The Seduction and Other Stories


The Seduction and Other Stories is a collection containing 16 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Black Sparrow Press in 1975.

Stories

Stories that first appeared in literary journals are indicated.
  • "An American Adventure"
  • "Gifts"
  • "Getting and Spending"
  • "On the Gulf"
  • "The Seduction"
  • "Passions and Meditations" 172
  • "6:27 P.M."
  • "Out of Place"
  • "Notes on Contributors"
  • "The Imposters"
  • "Year of Wonders"
  • "The Madwoman"
  • "DOUBLE TRAGEDY STRIKES TENNESSEE HILL FAMILY" ''
  • "The Stone House"
  • "Hell"
  • "The Dreaming Woman"

Reception

Multiple publications reviewed the collection after its publication. Literary critic Elizabeth Pochoda writing in The New York Times opens her review of The Seduction and Other Stories defending Oates against unnamed critics who equate her immense literary output with "second-rate" writers. Pochoda argues that Oates's output, style and narrative are matched to the author's social and literary concerns:
Jane Baker reviewed the collection for The Antioch Review, commenting that the stories felt the same but that "Yet these stories make curiously compelling reading." Peggy Constantine of Democrat and Chronicle noted that "Oates' penchant for peering into souls on the brink of terminal physical or mental illnesses is fatiguing, but she does win your attention."

Style and theme

The volume "contains some of her best revelations of complexity in lives ordinarily thought to be without depth or value." The subjects that concern Oates are those members of the American working-class—"hairdressers, assembly‐line workers, gum‐ cracking teen‐agers"—encountered in "shopping malls, tract housing, drive‐ins and car lots."
Pochoda cautions that the "oppressive sense of dread" conveyed in virtually all the stories may create fatigue in readers. As such, she suggests "read the stories at decent intervals and not go straight through the book as one might with a collection of Cheever's.