Joyce Carol Oates: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been"

                                        Photo: Wikipedia 

Author Joyce Carol Oates has enjoyed a long career as a writer and journalist, novelist, and literary critic. In this period of over fifty years in which she has been writing, she has received such honors as the O. Henry Award (1967), and the American Book Award (1970). Growing up in Lockport, New York, her family lived a hardscrabble existence, but was nonetheless happy and close. Her paternal grandmother was a particular favorite relative of Joyce’s.

In college at Syracuse University, she began writing and reading the work of D.H. Lawrence, Flannery O’Connor, and Franz Kafka: an eclectic assembly of influences that Oates still reflects on as having been “pervasive” (1)  After having been graduated from Syracuse, she went to the University of Wisconsin where she earned her master’s degree in English and began teaching at institutions that included Princeton, Detroit, and Windsor Universities. She currently resides in Princeton, New Jersey, where she and her husband, Raymond Smith directs the Ontario Review Press.

Oates is perhaps one of the most productive writers, having produced more than twenty-five collections of short stories and forty novels, which include Because it is Bitter, and Because it is My Heart, I’ll Take You There, and The Tattooed Girl. After her grandmother’s death, she discovered that her grandfather had committed suicide and that the family had fought to conceal their Jewish heritage. Much of her fiction draws on themes of family, visions of America, violence (“but never gratuitous,” says Oates), sexuality, and particularly in the short narrative, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” which deals, in part, with coming of age, naivete, and contemporary culture (Pearson 654).

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

According to Oates herself, this story was inspired by a Life Magazine article about a serial killer, Charles Schmid, who frequented the Speedway in Tucson, AZ in the 1960s, luring young teenagers, who looked up to him like a hero. For this reputation, Schmid was nicknamed “The Pied Piper” by the press. Schmid was, according to some accounts, suffering from an inferiority complex: he frequently used makeup to “make himself appear mean,” and to appear taller (he stood at a mere 5’3), stuffed newspaper into his cowboy boots, giving him a bow-legged, almost deformed appearance. In 1964, Schmid confided to his then girlfriend and one other friend, John Saunders, that he wanted to kill a young woman and “thought he could get away with it.” The trio lured 15-year-old Alleen Rowe to a deserted area outside of Tucson, having convinced the young victim they were going to a party. Instead, Schmid raped the young woman and murdered with a rock. He then buried her in the Arizona desert. Later, Schmid boasted to a new girlfriend, Gretchen Fritz, that he had murdered two young people. However, because he was unfaithful, Fritz reacted only to his infidelity, and threatened to expose him to authorities if he didn’t stop dating other women. Schmid would later murder both Gretchen and her fourteen-year-old sister, Wendy (2).

                                                     Photo: Bizarrepedia

And finally, why is this story dedicated to Bob Dylan?

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, baby blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, baby blue

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
All your reindeer armies, are all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, baby blue

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, baby blue