| Title | : | Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0865380775 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780865380776 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 522 |
| Publication | : | First published October 1, 1966 |
By the north gate: Edge of the world ; The fine white mist of winter --
Upon the sweeping flood, 1966: First views of the enemy ; At the seminary ; What death with love should have to do ; Upon the sweeping flood --
The wheel of love: In the region of ice ; Where are you going, where have you been? ; Unmailed, unwritten letters ; Accomplished desires ; How I contemplated the world from the Detroit House of Correction and began my life over again ; Four summers --
Marriages and infidelities: Love and death ; By the river ; Did you ever slip on red blood? ; The lady with the pet dog ; The turn of the screw ; The dead --
The goddess and other women: Concerning the case of Bobby T. ; In the warehouse ; Small avalanches --
Night-side: The widows ; The translation ; Bloodstains ; Daisy --
Uncollected: The molesters ; Silkie.
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Reviews
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Read with The Short Story Club
Creepy, Creepy, wow. Really good short story about a young girl and a predator. Their conversation gave me chills on my spine. -
This is a subtly horrible story - which is a tribute to Oates’ writing.
“She knew she was pretty and that was everything.”
It’s 1966 and 15-year old Connie likes hanging out with friends at the mall parking lot to meet boys. When not there, she mooches around, dreaming of boys she’s met.
“All the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July.”
Her father is away at work most of the time. Her older sister is dull but with a steady job their mother praises. Sometimes Connie wishes her nagging mother dead, although she happily takes advantage of her gullibility and lack of curiosity. Typical teen stuff.
“Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head.”
Music is important to Connie and is always in the background of the story itself, which is dedicated to Bob Dylan.
Teens in car parks can go either way. It was fairly innocent fun in
Grease, for example, but from early on, there’s a sinister undercurrent here. Ultimately, it was painfully, pleasingly, hauntingly ambiguous.
Having discussed it in the group (see below) and read around the story, Oates probably expected readers to infer one specific ending. I prefer “my” version.
Image: Scene from “Grease”, in a parking lot (
Source)
Major
Short story club
I reread this as one of the stories in
The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with
The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.
You can read this story
here.
You can join the group
here. -
This short story is only the second piece of writing I have read by this author. Some years ago I read
We Were the Mulvaneys which unfortunately I did not review, but I remember not liking much. I felt like trying something else by her.
I found
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? to be gripping, scary and totally ambiguous. At the same time it was beautifully written as the suspense rose and continued to rise during the confrontation between fifteen year old Connie and the suspiciously named Arnold Friend. Apparently Friend was based on a real criminal but the way the author writes this character makes him sound like someone who would be very much at home in a
Stephen King novel. Hence the gripping and scary!
The story leaves the reader to decide what happened next. I feared the worst. -
4★
“Be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?—and get away before her people come back?”
Supposedly inspired by Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, this is a very short, dark little story about what to me seems a reasonably typical self-centred, 15-year-old girl who’s convinced life is better somewhere else with someone else, doing something else.
Teen angst, anger, frustration, can’t-wait-to-grow-up-and-show-them-all-how- special-I-am-ism.
I’ve always figured all kids go through some form of this as Nature’s way of getting us ready to leave the nest so we don’t have all generations piled up on top of each other in some sort of feudal, walled city. That’s what I told my kids as they all got a bit antsy, and I still think that’s largely the case.
Connie's parents are woefully out-of-date (of course) and her older sister is 24, boring, working responsibly and still living at home (there goes my theory), so Connie listens to the usual pleas of why-can’t-you-be-more-like-your-sister?
Why do we even say these things to kids? What good can it possibly do?
For deep and meaningful discussion, I could guess that her name is really Constance, and that’s what she finds boring in her life. All is constant, nothing changes. She and a girlfriend spend their evenings in the company of various boys, pretending to their parents they’re going to the movies together. She craves some excitement. [Be careful what you wish for!]
“Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home.”
In the carpark, a guy she doesn’t know flirts briefly with her from his car. On the day this story takes place, her family has gone to a boring barbeque with friends. She’s far too cool for such an outing, so she opts to stay home, when what to her wondering eyes should appear . . . Arnold Friend dropping by.
I don’t know if his name is also a play on words (an old friend) or not, but it’s such a peculiar, heat-hazy kind of afternoon that it’s all a bit surreal. Connie stays inside the screen door while the “boy” (of indeterminate age) tries to sweet-talk her into coming for a ride with him and his friend in his too-cool-for-school gold car with slogans painted on the side.
She tries to put on her cool, evening persona to live up to his obvious expectations, but as he starts bragging about how much he knows about her and her family, she gets more and more nervous.
“Connie stared at him, another wave of dizziness and fear rising in her so that for a moment he wasn't even in focus but was just a blur standing there against his gold car, and she had the idea that he had driven up the driveway all right but had come from nowhere before that and belonged nowhere and that everything about him and even about the music that was so familiar to her was only half real.”
Yeah. That’s what I wondered. Is she hallucinating? She senses Arnold getting weirder and weirder. Telling his friend in the car to back off and leave the talking to him, Arnold says
“Don't hem in on me, don't hog, don't crush, don't bird dog, don't trail me," he said in a rapid, meaningless voice, as if he were running through all the expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which of them was in style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up with his eyes closed. "Don't crawl under my fence, don't squeeze in my chipmonk hole, don't sniff my glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers on yourself!”
It's a short short story and you really should have a look yourself. I’ve not read Oates before (possibly started something once), but I can see why she’s got so many fans! Must find some more.
I haven’t read the Spark notes or discussions yet, so I may be WAY off the track. Get a copy of it here (free) and see what you think. It's only a dozen or so pages long.
https://www.cusd200.org/cms/lib/IL010...
Thanks to the Goodreads Bound Together Group's monthly short story discussion for this.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
In 2023, it is another good read from the Goodreads Short Story Club which you can join and then follow the discussions for each story. There’s no requirement to participate, but the conversations are always interesting.
The Short Story Club -
A chilling short story of Joyce Carol Oates from her short story collection ‘Where are you going, Where have you been?’ It is a sort of story which invoked in me long forgotten fears. Thank you, Cecily, for posting the story at your review to copy for those who are interested to read it.
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I’ve owned this book for a long time, but for the longest time had only (re)read the title story. Recently, someone had mentioned a specific passage from the story, so I went to this volume to look for it and ended up rereading the whole story. At the same time, I’d also heard of a couple of Oates’ retellings, a Chekhov and a James Joyce, that happen to be included here as well; I read those. Looking at the table-of-contents, I figured her “The Turn of the Screw” would be a retelling of the Henry James, but it’s actually an envisioning of James’s possible inspiration for his novella of the same name. I enjoyed these; also fascinating is a story called “Daisy,” an imagining of the relationship between Joyce and his daughter (using different names). Shortly after that, I turned to the beginning of the book and read the rest chronologically, one per night.
Hopping around like that is not usually how I read a collection, but it worked for me this time. I think I’d been daunted by the size of the volume and awhile back I’d grown tired of Oates, which is wont to happen with writers I’ve read so much of and who are so prolific. Yet each story satisfied my short-story reading-soul, despite a bit of impatience at a bit of repetition and verbosity in a few, and also excepting one story I wasn’t impressed with and no longer remember. A couple of the other stories seemed vaguely familiar, as if I’ve read them before and maybe I have. -
3.5 stars
"Where are we going?" -- Connie
"Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart." -- 'Arnold Friend'
The work that first garnered Joyce Carol Oates attention in literary circles, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - originally published in 1966 - still is effective as a foreboding short story involving a teen girl quietly stalked by an alarming admirer. However, while it IS a well-written piece it also suffers a little from the last 55+ years worth of real-life serial killers, crazed stalkers, and other obsessed folks who have increasingly made the front page and/or became the lead story in the news media. (In other words, such activities have sadly become almost commonplace.) Fortunately, this edition also includes the LIFE magazine article text - a story entitled 'The Pied Piper of Tucson,' about a James Dean wannabe-type who killed three teenagers in 1965 - that first provided Oates with some inspiration, as well as an essay by Oates in which she discusses her story plus its film adaptation in 1986, re-titled Smooth Talk, which was the first starring role for a young Laura Dern. -
Shades of Flannery O'Connor with this white knuckle title story that will have you squirming. Not recommended for young ladies who are home alone.
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The title is a question for the reader. Where are you going, Where have you been, and Why did you bring this sadistic child murderer home with you?
The story begins with threats and manipulation “Gonna get you, baby” which never escalates to the physical level. It centers around a stranger who knows the kind of intimate details that couldn’t even be found on the internet about his victim’s life.
Then it all turns out to be the daydream of a girl who feels powerless about her destiny, which appears to me as a glimpse into the mind of a victim. “Your daddy’s house is nothing but a cardboard box that I can knock down anytime” -
Connie is a typical fifteen-year-old girl of the 1960s who enjoys meeting boys, and gets her values from the popular music on her favorite radio station. She stays home alone on a Sunday afternoon while her family goes to a barbecue. A man that she has seen at a fast food joint drives up her long driveway. The story gets more and more suspenseful as this pervert talks to her through the kitchen screen door. We can only imagine what this creepy, evil man is planning. Author Joyce Carol Oates does a superb job of slowly ramping up the tension in this tale about the loss of innocence. This story freaked me out because it was written so well. (These are my thoughts about the title story only.)
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I came across this book yesterday in my library and read the title story.
In 1985 or 86 I saw this movie called “Smooth Talk” on PBS, if I remember it correctly. I had recorded it. Laura Dern was a new actress and played a 15 year old girl. I was 15 at the time.
It was a time where I wanted to be grown up but couldn’t possibly comprehend what that really meant. At the time time I never wanted to abandon the safety of my family & my home.
I watched this movie countless times & it opening my eyes to how quickly innocence & safety could be lost. It wasn’t the coming of age film I’d come to expect. It tread the line of horror and how all could go wrong instead.
What I didn’t know then is that the movie has a different ending. This Oates short story, written in 1966, is based on/inspired by the Tucson Murders by Charles Schmid. The movie had a profound impact on me then & I had never forgotten it.
Since learning the real story ended differently I’ve been chilled to the bone. I can’t stop thinking about it all: the story, the movie, who I was then, who I am now, what I’ve learned since and my 16 year old daughter.
This story is chilling, relatable & timeless.
I’ll rewatch the movie again this week. If you get a chance check it out. -
I have read many reviews about this short story that provided so much valuable context with songs, biblical insights, etc.
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I have no background knowledge of this short story per se, but what I can tell you is that reading this story has been a horrifying experience, whilst I was trembling for this inexperienced, 15-years-old girl, Connie, and I was wishing for an unexpected rescue of her abysmal situation.
Superb writing that sucks you right into the 60’s. It’ll have you hang out with Connie in front of the mall, whilst you tread through her teenage thoughts, leading onto the porch of her family‘s house, where she is trying to get her way out of a monster’s focus.
The cause for this horrific situation that Connie faces can be rooted back to her broken mother-daughter-relationship. The latter is an omnipresent topic over decades and centuries that hasn’t been sufficiently explored in novels and stories in my opinion. Allegedly, the strongest love relationship that shapes minds and futures could well be our misery or our chance in life. -
"'The place where you came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now- inside your daddy's house- is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?'"
This is a really creepy little story about the duality of the teenaged mind and the vulnerability that comes along with that. So much tension is excellently built up over the course of the plot, and so much is told about in Connie that her seemingly illogical actions make sense. Because of her yearning for freedom, she makes a pivotal decision that we never find out the outcome for, but one can only assume she's just put herself into a really bad situation.
Again, this is a great story about the teenaged mind and how easily it can be taken advantage of. -
I've read the title story but I'm not sure what other (early) stories of hers I've read. Liked that story, though Joyce Carol Oates' stuff is sometimes so edgy and raw it's like trying to swallow razor blades.
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I read this second semester of my freshman year of high school. It was when I was running for Miss Lenexa and we were selling candy to raise money for the Legler Barn. I ate almost all of my own Milky Way bars, and to this day, every time I read one of the short stories from this, I can taste a Milky Way.
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Una maravilla de cuento. Quién lo quiera leer, os lo paso. Ultimamente se ha puesto de actualidad porque se ha reeditado la adaptación cinematográfica que se hizo en 1985, una adaptación muy fiel y casi perfecta, que os recomiendo. Pero primero el cuento:
https://www.literatura.us/idiomas/jco... -
5 stars
This review is just for the short story of the same title. It left such a mark on me back when I first read it in high school. I randomly think about this on multiple occasions as well as sometimes having to indulge in watching the film adaptation "Smooth Talk".
This is entirely some of my worst fears, and in a way as such as listening to true crime podcasts and documentaries—this short story has a calming effect to my nerves on the grounds of being able to assess odd behaviors and mannerisms to keep me out of danger.
Arnold Friend is FRIGHTENING, and Connie really didn't stand any chance against him. The short story ends leaving the mind of the reader to wander and decide what happens to Connie. Insinuation points to nothing good. -
No stars. This is literally my least favorite thing I've read in my entire life. It gave me 300000 nightmares.
I might consider that a good thing, except the story is just an allegory about virginal purity. The brilliant symbolism here? Her house is a vagina. Her house. Is a vagina. HE is a metaphor for a dick. Do you know how fucked up this story is?
Also, terrifying me about the possibility of rape? Not something that deserves any stars whatsoever.
God, I feel gross even talking about this. Never ever recommended. -
Oates has me convinced that I’m in the story with her characters, they are standing next to me and I can feel their fear, their irritation and even their sadness. In WAYG we get to go inside the head of Connie, a young impressionable teenager who is more concerned about her looks than her own safety, when Arnold Friend shows up at her house her first instinct is to look at herself in the mirror even though she has no idea who this strange boy is. Through Connie’s description of him, we know something isn’t right and through the flow of dialog we begin to feel scared for Connie who is helpless and vulnerable against this strange man.
“Now, what you’re going to do is this: you’re going to come out that door You‘re going to sit up front with mean Ellie’s going to sit in the back, the hell with Ellie, right? This isn’t Ellie’s date. You’re my date. I’m your lover, honey.”
“What? You’re crazy-“
“Yes, I’m your lover. You don’t know what that is but you will,” he said.
Oates creates the perfect villain in this story because he is handsome and charming, yet we are caught in his twisted lies and feel weak against him. This story literally had me scared not just for Connie but my own life. It is my goal to accomplish this skill in my own writing; I want people to feel like they are somehow involved in the story.
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This intricate story about a predator at work on a young innocent girl demonstrates a deep psychological understanding and a clear knack for creating tension and suspense. It’s disturbing and thought-provoking.
But it’s another of my unsuccessful attempts at appreciating this talented author. She has a style that feels distant to me, removed, like she’s accurately describing people but not getting under their skin. I don’t know … it just doesn’t work for me. -
Vanità di Cappuccetto rosso
Questo è uno dei più famosi racconti di Joyce Carol Oates ed è in effetti molto potente. Si parte come una sceneggiatura di Happy days con tre ragazzine che vanno di nascosto in un bar drive-in e occhieggiano i ragazzi più grandi, valutando quanto sono alla moda e di bell'aspetto: il trionfo della frivolezza dell'adolescenza. Poi si materializza il destino (?) che punisce la civetteria di una ragazza, che aveva soppesato con lo sguardo un tipo, il quale si era fatto delle idee. Nell'introduzione è scritto che il racconto riprende i sermoni medievali che invitavano le fanciulle alla modestia, illustrando le conseguenze di una condotta imprudente; in effetti, nel XX secolo, JC Oates ha scritto un racconto morale, riprendendo inquietanti dettagli da un caso di cronaca che aveva turbato gli USA. Singolare coincidenza, il racconto fu pubblicato nel 1966, lo stesso anno di A sangue freddo, di Truman Capote: stessa collocazione negli Stati Uniti centrali, desolati e spazzati dai venti.
JC Oates è una scrittrice molto talentuosa, ma la sua vena nera toglie la voglia di uscire di casa; oppure, a seconda dei casi, fa venir voglia di fuggire nel vasto mondo, nell'anonimato.
Mi viene voglia di aggiungere che le brave ragazze vanno in paradiso, ma quelle cattive vanno dappertutto, sia pure a loro rischio e pericolo. -
In this frightening story, a sinister stranger called Friend preys upon Connie, a 15-year-old teenager who is left home alone. Connie falls into Friend's predatory clutches not through his aggressiveness (his physique is described as "bony"), but through Friend's cleverness with words. The satanic figure seduces her in spite of his frightening appearance; in spite of his unkempt hair and bony physique. Despite his delusions, he argues relentlessly, incessantly, and this barrage of possessive, entitled assertions is enough to break her will to assert her own boundaries. Friend argues:
1. The screen door, if locked, can easily be smashed: "Why lock it? It's just a screen door, It's just nothing."
2. The parents - only several streets away at a neighbourhood BBQ - are disposed and inaccessible "They ain't coming."
3. He has her favourite music in the car, and she will enjoy the ride
4. he is (already!) her lover... she just doesn't know it yet: "you washed your hair and you washed it for me. It's nice and shining and all for me. I thank you sweetheart."
5. her indecisiveness is a cause of embarrassment: "Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean - I mean, don't fool AROUND," he said, shaking his head incredulously."
By the time she goes out to be embraced by Friend, she is a zombie. The story ends with the sight she sees from the car window: "so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it".
Friend's delusional arguments represent patriarchal entitlement in its extreme form: the abduction and rape of women. At the time of writing, the world was coming to terms with the notion of a serial killer, and the murder of women with a sexual motive. The rationale of Friend reflects a presumption of ownership, of overwhelming self-confidence which women can feel powerless to counter in the context of society's tacit acquiescence. What is particularly creepy is how Friend's speech is scattered with the corny language of popular songs: an indication by Oates that the story is not mere true crime, but an allegory for mainstream views.
The prelude to Connie's actual meeting with Friend seems to establish Connie as a regular suburban girl. She follows the rules, happily. Her character is true to adolescence, on the brink of adulthood.
Some of the critical essays included in my edition have pointed out there is something heroic about Connie's sacrifice. I find this interpretation difficult to reconcile with her zombified attitude at the end of the story: "....so much land...."
If it was a sacrifice, who was saved? Friend drives a gold car. He is so inconspicuous that he might have stepped out of a fairy tale. The threat to the family is not credible; the visit happens in broad daylight; she has a lock between she and him; even if the lock had been forced she could have run and jumped fences. She could have screamed and screamed again. I think that she is quite simply brainwashed, and Carol Oates, a feminist, wants us to take the story allegorically: a message about predatory male sexuality and female submission to its glib, underhanded language. -
Girls transitioning into women- not a new subject, but Oates covers it in a way that took me back to when I was wearing my tight blue jeans, trying to get the older boys’ attention, dancing around the living room to MTV and thinking about the handsome man who would come take me away from it all. Ugggh, a fantasy born from music, books, movies, and teenage angst.
Oates covers a very dark side of this fantasy for one young girl Connie. Connie is going through that push/pull with her mother, trying to prove she is independent and grown. She goes with boys from school into the alley and snickers with her girlfriends over it. All very innocent , until its suddenly not and Connie is ill equipped to deal with the 2 evil visitors that come into her life. Connie views the details of this very dark scene as through a fever dream. Very great descriptions of Connie’s views of the 2 visitors.
…be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?... -
If I had adolescent teenage daughters; or, if my own adolescents had been anything like this, I believe the book would have resonated more. Maybe I'm too old to remember feeling the things that Connie did, but I don't remember anything like that going on in my head. My mother would have snatched me up by the arm and given me a good shaking if I had treated her as Connie treated her mother. Because I can not relate I'm left with a "judge-ee" mind and just kept shaking my head at Connie's choices. When Arnold Friend drove up and his persuasive skills were turned on I wasn't sympathetic with Connie's fear at all--Sow to the wind and reap a whirlwind--as the Biblical saying goes.
The reason I picked this book up was that the story is supposed to be based on serial killer Charles Schmid "The Pied Piper of Tucson". Out of all I have read about this killer, not one thing matched this story. -
Tematika priče je vrlo uznemirujuća, a koliko sam do sad uspela da saznam o Džojs, žena veoma voli da teroriše svoje likove (posebno žene). Nije baš my cup of tea, ali skidam kapu za to kako maestralno piše i vodi radnju. Iako vas podilazi jeza od njenih rečenica, ne možete a da se ne divite njenom talentu.
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Viaggio negli inferi
Molti racconti presi singolarmente sono molto belli. Penso a Come ho osservato il mondo.... in cui una ragazza dell'upper class finita in carcere racconta la propria vita allucinata dalla quale ha trovato la forza di uscire dopo un pestaggio nei bagni della prigione, oppure a Desideri esauditi, in cui si racconta di una coppia di intellettuali nella quale si introduce una studentessa sedicenne, che viene fatta passare per babysitter, rimane incinta, viene sposata. L'ex moglie, poetessa affermata, si suicida, assurgendo all'empireo personale dell'ex marito che sempre ne loderà la grandezza d'animo: intanto l'ex sedicenne si abbrutisce non poco allevando i figli della coppia precedente, non finisce gli studi, è la vera sconfitta.
Ciascuno di questi racconti ha una tale ricchezza di invenzione da poter sostenere una narrazione ben più estesa e tutti sono scritti benissimo. Tuttavia, la raccolta è un viaggio nell'incubo, c'è chi viene accoltellata dal caro papà, la bimba e la ragazza oggetto di molestie, chi viene colto da un raptus omicida nei confronti del quale non prova rimozione nè pentimento, chi impazzisce del tutto, insomma non c'è posto per vicende che non siano estreme. L'insieme mi è risultato difficile da digerire per l'eccesso di negatività, anche questo irreale e stucchevole. -
With a visceral feeling of dread, this powerful short story grips the reader with an inevitable loss of innocence.
A coming of age story, where the descent from blissful ignorance is rapid and brutal.
(Note: Review of title story only) -
I saw "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" on a list of best short stories and sought it out. It is a creepy, tense story about a teenage girl who skips a family outing to stay home alone, but she gets an unexpected visitor. The story gave me chills.
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Oh boy this was creepy. I love this woman, but don't read her if you're struggling with any emotions unless you want them to get deeper and blacker. Her prose will consume you.
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I was remembering this story recently. When I first read it I was a teenager and didn’t realize that this disillusionment appears so often. Now more than a decade later I really recognize the pattern in the story. The disillusionment that comes with attraction - especially when someone is trying to attract you to them. Attraction, hiding behind masks, finally the dropping of masks, when the reality comes out. How often this happens: people pretend to be someone they are not and you realize it only after some time spent getting closer to them.
You see someone who is so attractive, cool and magnetic that you walk right up to it. You get closer and closer, drawn to that image. Then you get close enough and suddenly see beneath the mask. In this story it happens quite literally, she can see the placement of the wig and realizes this man is wearing a disguise designed to lure her in. All the illusions come apart quickly but only when it is too late.
