From Publishers Weekly
The prolific, bestselling novelist Oates wears a critic's hat in this tastefully textured compilation of prose pieces. Guided by her overarching desire "to call attention solely to books and writers that merit such attention, and to avoid whenever possible reviewing books 'negatively' except in those instances in which the 'negative' is countered by an admiring consideration of earlier books by the same author," Oates has achieved a delicate critical balance-gracefully sidestepping the Dale Peck approach to reviewing while eschewing the temptation to dish pat, effusive praise. As a result, her essays, never grating nor bland, engage the reader with their refreshing honesty. She does not hesitate to expose the various contrivances of Patricia Highsmith, particularly as they pertain to the short story, for which, Oates suggests, Highsmith possessed "perhaps little natural skill." Similarly, Oates challenges Anita Brookner's solipsistic insistence that self-analysis "'is an art form in itself.'" Other highlights include her look at the "new memoir" of crisis as seen through Alice Sebold's Lucky, her take on the exhibition of essentially private writing (Sylvia Plath's journals, J.D. Salinger's letters to Joyce Maynard, etc.) and her questioning of the "restoration" of literary works, a process she explores vis-à-vis a scholarly re-release of Robert Penn Warren's classic, All the King's Men. Envisioned as "a conversation among equals," this collection covers the literary gamut-from spirited icons like Hemingway and Carson McCullers to quieter, more unassuming contemporaries such as Pat Barker, Ann Patchett and William Trevor-and even makes room for the occasional homage to a trailblazing athlete (Muhammad Ali), a film idol (Bela Lugosi) and an art world sensation (Balthus). Fortunately for readers, Oates does not spare herself either, turning that discerning dialogue inward to candidly discuss her own writing process. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
So illuminating, personable, and prevalent is Oates' literary criticism, a reader might know and value her strictly as a clarion and companionable critic. But, of course, the acuity of her critical perspective derives from her unparalleled experience as a versatile novelist, short story writer, playwright, and young adult and children's book author. And she seems to have read everything. Utterly at home in literature, she writes naturally about books with vigor and pleasure. In her latest collection of graceful and welcoming essays and reviews, Oates is as avid as ever. She presents substantial retrospective considerations of Hemingway, Emily Bronte, Carson McCullers, and Robert Penn Warren, and happily takes a magnifying glass to the mishmash of fact and interpretation found in memoirs in her energetic dissection of Mary Karr's racy contributions to the genre. Oates praises Kazuo Ishiguro and E. L. Doctorow, scrutinizes Anita Brookner, and, most proactively, reflects in depth on the state of the short story as she reviews a bounty of striking collections that argue mightily for the form's ongoing vitality. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Kirkus Reviews
"It’s useful to know what good writers are reading and thinking about...[Oates] seldom disappoints."

Booklist
"Utterly at home in literature, she writes naturally about books with vigor and pleasure."

Book Description

Uncensored: Views & (Re)views is Joyce Carol Oates's most candid gathering of prose pieces since (Woman) Writer: Occasions & Opportunities. Her ninth book of nonfiction, it brings together thirty-eight diverse and provocative pieces from the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Times Book Review.

Oates states in her preface, "In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent," and indeed, the voice of these "conversations" echoes the voice of her fiction in its dramatic directness, ethical perspective, and willingness to engage the reader in making critical judgments. Under the heading "Not a Nice Person," such controversial figures as Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, and Muriel Spark are considered without sentimentality or hyperbole; under "Our Contemporaries, Ourselves," such diversely talented figures as William Trevor, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Connelly, Alice Sebold, Mary Karr, Anne Tyler, and Ann Patchett are examined. In sections of "homages" and "revisits," Oates writes with enthusiasm and clarity of such cultural icons as Emily Brontë, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Robert Lowell, Balthus, and Muhammad Ali ("The Greatest"); after a lapse of decades, she (re)considers the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Americana, Don DeLillo's first novel, as well as the morality of selling private letters and the nostalgic significance of making a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond.

Through these balanced and illuminating essays we see Oates at the top of her form, engaged with forebears and contemporaries, providing clues to her own creative process: "For prose is a kind of music: music creates 'mood.' What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, subtextual urgency."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Uncensored: Views & (Re)views is Joyce Carol Oates's most candid gathering of prose pieces since (Woman) Writer: Occasions & Opportunities. Her ninth book of nonfiction, it brings together thirty-eight pieces from the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Times Book Review." "Oates states in her preface, "In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent," and indeed, the voice of these "conversations" echoes the voice of her fiction in its dramatic directness, ethical perspective, and willingness to engage the reader in making critical judgments. Under the heading "Not a Nice Person," such controversial figures as Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, and Muriel Spark are considered without sentimentality or hyperbole; under "Our Contemporaries, Ourselves," such diversely talented figures as William Trevor, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Connelly, Alice Sebold, Mary Karr, Anne Tyler, and Ann Patchett are examined. In sections of "homages" and "revisits," Oates writes with enthusiasm and clarity of such cultural icons as Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Robert Lowell, Balthus, and Muhammad Ali ("The Greatest"); after a lapse of decades, she (re)considers the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Americana, Don DeLillo's first novel, as well as the morality of selling private letters and the nostalgic significance of making a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond." Through these essays we see Oates at the top of her form, engaged with forebears and contemporaries, providing clues to her own creative process: "For prose is a kind of music: music creates 'mood.' What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, subtextual urgency."

FROM THE CRITICS

A. O. Scott - The New York Times

There may be some books out there that Joyce Carol Oates hasn't written, but there don't seem to be very many that she hasn't read. She doesn't so much review individual books as assess entire bodies of work, sorting wheat from chaff and finding the point at which talent meets its limits. Among the objects of her careful, passionate scrutiny are Muriel Spark, Sylvia Plath, E. L. Doctorow and Anne Tyler, as well as a host of lesser-known novelists, memoirists and short-story writers.

Kirkus Reviews