We Were the Mulvaneys

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Sometimes, when reviewing a book, it's easier to explain the experience you had while reading it - so that's what I'm going to do with "We Were the Mulvaneys". Joyce Carol Oates nos ofrece un relato detallado de cómo una familia perfecta se precipita a los infiernos a raíz de un incidente de abusos sexuales. Es un tema frecuente en la literatura, de cómo el sueño americano puede convertirse en pesadilla a raíz de un imprevisto que altera el curso natural de las cosas y desata una serie de reacciones individuales y sociales que hacen que algunas personas – y especialmente las relaciones familiares – entren en una espiral destructiva. Creo que la reflexión de la autora es si fue lo que pasó o más bien la reacción de los implicados lo que trajo tanto dolor. Hay también énfasis sobre el papel de la víctima y cómo es rechazada por la sociedad sin tener culpa alguna, de manera que el machismo se impone.

The dramatic trajectory of Oates’s career, especially her amazing rise from an economically straitened childhood to her current position as one of the world’s most eminent authors, suggests a feminist, literary version of the mythic pursuit and achievement of the American dream. Yet for all of her success and fame, Oates’s daily routine of teaching and writing has changed very little, and her commitment to literature as a transcendent human activity remains steadfast. Not surprisingly, a quotation from that other prolific American writer, Henry James, is affixed to the bulletin board over her desk, and perhaps best expresses her own ultimate view of life and writing: “We work in the dark —we do what we can —we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” After the publication of her 24th novel, Joyce Carol Oates was invited to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show. The book, We Were the Mulvaneys, had been chosen as one of Oprah's coveted Book Club titles and a portion of the show was devoted to whooping her achievement. Even by the standards of the format, it was a bizarre encounter - the booming, vivacious pioneer of confessional TV and the small, nervy academic. After the recording, an astonished Oates was mobbed by a gang of ardent Book Club members, one of whom threw her arms about her and said: "If my daughter had read your novel she would not have committed suicide." Despite her success (Oates has published 37 novels, 19 collections of short stories, four novellas, eight volumes of poetry, seven plays and eight academic essays), she has the habit of hitching the disclaimer "it seems like a small thing in the great scale of being" to the end of her statements, although this is possibly a rebuke to the giant egos of the literary world rather than straightforward modesty. The great scale of being is something she is in two minds about. "I veer between a vision of the human race rather like Jonathan Swift's, dark and embittered and satirical, and a kind of idealism that maybe there are just enough wonderful people in the world to make us feel thrilled with the possibilities of the human."

Themes of Innocence and Loss

Judd imagines but does not invent. He’s the intellectual and moral center of the novel, as it is presented in terms of language. It’s fitting that he’s a newspaper editor and writer. Many people in families feel themselves in repositories of the family narrative —as Judd says, he is assembling a kind of family album, not writing a “confession.” Primarily, I wanted to write about family life —the mysterious and seemingly autonomous “life” of the family that is made up of individuals yet seems to transcend individuals; the joys, the sorrows, the continuity of jokes and humor; the shared pain; the conflicted yearning for freedom simultaneous with the yearning for domesticity; always, the unspeakable mystery at the heart of the family. I wanted to write about complex lives as they are interwoven with one another, always defining themselves in terms of one another.

Junto con el drama familiar, esta novelaza (¡) viene a ser una ‘Comedia humana’ de los años 70 en la costa este de los USA, en la que se retratan diversos ambientes con movimientos y tendencias alternativos que se estaban desarrollando en aquel tiempo tan interesante. Hay una contraposición entre la sociedad rural y tradicional de Mount Ephraim y la cooperativa ecologista dirigida por Abelove - una especie de guru - o el refugio de animales también inspirado por una persona que quiere romper los límites estrechos de lo establecido. Puoi avere un solo figlio miracoloso. Se sei fortunato. Però molta gente non lo è. (Quindi non dovete gongolare, è ovvio) What was the germ of the book? Was there a single scene or character or theme that inspired you to write it? Michael Sr. goes to the Mt. Ephraim Country Club one afternoon and notices a group of his former friends sitting together, laughing. Drunk, he pours a glass of beer on the head of a district judge, which leads to his arrest for assault and a newspaper article about the incident. The results are further erosion in Mulvaney Roofing and more attorney bills. The Mulvaneys are blessed by all that makes life sweet. But something happens on Valentine’s Day, 1976—an incident that is hushed up in the town and never spoken of in the Mulvaney home—that rends the fabric of their family life…with tragic consequences. Years later, the youngest son attempts to piece together the fragments of the Mulvaneys’ former glory, seeking to uncover and understand the secret violation that brought about the family’s tragic downfall.

I won’t reveal the event, although it’s hinted at early on and it’s easy enough to figure out. But it literally divides the family: from the community (there’s legal action, shunning), and perhaps more tragically, from themselves. Ya había leído a Joyce Carol Oates antes, así que si, conocía su enorme calidad literaria, pero por sobre cualquier tema técnico que se pueda decir de su estilo narrativo, hay algo que la caracteriza y es su gran y tremenda capacidad para transm I read that last run-on sentence four times before comprehending it. And in the same paragraph (!) we get:

The last part of the book and the ending was very bittersweet. As much as you want to be happy you can't help feeling something is just not letting you achieve that. It's probably the same thing the Mulvaneys are feeling by the end. Somehow we've become the Mulvaneys by just a few chapters into the book, so truly whatever they're feeling, you're now feeling. That just got you all the more involved in the book, because of course you want to know everything that happens and why. It also makes the book that much harder to put down. By the end of this book I was crying. I just want to start with that and get it cleared out of the way. It wasn't just a sniff and the threat of tears, I had actual tears running down my face and snot streaming out of my nose. I was leaking enough that I actually had to put the book down and go grab some tissues.The past tense in the title hints at the book’s outcome. In some ways it’s about the decline and fall of a once prosperous, well-loved upstate New York family. One event that happens on Valentine’s Day in 1976 affects each of the six Mulvaneys differently, and this book, narrated mostly by the youngest child, Judd, tells the sad, sad story. In conclusion, summarize your reading experience with We Were the Mulvaneys. What grade would you give this novel? Michael Mulvaney, the family patriarch, exemplifies resilience in the face of challenges. His determination to protect and provide for his family drives his actions. Corinne Mulvaney, his wife, copes with guilt and grief in her own way, highlighting the diversity of responses to trauma. Marianne's journey toward healing and self-discovery showcases the human capacity for growth and survival in the aftermath of trauma. Pero creo que el valor principal es que Joyce Carol Oates es una grandísima narradora, y lo que en manos de otro escritor habría resultado algo tocho, ella consigue que sea una lectura interesante y adictiva. Marianne ends up in Spartansburg, as the companion of an older, wheelchair-bound writer, Penelope Hagström. Miss Hagström respects Penelope's intelligence and trusts her with her household business.

Why did you choose Judd, the youngest of the Mulvaneys, to narrate the story? Was it difficult to have him tell so much about the interior lives of characters he did not always understand? The center section of the book is so dark and yet it ends on a note of hope and resolution. Where did this ending come from? Did you consider concluding on a darker note? This is also a novel that can be read on many levels. Certainly it is the story of the deterioration of an American family, but it is also the story of how difficult it is to break the bonds of love once forged. It is also a story of the fragility of self-esteem solely based on how others view us, which, of course, can turn on a dime, with underscoring threads of the fundamental coldness of nature itself and the inevitibility of death. These themes are interwoven with the philosophies of Christianity, Darwinism, and the age of reason that in Oates' skilled hands seem not to compete with each other so much as to cooperate, and perhaps even complement. Success came early: while attending Syracuse University on scholarship, she won the coveted Mademoiselle fiction contest. After graduating as valedictorian, she earned an M.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin, where she met and married Raymond J. Smith after a three-month courtship; in 1962, the couple settled in Detroit, a city whose erupting social tensions suggested to Oates a microcosm of the violent American reality. Her finest early novel, them, along with a steady stream of other novels and short stories, grew out of her Detroit experience. “Detroit, my ‘great’ subject,” she has written, “made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am —for better or worse.”After many years, the Mulvaneys meet once again at a family reunion in Corinne's new home, which she shares with a friend. The family has extended to include spouses and children. Finally, the Mulvaneys come full circle and receive closure. We Were The Mulvaneys is a juicy novel with quite a selection of antiheroes that creep up on you slowly, and you’re not sure when exactly you started hating them.