At 84, Oates still knows how to strike a nerve. She talks about Babysitter – her new book inspired by a Detroit serial killer – loneliness and her controversial tweet about white male writers
Joyce Carol Oates is on her feet in her study, looking out over woodland in rural Princeton, New Jersey, while her maine coon, Zanche, sprawls atop a swanky white cat tower. We are speaking on video and Oates pans around the room – large, book-lined – to show me it. She lets the camera linger on Zanche, who is amply provided for – she also has her own “catio” garden. “She hopes we won’t interfere with her nap,” Oates says, in a voice that sounds mildly warning. She is friendly, but not in a way that makes her less forbidding.
We are speaking before the publication of her novel Babysitter, inspired by a serial killer who murdered children in the 1970s in the suburbs of Detroit, where Oates lived at the time. She is 84, but her work remains exceptionally relevant. The film adaptation of her 2000 novel Blonde, a fictionalised account of the life of Marilyn Monroe and “the most difficult novel” she has written, is to be released on Netflix next month, while Babysitter is unflinching in its detailing of sexual assault before the #MeToo era. According to her publisher, it is Oates’ 61st novel, although no one seems certain, least of all Oates. She waves away the question as if counting is for people who have nothing better to do.
