The Wheel of Love and Other Stories by Joyce Carol Oates was a finalist for the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was called "Quite simply, one of the finest collections of short stories ever written by an American” – you find a few thousand reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other lists, plus other thousands of notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other sites on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

The Wheel of Love and Other Stories by Joyce Carol Oates was a finalist for the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was called "Quite simply, one of the finest collections of short stories ever written by an American” – you find a few thousand reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other lists, plus other thousands of notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other sites on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

9 out of 10

 

Black Water https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/black-water-by-carol-oates-this-book.html by Joyce Carol Oates is an enchanting read, seeing that, I would have started Blonde, which is ranked 723rd on The GOAT site for masterpieces, but it is extremely long, I think it has more than one thousand pages…

 

In The Region of Ice is the fist in this collection - one of the others is at 6843 on this GOAT page – and it has already caught my attention, to the point where I moved on to the next two, and these tales appear to promise a delightful read, most importantly, they keep me focused, attention deficit disorder is a plague of the times

In this first story, we have a very munificent nun, Sister Irene, who is a professor at this catholic university, where she has a new student, a Jewish man, Alan Weisntein, with wonderful abilities, but a troubled life, he has a long-standing conflict with his father, who would commit him to a hospital, eventually…

 

Weinstein talks about Nietzsche, Freud, he debates the fact that Shakespeare appears to contradict himself with his themes, only Sister Irene explains that the genius had various approaches in different plays, he did not produce them all at the same time…Alan Weinstein disappears and writes from the hospital, asking for help

 

 

Where are You Going, Where Have You Been is the next in the Collection, and the main character is Connie, who is fifteen, but very near serious trouble, when a stranger, Arnold Friend, approaches her and wants to take her in his car, with a mate of his, and the promise is that he will be her…lover, he will explain it

This would be statutory rape, but this man is trouble on more, or all fronts: when the girl realizes that he is much older, he must be about thirty, and dangerous, she wants to call the police, but he is blackmailing her now: ‘you don’t want your family to be hurt’, meaning he will use some weapon, burn the house

 

This criminal – we do not know that he has a record, but his behavior leaves no doubt – knows the name of the girl, that the parents are away, where they are, he even speculates that they must have the barbecue now, at this fat woman, Arnold Friend does not like heavy women, he likes them just the way Connie is…

We have the feeling that there is no happy exit from all this, the author is honest, and this dark figure reminds me of the one I see as the epitome of evil in the world now, he has reached the zenith – they call themselves in the MAGA cult ‘apex predators’ – and does not have a decent human feeling in that awful soul of his

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

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