{"id":30661,"date":"2025-03-17T15:42:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T19:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30661"},"modified":"2026-05-02T01:14:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T05:14:31","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: &#8220;The Frenzy&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>&#8220;The Frenzy&#8221;<\/strong><\/span><br><span style=\"color: #808080;\">by Joyce Carol Oates<\/span><br><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><span style=\"caret-color: #808080;\">from the March 24, 2025 issue of&nbsp;<em>The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Publishing stories, poems, and criticism in the magazine for decades, Joyce Carol Oates is still going strong at 86. I haven&#8217;t read it yet, but from what I&#8217;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\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-dropcap has-dropcap__lead-standard-heading paywall\"><span style=\"color: #003366;\">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\n\n\n<p class=\"paywall\"><span style=\"color: #003366;\">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 <em>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\n\n\n<p class=\"paywall\"><span style=\"color: #003366;\">Cassidy is feeling reckless. <em>Young<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I look forward to your thoughts! Please feel free to share them below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s New Yorker fiction is Joyce Carol Oates&#8217;s &#8220;The Frenzy,&#8221; which looks to be a disturbing look at an older man&#8217;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":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31032,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30661\/revisions\/31032"}],"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}]}}