my-server
← Wiki

Night-Gaunts (short stories)

Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense is a collection of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates published in 2018 by The Mysterious Press. "The Woman in the Window" was anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories in 2017.

Stories

Selected periodical and date of original publication are provided:

Reception

Reviewer Michael Thomas Barry at The New York Review of Books questions the clarity and purpose of these stories:

Theme

The title of the collection is derived from Gothic writer H. P. Lovecraft's autobiographical report of his disturbing childhood nightmares involving faceless monsters. Oates selected the Lovecraft poem "Night-Gaunts" for the volumes's epigraph. His work was originally published in Weird Tales, December, 1939.

Literary critic Eric K. Anderson regards the volume as a suitable homage to Lovecraft and Oates's literary debt to him: "In fact, the titular story which ends the book is a tribute to and a fictional re-imagining of Lovecraft's life."

Anderson adds that the collection as a whole "skillfully invokes the tortured imagination of Lovecraft and form utterly compelling modern tales of suspense."

Footnotes

Sources

  • Anderson, Eric K. 2018. Review of Joyce Carol Oates's Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense. Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies. Vol. 4, Article 5. LonesomeReader Blog. University of San Francisco. https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=jcostudies Accessed March 10, 2025.
  • Barry, Michael Thomas. 2018. "Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense." The New York Review of Books https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/night-gaunts Accessed 9 March 2025.
  • Oates, Joyce Carol. 2018. Night-Gaunt and Other Tales of Suspense. The Mysterious Press, New York.