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Crazy for Satan >> Joyce Carol Oates overcooks Man Crazy by JULIET WATERS
She's a compulsive writer spinning compulsive tales that drew readers inside girl gangs in Foxfire, inside the brain of a serial killer in Zombie and now inside a Satanic cult in her latest novel, Man Crazy. But one gets the sense that the Satanic cult was not always the driving subject of this novel. Obviously it's the topic that's going to make it the most marketable, but the thrust of Man Crazy seems more to be the desperation for real love that sends a young girl into the depths of unreal love. To her credit, Oates does such a haunting and beautiful job of depicting the relentlessly broken heart of protagonist Ingrid Boone that by the time one gets to the Satanic chapters there's something unnecessary about all the capital 'E' evil. The self-inflicted hell of Ingrid's life is so disturbing that, when she ends up in true hell, the novel seems to overcook. It's the invisible evil, not the sensational one, that makes Ingrid Boone an interesting character, the impenetrable evil that seems to be lurking beneath her skin, driving her into a frenzy of compulsive scratching and self-mutilation throughout her teenage years. In the opening chapters, Ingrid speaks about "the first time I saw what isn't there to be seen." But it's only in the last chapter that the reader really starts to really see it too. It's hard to see the non-existence of real love in Ingrid's life because it's so saturated with a high-pitched, obsessive love. In 1972, when Ingrid is five, her 'Nam veteran father, Lucas, has to flee civilization after murdering a drug dealer in Florida. Chloe, Ingrid's gorgeous mother, is forced over the next decade to live off the always-available kindness of male strangers. But this string of faceless father replacements is broken one evening when Lucas shows up to murder Chloe's current boyfriend. It's an extreme message of undying love, and also Chloe's cue to get a job. So the mother and daughter move to upstate New York, where Chloe becomes a seamstress and Ingrid starts high school. Through no effort of her own, Ingrid becomes popular. She's beautiful, charmingly innocent in a way she doesn't understand, and has the glamour of a mysterious past. But in reality Ingrid is actually an anti-Heather. She's popular but friendless. She has zero self-esteem. She's a potential A-student, but is too self-conscious and terrified to think during her exams. But although her life is excruciating, it is at least bearable--until it gradually becomes clear that she's the easiest lay in her high school. As her reputation develops, so does an itching phobia that has her compulsively mutilating herself. Eventually this develops into a course of self-destruction that results in her metamorphosis from "doll-girl," her nickname in high school, to "dog girl," her monicker in the Satanic cult. It's clear why Ingrid Boone has a low resistance to men. What's less clear is what draws her into a world of extreme evil. "It's the men who treat you like shit you're crazy for," she claims, "for only they can tell you your punishment is just." This statement holds the seed of an explanation of what drives her into sadomasochism, but somehow it's just not enough to explain what drives her towards Satan. In the end, however, Oates comes up with such a brilliantly ambiguous ending that the final chapter is well worth wading through the horror. Man Crazy by Joyce Carol Oates, Dutton, hc, 282 pp. $29.99
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I've often wondered what maniacal force drives Joyce Carol Oates to be one of the most prolific American writers alive. It's hard to go two months without seeing her byline on an essay or review. Then there's the harvesting of her fiction. By the time Man Crazy came out this year, six chapters of this novel had already appeared in various forms: five as stories in American literary journals and one as a story in both Best American Short Stories 1996 and American Short Fiction 1995.