JOYCE CAROL OATES - TYPED QUOTATION SIGNED CIRCA 1989 - HFSID 169100

JOYCE CAROL OATES
Discusses the challenge of turning prose fiction into a screenplay
Typescript signed: "Joyce Carol Oates", 1p, 8½x11. Her quote from the New York Times, 1989 January 13. On writing a screenplay for one of her novels: In full: "It's an enormous challenge, because one has to transcribe virtually from one dimension to another. In prose fiction, the writer is really writing about language. In a screenplay, there is no language. Just dialogue. Everything is visual. I don't think I found it as difficult as I do prose fiction. It's not that it's easier. I don't find writing easy at all. It's always a challenge, an uphill struggle. But writing novels is very lacerating to the soul, and I'm really very exhausted. When I do a screenplay, I'm taking something I have already written. I know the characters like members of my own family. I know the ending. I don't have the anxiety of the original writing. So the screenwriting is a delightful excursion into another dimension." Oates, one of America's most critically acclaimed writers, published her first short story collection, By the North Gate, in 1963 and her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, one year later. Her novel Them won the National Book Award in 1970. The author of over 30 books in many genres, she received the Bram Stoker award in 1996 for lifetime achievement in horror fiction. Several of Oates' novels and short stories have made it to TV and movie screens, including Blonde, her fictionalized account of the life of Marilyn Monroe (2001). Fine condition.