Joyce Car­ol Oates is often described as Amer­i­ca’s fore­most woman of let­ters. Since 1963 she has pub­lished more than 50 nov­els and a great many short sto­ries, plays, essays, poems and chil­dren’s sto­ries — all of unusu­al­ly high qual­i­ty. Her pro­duc­tiv­i­ty has been leg­endary, almost from the start. When her for­mer Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty class­mate Robert Phillips inter­viewed Oates for the Paris Review in 1978, he recount­ed a rumor that cir­cu­lat­ed cam­pus about how she would fin­ish a nov­el, turn it over, and begin com­pos­ing anoth­er one on the oth­er side–only to throw the man­u­script away when both sides were cov­ered and begin again. Oates did­n’t deny the rumor. “I began writ­ing in high school,” she said, “con­scious­ly train­ing myself by writ­ing nov­el after nov­el and always throw­ing them out when I com­plet­ed them.” But sheer vol­ume was nev­er the point, as Oates told Phillips:

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is a rel­a­tive mat­ter. And it’s real­ly insignif­i­cant: What is ulti­mate­ly impor­tant is a writer’s strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few last­ing ones — just as a young writer or poet might have to write hun­dreds of poems before writ­ing his first sig­nif­i­cant one. Each book as it is writ­ten, how­ev­er, is a com­plete­ly absorb­ing expe­ri­ence, and feels always as if it were the work I was born to write.

Oates has won many hon­ors for her work, includ­ing the Nation­al Book Award, the Pen/Malamud Award, the Nation­al Medal of the Human­i­ties, and a life­time achieve­ment award from the Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle. Her lat­est nov­el, The Accursed, is a Goth­ic tale of a super­nat­ur­al curse vis­it­ed upon Prince­ton, New Jer­sey, the town where she lives and teach­es. Last month the New York­er vis­it­ed Oates at her home in Prince­ton. The short film above offers a rare look inside the writer’s pri­vate world. Oates talks about her work rou­tine, her inter­est in lan­guage and struc­ture, and her sense of her own per­son­al­i­ty. “I can basi­cal­ly write almost all day long with inter­rup­tions,” she says in the film. “It’s not real­ly that I sit down to write as if it were some extra­or­di­nary act. It’s basi­cal­ly what I do.”

You can read online Oates’ ear­ly short sto­ry, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. It was writ­ten for Bob Dylan in 1966.

via Page-Turn­er

William Faulkn­er, 1949:

Almost every year since 1901, the Swedish Acad­e­my has appor­tioned one fifth of the inter­est from the for­tune bequeathed by dyna­mite inven­tor Alfred Nobel to hon­or, as Nobel said in his will, “the per­son who shall have pro­duced in the field of lit­er­a­ture the most out­stand­ing work in an ide­al direc­tion.”

Many of the great­est writ­ers of the past 112 years have received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, but there have been some glar­ing omis­sions right from the start. When Leo Tol­stoy was passed over in 1901 (the prize went to the French poet Sul­ly Prud­homme) he was so offend­ed he refused lat­er nom­i­na­tions. The list of great writ­ers who were alive after 1901 but nev­er received the prize is jaw-drop­ping. In addi­tion to Tol­stoy, it includes James Joyce, Vir­ginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Joseph Con­rad, Anton Chekhov, Mar­cel Proust, Hen­ry James, Hen­rik Ibsen, Émile Zola, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov.

But the Nobel com­mit­tee has hon­ored many wor­thy writ­ers, and today we’ve gath­ered togeth­er sev­en speech­es by sev­en lau­re­ates. Our choice was restrict­ed by the lim­i­ta­tions of what is avail­able online in Eng­lish. We have focused on the short speech­es tra­di­tion­al­ly giv­en on Decem­ber 10 of every year at the Nobel ban­quet in Stock­holm. With the excep­tion of short excerpts from Bertrand Rus­sel­l’s lec­ture, we have passed over the longer Nobel lec­tures (which typ­i­cal­ly run about 40 min­utes) pre­sent­ed to the Swedish Acad­e­my on a dif­fer­ent day than the ban­quet.

We begin above with one of the most often-quot­ed Nobel speech­es: William Faulkn­er’s elo­quent accep­tance of the 1949 prize. There was actu­al­ly no prize in lit­er­a­ture giv­en in 1949, but the com­mit­tee decid­ed to award that year’s medal 12 months lat­er to Faulkn­er, cit­ing his “pow­er­ful and artis­ti­cal­ly unique con­tri­bu­tion to the mod­ern Amer­i­can nov­el.” Faulkn­er gave his speech on Decem­ber 10, 1950, in the same cer­e­mo­ny with Bertrand Rus­sell. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the audio cuts off just before the fin­ish. To fol­low along and read the miss­ing end­ing, click here to open the full text in a new win­dow. Faulkn­er stum­bles a few times dur­ing his deliv­ery. You can lis­ten to his smoother 1954 read­ing of a pol­ished ver­sion of the speech here.

Bertrand Rus­sell, 1950:

The British logi­cian and philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell was one of sev­er­al prize-win­ners in lit­er­a­ture who were pri­mar­i­ly known for their work in oth­er fields. (The short list includes states­man Win­ston Churchill and philoso­pher Hen­ri Berg­son.) In addi­tion to his ground-break­ing con­tri­bu­tions to math­e­mat­ics and ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy, Rus­sell wrote many books for the gen­er­al read­er. In 1950 the Nobel com­mit­tee cit­ed his “var­ied and sig­nif­i­cant writ­ings in which he cham­pi­ons human­i­tar­i­an ideals and free­dom of thought.” Above are two short audio clips from Rus­sel­l’s Decem­ber 11, 1950 Nobel lec­ture, “What Desires are Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant?” You can click here to open the full text in a new win­dow.

Ernest Hem­ing­way, 1954:

The Amer­i­can writer Ernest Hem­ing­way was award­ed the 1954 prize “for his mas­tery of the art of nar­ra­tive, most recent­ly demon­strat­ed in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influ­ence that he has exert­ed on con­tem­po­rary style.” Hem­ing­way was not feel­ing well enough in Decem­ber of 1954 to trav­el to Stock­holm, so he asked John C. Cabot, Unit­ed States Ambas­sador to Swe­den, to deliv­er the speech for him. For­tu­nate­ly we do have this record­ing from some­time that month of Hem­ing­way read­ing his speech at a radio sta­tion in Havana, Cuba. You can click here to open the full text in a new win­dow.

John Stein­beck, 1962:

The Amer­i­can writer John Stein­beck, author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, was award­ed the Nobel in 1962 “for his real­is­tic and imag­i­na­tive writ­ings, com­bin­ing as they do sym­pa­thet­ic humor and keen social per­cep­tion.” To read along as you watch Stein­beck give his speech, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.

V.S. Naipaul, 2001:

Jump­ing ahead from 1962 all the way to 2001, we have video of the speech giv­en by the Trinida­di­an-British writer V.S. Naipaul, author of such books as In a Free State and A Bend in the Riv­er. Naipaul was cit­ed by the Nobel com­mit­tee “for hav­ing unit­ed per­cep­tive nar­ra­tive and incor­rupt­ible scruti­ny in works that com­pel us to see the pres­ence of sup­pressed his­to­ries.” You can click here to open a text of Naipaul’s ban­quet speech in a new win­dow.

Orhan Pamuk, 2006:

The Turk­ish writer Orhan Pamuk, author of such books as The Muse­um of Inno­cence and Snow, received the prize in 2006. The Nobel com­mit­tee praised the Istan­bul-based writer, “who in the quest for the melan­cholic soul of his native city has dis­cov­ered new sym­bols for the clash and inter­lac­ing of cul­tures.” To read Pamuk’s ban­quet speech, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.

Mario Var­gas Llosa, 2010:

The pro­lif­ic Peru­vian-Span­ish writer Mario Var­gas Llosa, author of such nov­els as Con­ver­sa­tion in the Cathe­dral and Death in the Andes, was cit­ed by the Nobel com­mit­tee in 2010 “for his car­tog­ra­phy of struc­tures of pow­er and his tren­chant images of the indi­vid­u­al’s resis­tance, revolt, and defeat.” To read along with Var­gas Llosa as he speaks, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.

It used to be that accept­ing an advance on an unwrit­ten nov­el was as good as admit­ting fail­ure before the work is even fin­ished. Can you imag­ine blue-blood nov­el­ists Edith Whar­ton or Hen­ry James tak­ing a check before fin­ish­ing their books?

F. Scott Fitzger­ald may have been a long-suf­fer­ing wannabe when it came to high soci­ety, but he nev­er pre­tend­ed to be any­thing but a busi­ness­man when it came to writ­ing. For near­ly his entire pro­fes­sion­al life he kept a detailed ledger of his income from writ­ing, in which he not­ed the $3,939 advance he received for his in-progress nov­el, The Great Gats­by. The new Gats­by film out this sum­mer is the fifth adap­ta­tion. The first earned Fitzger­ald $16,666. (See the sur­viv­ing footage here.)

Recent­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the lined note­book, which the writer prob­a­bly packed with him on all of his trav­els, paints a pic­ture of a prag­mat­ic busi­ness­man repeat­ed­ly on and off the wag­on. Sound like Gats­by? Maybe a lit­tle.

The famous­ly hard-drink­ing Fitzger­ald must have done his admin work after the hang­over wore off and before hap­py hour. He metic­u­lous­ly not­ed every pen­ny of every com­mis­sion earned, divid­ing the book into five sec­tions: a detailed “Record of Pub­lished Fic­tion,” a year-by-year account­ing of “Mon­ey Earned by Writ­ing Since Leav­ing Army,” “Pub­lished Mis­ce­lani (includ­ing nov­els) for which I was Paid,” an unfin­ished list of “Zelda’s Earn­ings” and, most inter­est­ing of all, “An Out­line Chart of My Life.”

A true Jazz Age sto­ry­teller, Fitzger­ald sets up the droll social scene of his own ear­ly days: Not long after his birth on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1896, the infant “was bap­tized and went out for the first time—to Lambert’s cor­ner store on Lau­rel Avenue.”

It’s worth a stroll through Fitzgerald’s clipped account of his child­hood, for the humor and the poignant ref­er­ences to birth­day par­ties and child­hood mis­chief. By 1920 the writer is mar­ried and has some pro­fes­sion­al momen­tum. In the mar­gins of that year’s page, he writes “Work at the begin­ning but dan­ger­ous toward the end. A slow year, dom­i­nat­ed by Zel­da & on the whole hap­py.”

By the last entry, the state of Fitzgerald’s life is grim—“work and wor­ry, sick­ness and debt.” The book reads like a whirl­wind of drink­ing, writ­ing, trav­el and jet-set­ting. Fitzger­ald holds his gaze steady on social dynam­ics, not­ing gath­er­ings and argu­ments with friends along­side the notes about his cre­ative bursts and dry spells.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site at and fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix.