{"id":30661,"date":"2025-03-17T15:42:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T19:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30661"},"modified":"2025-03-17T15:42:34","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T19:42:34","slug":"joyce-carol-oates-the-frenzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2025\/03\/17\/joyce-carol-oates-the-frenzy\/","title":{"rendered":"Joyce Carol Oates: “The Frenzy”"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

“The Frenzy”<\/strong><\/span>
\nby Joyce Carol Oates<\/span>
\nfrom the March 24, 2025 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"\"P<\/span>ublishing stories, poems, and criticism in the magazine for decades, Joyce Carol Oates is still going strong at 86. I haven’t read it yet, but from what I’m gathering from the interview, this feels very much like an Oates story, examining the power dynamics and horror as a much older married man takes a ride down the Jersey Shore with a young woman named Cassidy. Here is how it begins:<\/p>\n

\n

Early afternoon, driving south on the Garden State Parkway with the girl beside him. Passing exits for Point Pleasant, New Jersey, for Toms River. Something haphazard in his driving today, which is unlike him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wind from the Atlantic is rocking the Subaru Forester, and he feels a thrill of, what is it, a tug, like a tug-of-war, invisible hands on the wheel, which is his<\/em> wheel, so his reaction is to resist the intrusion, the way he resists the subterranean pull of sleep when he wakes before dawn, stunned and exhausted by dreams.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cassidy is feeling reckless. Young<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I look forward to your thoughts! Please feel free to share them below!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s New Yorker fiction is Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Frenzy,” which looks to be a disturbing look at an older man’s weekend trip with the much younger Cassidy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[435,94],"tags":[1504],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-joyce-carol-oates","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2025-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/March-24-2025-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7Yx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30661"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30670,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30661\/revisions\/30670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30661"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}