we are interested in living creatures people mice routes dogs horses Beatles frogs but definitely not infinity which is an abstract concept far beyond the reach of the mind of a cat like me.

Cup of tea and sat down thinking it’s going to take me infinitely long to find this phone so I will die while I’m looking for it

She stared down at the blue roof and taught there’s no point loosing at the blue rub it’s not in this room it must be in the hall or the kitchen

Suddenly an idea came to her, it’s in the hall darling.

Stan is that you? I can’t manage very well without you because you’ve got better eyesight than me or at least you did but how do you know it’s in the hall where are you? Can people in heaven loop down and look at lost objects for their relatives?

So she went into the hall and she walked towards different door and there on the floor underneath the tablet a Catholic weekly periodical load a phone

well that’s very peculiar Mary thought because she had come so her subscription 18 months before and she had not been receiving it and now by some miracle someone to put it through the door and said London right on top of the phone except there was a tiny bit peaking out and she must have noticed that previously without making it concerts. She picked up the phone and almost kissed it for joy

I must be more systematic because unlike the infinite length of the coastline the life of a battery in a phone is only a few hours

So that means you need a plan

the phone rang as soon as she put it on the charger and it was a neighbor Annie.

What are you doing today question mark do you fancy taking Emile out for a walk?

He is a cat not a dog

I think you have some ulterior motive for asking me that.

Well I’m feeling very shy today but I need to get some exercise so I thought if you iand  came with me it would give strangers something to talk about

Yes will you proposing to put Emile on a lead because he will not like that

Well you can sit on your shoulder I have seen nothing the tone there is a man with a white coat on Sunday mornings he takes it into Marks and Spencer’s.

I wonder if he is enquiring about winter clothing forecast because it’s somewhere they could expand into although since cats are very small it might not make a lot of profit and yet at the same time because they are so small the tailoring and the fit will be very difficult and who’s prepared to pay millions for a coat for their cat when they could simply keep the caf at home by the fire

Next thing that we’re doing makeup for cats she said to Annie as he told her about Emile wanting a silk I mask.

Well at least he won’t be asking for lipstick and I shado

?

Stan was in the new black and cream kitchen cooking the Sunday dinner.As usual in the North it was roast beef and Yorkshire puddings.Stan was very good with Yorkshire puddings.They ate them with gravy before the main course just to maintain tradition.Even Emile,their talking cat, loved a pudding soaked in thick meaty gravy..
Suddenly the kitchen door burst open and in rushed their neighbor Annie… covered in blue paint.
What’s happened to you,Stan enquired cautiously.Surely you are not house painting on Sunday?
No,I never paint myself,she responded.I was in the old shed and a stray cat was up on the top shelf.It leaped off knocking over this tin of paint.I’m wondering how to get ot out of my hair?
What type of paint is it?
It’s emulsion paint.
Well,I’m afraid you can’t get it out!
I can’t go around town with blue hair,she cried loudly,even a touch hysterically.
Well,all I can think is that I could cut off a little of your hair.
OK, if that’s the only way to get rid of that damned paint.Can I stay and eat with you,babe?
Of course,sweetheart.Now here are some pinking shears.
Have you no ordinary scissors? she cried fractiously.Oh,bleedin’ ‘ell!!
No,we lost them.But pinking shears will give a layered effect.
Stan began cutting the lefthand side of Annie’s hair.Then he went around to the right….his left or her right?
She looked in the mirror,The left is a bit longer,she murmured vampishly.She falt like cussing and swearing but she didn’t know enough bad words so far in her life.
OK I’ll cut off a bit more.Stan whispered into her neck.
Oh,my God.The shears slipped,it’s gone really short,he shouted.
All Stan could do was cut the remainder of Annie’s lovely hair so it was only 2 cm long all over.
Suddenly Mary came in,
I didn’t know you were a hair dresser, she said sardonically to her errant husband.
Well,Annie got paint in her hair so I’ve trimmed it off.
Trimmed it..it looks like she won’t need a cut for about two years.
Annie began to sob noisily ,terrifying Emile who was hiding behind the flour bin watching some ants.
Well,Stan answered, it will be easier to wash and dry and she’ll have no need for rollers etc.Why,I could do it for a living.
I think it looks charming.
Why pinking shears?Mary whispered.You could have used my dressmaking ones.
Well,too late now mioawed Emile sarcastically from the bookcase filled with the entire Penguin cookery book collection over thirty years.What a pity it took up so much space in the tiny kitchen.
I think her hair looks sweet,said Stan bravely.
Meantime,you have burned the puddings again.Just like King Alfred and the cakes.Men are only good at savory and meat dishes.
It takes a woman to cook puddings and cakes.But Yorkshire puddings are savories.
I wonder how Wittgenstein would have classified them ? cried Mary enthusiastically.
Not Wittgenstein again,moaned Stan in mental torment,can’t you move onto some other philosopher?
Whom do you suggest? she said grammatically.
Try Carnap or take up gardening.
Oh,Carnap’s more of a logician,Mary said defiantly,
You see I love Wittgenstein as a human being.
Are you committing adultery with him ?Stan demanded thoughtfully his eyes bright like lasers.
That’s a wild exaggeration,He’s dead,Mary muttered.And he was,er,gay!
How do you know? That’s what they all say,shouted Stan angrily.
But what about you and Annie? Mary said venomously.
Well,I get lonely with you lecturing all day and studying Wittgenstein and mathematics all night
Surely you could wait till I come home? Mary said sharply
I suppose so,though a harem has always been my dream!
I think you are a bit past it now at 99,said Mary.
That’s not what I think, said Emile quietly.Cats and men…how do they do it?
Meanwhile Annie had washed her hair an it dried in tiny uneven curls all over her head.
It looks quite fetching,they decided as they sat down to eat the charred Yorkshire puddings.
What an exciting Sunday especially for Stan who enjoyed touching and playing with women’s hair.
I wonder if it’s a mental illness?I’ll have to look on the internet.Still, better than panic attacks, he thought
consolingly as he carried the roast beef onto the dining room where the women were discussing religious topics including a curiosity about why Christians were so anti Semitic despite Jesus’ wish for people to love each other.and besides being God,He was also a Jewish person too.
That’s interesting,Stan thought,here people think he’s English!What a weird world it is,to be sure.God was not a white Eton educated man.He may have been brown with a long black beard and a moustache.Did he smoke?
Only when he thought nobody was looking!Then he had flames coming out of his ears,Well,it made him laugh,you see.It’s Sunday soon so get ready.The Lord is nigh and he has a new hat on too