Sex With Camel by Joyce Carol Oates is the first short story in the collection Lovely, Dark, Deep, which has been a finalist for The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Literature; I still have to open Them, which is 658th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and Blonde, 723rd on The GOAT – I have been elated by Black Water and this short story is wondrous – you have more reviews at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

Sex With Camel by Joyce Carol Oates is the first short story in the collection Lovely, Dark, Deep, which has been a finalist for The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Literature; I still have to open Them, which is 658th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and Blonde, 723rd on The GOAT – I have been elated by Black Water and this short story is wondrous –  you have more reviews at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

9 out of 10

 

Black Water is so outstanding https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/black-water-by-carol-oates-this-book.html that I must find time to take on Blonde, 1110 pages (!), or Them, which only over five hundred pages long, and placed quite high on the hierarchy of The Greatest Books of All time site, which has a dubious algorithm

 

I say that because some of my favorite oeuvres do not even find a place on this GOAT, whereas Black Water is only 10798…I have just checked again, and Lovely, Dark, Deep does not exist, or else they put up the work, but without any ranking, which is bizarre, considering this was on the short list for The Pulitzer Prize

The first story makes me sure to continue, maybe even enjoy the whole collection, Insha’Allah, which is a good omen, I have tried The Night Watchman today and had to abandon it…the start of Sex With Camel is provoking https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-myth-of-sisyphus-by-albert-camus-is.html made me think of Albert Camus

 

“Lots of things are overrated. Like suicide.” The boy laughed at his own cleverness. The grandmother, who was driving in mid-morning traffic, seemed distracted…Albert Camus considered suicide the paramount, quintessential problem, nevertheless, the boy is jesting for most of the time, even if there is an underlying tragedy

The teenager is travelling with his grandmother to the Medical Center, and he keeps making jokes, such as ‘you are so ugly, the cat tried to hide you in the sandbox’, something like that – a sense of humor is part of transcendence, a character strength https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/flourish-by-martin-seligman.html

 

Indeed, the title of the tale comes from this blague: ‘this man in in the desert on his camel, he tries to have sex with it (should I say her?), but the animal walks away, after some time, he has these fantasies again, but the camel runs, eventually, he crosses the desert, and on this road, there are two gorgeous blondes…

Their car broke down, and they say they will ‘do anything’ if the man repaired the vehicle, he does that, and when they ask ‘now, what can we do for you’, he says ‘would you hold the camel please?” now, is there any meaning in here, beyond the obsession, I do not suppose that this was just a zoophilia issue, or is it?

 

Inside the medical center, there are people with cancer, without hair, even girls, one in particular is spectacular, come to the boy, who gets so scared that he pretends he is looking for the elevator, and runs away, there is a strange feeling, a outré mixture of dry, maybe absurd humor and a tragic, heavy atmosphere of death https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-wheel-of-love-and-other-stories-by.html

 

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