Author Joyce Carol Oates on complicated history and book bans

Joyce Carol Oates isn’t afraid to confront the realities of disturbing history in her novels.

The prolific author joined Talk of Iowa host Charity Nebbe as part of the Des Moines Public Library’s AVID Series for a conversation about her newest release, Butcher .

Exploring the nuanced history of medicine

The novel is inspired by the true history of medical malpractice committed against women.

“The character in the novel is a composite. And he's based upon three, just, distinguished and renowned physicians of the 19th century,” Oates said. “I mean, I didn't want to write about a person who was just a failure.”

The character Silas Weir performs experimental procedures on the women in his care at an asylum. Oates said medical history is interesting and ironic — because so many discoveries were made through unethical means.

“They didn't think that they were butchers or doing anything wrong. They thought that they were doing a lot of good. And oddly enough, they all did some good. That's what's so, so ambiguous about the whole history of medicine, because it is experimental.”

Through Silas, Oates depicts how women in the 19th century were exploited by doctors who didn’t know what they were doing, while the midwives actually took care of the patients.

Speaking to the audience in Des Moines, Oates said it was easy and appealing to write Silas’ perspective because he's so clueless. She described one scene in the novel where he tries to fix a cleft palate.

“He's got some surgical tools that he bought secondhand and he's kind of excited about this. The woman is tied down, but fortunately, he has two women, Greta and Bridget, who are helping him — because the women always know more than he does — so they're kind of helping and giving him little hints about things to do,” Oates said. “And he realized, it comes over him in a feeling of sensation of cold, ‘I don't know what I'm doing.’”

Discussing the novel, Oates was able to find humor in the tragic incompetence of the doctor.

“He is very hurt that he hasn't gotten any praise from his nurse assistants. They haven't said how well he stitched it up,” she said. “And I just thought that would be so typical — like, he's completely maimed this woman, now she looks much worse … The cleft is worse now because he just cut it wrong and he didn't do it right. But he just feels hurt that he didn't get credit for the stitching, which he thought was quite good. I just thought that's just how he would be. Well, there are many men where you have to take care of their egos, you know?”

Limits of horror

Oates delivers some chilling passages about the human psyche, though she does promise audiences that certain creatures are safe from harm in her stories.

"I would say sort of parenthetically that if you read any novel of mine, no cat or dog will be harmed," Oates said, prompting a laugh from the audience. "So even though I may have a —"

"A baby die," Nebbe pointed out.

"Well, that's true, but it wasn't a kitten."

Believing in happy endings

Though she's interested in these dark moments in history, Oates also takes care to include the resilience of characters.

“My women characters – women and girls – who suffer sometimes at the hands of men, nonetheless, I'm sort of focusing on how they come through it, and how they persevere,” Oates said. “And Bridget has had a lot of things happen to her physically that she couldn't control. She feels shamed by it, but then later on, she sort of becomes just much more self-reliant.”

While it's an unsettling read, Oates ultimately delivers a happy ending to her Butcher readers.

“I think that in large political, you know, larger context, that life is quite tragic. There's always war and violence and hurtfulness. But in human, smaller relationships... anything that's sort of emotional ties, I'm very optimistic about that. I do believe in romance.”

Book banning as a wedge issue

When asked about recent political efforts to restrict reading material, Oates said those trying to ban reading material don't really care about books.

"Sometimes you see a politician who could care less about this issue, it’s of no interest at all, but he's pretending to, trying to get people angry, trying to divide people," Oates said.

An Iowa law that forces schools to remove books with sexual content from libraries is currently being challenged in a federal court.

"Banning books, it's like the tip of the iceberg and there's something deeper beneath," Oates said. "We're in such a culture where there are so many very, very rich people who are largely invisible oligarchs... and there are many, many poor people, and not so much of a middle class. And so that's where people's anger should be directed, not at books. But the books are something finite, where you can sort of rouse up people emotionally."

To hear <i>more from Oates, listen to the</i> Talk of Iowa podcast. <i>Charity Nebbe</i> hosts Talk of Iowa . <i>Caitlin Troutman</i> produced this episode.

The Des Moines Public Library is an IPR sponsor.