Joyce Carol Oates's opinions are fascinating

Uncensored: Views & (Re)Views by Joyce Carol Oates is a collection of reviews and essays. It was published in 2005, and the works originally appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times and elsewhere between 1999 and 2004. The dates, however, are irrelevant. Oates' comments about Sylvia Plath, Willa Cather, Richard Yates, Ernest Hemingway, Balthus, and her reviews of books by William Trevor, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Mary Karr among other are as interesting today as when they were published.

I picked the book up because I was curious to see what Oates had to say about these writers, to see if there are writers I ought to know more about (there are), and to improve my own ability to read and, ideally, to write. What does a working novelist and short story author like Oates have to say? What does she respond to in a book? What does she criticize—or feel does not work?

As a writer of fiction, I think about the challenges. How do you engage a reader? How do you create—invent, devise, fabricate, fashion, build, construct—living characters that are, after all, nothing but words on paper? How do you avoid rupturing the reader's willing suspension of disbelief, throwing her out of the story and tempting her to throw the book across the room?

The only way I know to answer questions like these is to learn what seems to work and what usually doesn't work in fiction. You can, I supposed, learn this on your own, but by doing so you are always limited by your own experiences, your own history, by what you are able to bring to and take from the text. A thoughtful reader like Joyce Carol Oates, with her history and her experience, can add alternative insights, ideas, and perspectives to your own.

One of the book's more interesting essays is "A Garden of Earthly Delights Revisited." Oates wrote the novel in 1965-66 (when she was in her late 20s) and had the opportunity to revise it in 2002. "As a composer can hear music he can't himself play on any instrument, so a young writer may have a vision he or she can't quiet execute; to feel something, however deeply, is not the same as possessing the power—the craft, the skill, the stubborn patience—to translate it into formal terms."

I have not done it (and considering the demands on my time, probably won't do it), but a fascinating exercise would be to compare the 1967 edition of A Garden of Earthly Delights to the 2002 edition. How often is it possible to compare a writer's early version of a novel with her mature edition? If you know of any others, please let me know.

A gay police chief has to solve a small town murder

Stephanie Gayle has attempted a difficult trick and, in my opinion, pulled it off: She has written Idyll Threats entirely in the voice of a gay, former New York homicide detective, Thomas Lynch, now the police chief in bucolic Idyll, Connecticut.

At the beginning of the book, Lynch is profoundly depressed. He has not recovered from the death of his partner and friend in New York City, a shooting that derailed Lynch's career, sending him off to rural Idyll. He's been the town's chief for seven months, seems to have learned almost nothing about

the town ("You could fit what I knew about this town into a shell casing"), has an arm's-length relationship with his officers, and is terrified they will learn he's gay.

One night, Lynch allows himself to be picked up by a local he's stopped for speeding. They go to a shack for their tryst but find it already in use by a young woman and an older man. Lynch's arrival in uniform destroys the couple's mood and his own enthusiasm for quick, uncommitted sex. Everyone heads home, presumably frustrated. The next morning, the local golf course's groundskeeper finds the young woman's body on the 9th green, four bullets in her.

Lynch now has a problem. If he tells his detectives he'd seen the girl shortly before she was killed, he'll have to tell them where and how he'd seen her. In the homophobic world of a small town police station in 1997, this is more than Lynch can face. He has to solve the murder without revealing his involvement.

Gayle can write a lively scene. She has a chapter in which Lynch interviews an elderly, somewhat dotty woman who has seen figures on the golf course the night of the killing. He tries to keep the lady on topic while fending off her horny Pomeranians. It's a hoot (and the information relevant).

She can also write a neat description: "His bare arms were a mosaic of bad tattoos. He even had a dancing hula girl. Her lips were crooked. When I looked closer. I saw that all of her was crooked. He deserved a refund for that tat." Or: "Inside, it looked like a science fair and a yard sale had mated." And: "I couldn't say more [to the parents of the dead girl]. Didn't dare. Hope is a terrible gift. The return policy is heartbreak."

While I had no problem with Lynch's homosexuality, I had a real problem at the beginning of the book with his decision to have sex with the guy he'd stopped for speeding. Chief! Okay, it's been months since you've had sex with anyone, but this is a small town, not New York City! It can only end badly!

As it does. Not only does the visit to the shack hobble the murder investigation (although, to be fair, Lynch could not have imagined that), but the guy he'd gone off with shows up mid-book with a speeding ticket and blackmails Lynch into tearing it up.

Once I had accepted Lynch's flawed judgment, however, I was willing to be carried along by his voice as he deals with past demons and current stresses. By the end of the book, while still unwilling to excuse his actions, I understood why he did what he did. All in all, I thought Idyll Threats an interesting first entry in what promises to be an entertaining series.