Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

Martin Kich (Wright State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1992

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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This novella, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, has generally been classified as a “nonfiction novel” in the mode of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979). Although those novels treat more hardened criminals, their crimes, their trials, and their executions, Oates’s novella treats an “incident” that arguably had a more pronounced and enduring impact of the national consciousness. The novella provides a fictional version of the so-called Chappaquiddick “incident”, in which Senator Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge connecting Chappaquiddick Island to Martha’s Vineyard and saved himself as his passenger drowned. That passenger, a 29-year-old woman named Mary Jo Kopechne, and Kennedy had just met…

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2306 words

Citation: Kich, Martin. "Black Water". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 May 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12195, accessed 27 July 2024.]

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