It might be objected, of course, that Enoch Skaggs is quite real. Man Crazy,'' a very different novel, is similarly frustrated by the extremity of its material. It is unnerving to consider that the underside of our current, divided national consciousness may lie beyond the imaginative powers of even our best novelists. Oates writes of whom she agrees with and why. A short story by Oates.
Oates answers questions about the art of poetry.
Telling stories, I discovered at the age of 3 or 4, is a way of being told stories. In a New York Times Magazine article adapted from her anthology ''Family Portraits,'' Oates reflected on her parents' lives. What You Will' has fewer strong climaxes than 'Them' and 'Wonderland' and perhaps less of the hum of immediate duration. On the other hand, it begins and ends better and, even though the chief characters are hard to care about until the close, reads itself rather eagerly. Their extraordinary and often violent behavior notwithstanding, the characters in these stories are not very interesting.