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• Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), Blonde (2000), and short story collections The Wheel of Love and Other Stories (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Oates has taught at Princeton University since 1978 and is currently the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing.

• Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ih8UkxJqeQ Trailer

The story first appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of Epoch Magazine. It was inspired by four Tucson, Arizona murders committed by Charles Schmid, which were profiled in Life magazine in an article written by Don Moser on March 4, 1966. Oates said that she dedicated the story to Bob Dylan because she was inspired to write it after listening to his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."

The main character of Oates' story is Connie, a beautiful, self-absorbed 15-year-old girl, who is at odds with her mother—once a beauty herself–and with her dutiful, "steady", and homely older sister. Without her parents' knowledge, she spends most of her evenings picking up boys at a Big Boy restaurant, and one evening captures the attention of a stranger in a gold convertible covered with cryptic writing. While her parents are away at her aunt's barbecue, two men pull up in front of Connie's house and call her out. She recognizes the driver, Arnold Friend, as the man from the drive-in restaurant, and is initially charmed by the smooth-talking, charismatic stranger. He tells Connie he is 18 and has come to take her for a ride in his car with his sidekick Ellie. Connie slowly realizes that he is actually much older, and grows afraid. When she refuses to go with them, Friend becomes more forceful and threatening, saying that he will harm her family, while at the same time appealing to her vanity, saying that she is too good for them. Connie is compelled to leave with him and do what he demands of her.

• It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,
Crying like a fire in the sun.
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense.
Take what you have gathered from coincidence.
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets.
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home.
All your reindeer armies, are all going home.
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor.
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, Baby Blue.