Childwold is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates first published in 1976 by Vanguard Press.Johnson, 1994 pp. 218-222: Selected Bibliography, Primary WorksCreighton, 1979 pp. 161-169: Selected Bibliography
Childwold's narrative and characters bear similarities to Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita.Bender, 1979 p. 118-119: A "critical revision" of the Nabokov work.
Plot
"[T]he action centers around a writer named Kasch whose infatuation with a fourteen-year-old girl, Laney Bartlett, and his subsequent attraction and engagement with her mother, Arlene, ends abruptly when he kills Arlene's former lover, Earl Tuller."Creighton, 1979 p. 106
Reception New York Times literary critic Josephine Gattuso Hendin ranks Childwold as the best of Oates's novels to date.Hendin, 1976 Praising the "verbal brilliance" that characterizes irs writing, Hendin adds this caveat:
Interpretation and appraisal Biographer Joanne V. Creighton offers this assessment of Oates's use of interior monologue and stream-of-consciousness in novels The Assassins (1975) and Childwold:
Literary critic Greg Johnson regards Childwold, like Oates's Angel of Light (1981), to be a "poetic novel," as does Oates herself:
Influence of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) Childwold is an homage to Nabokov's famous novel Lolita (1955), "echoing" its themes and characters. Oates's Fitz-John Kasch resembles the middle-aged Humbert Humbert, and his obsession for the 12-year-old Lolita here reimagined as the 14-year-old Laney Bartlett.Creighton, 1979 p. 106: "Echoing and in some senses parodying Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita..."Bender, 1979 p. 118-119: A "critical revision" of the Nabokov work.
Of the novels' respective tragic-comic pedophiles, literary critic Eileen T. Bender writes:
Bender stresses that Childwold is more than a mere "imitation" of Lolita. Rather, it serves as a critical "counterstatement," in which Oates shifts the primary focus from the voyeur Kasch to the "responsive, youthful " Laney, "offering the promise of radiance and regeneration."Bender, 1979 p. 120, p. 122
Footnotes
Sources Bender, Eileen T. 1979. "'Paedomorphic' Art: Joyce Carol Oates's Childwold." 1979 in Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates, by Linda W. Wagner. pp. 117–122. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Creighton, Joanne V.. 1979. Joyce Carol Oates. Twayne Publishers, New York. Warren G. French, editor. Creighton, Joanne V.. 1992. Joyce Carol Oates: Novels of the Middle Years. Twayne Publishers, New York. Warren G. French, editor. Johnson, Greg. 1987. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina. Hendin, Josephine Gattuso. 1976. Childwold. New York Times, November 28, 1976.https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/oates-childwold.html?_r=1 Accessed 21 January 2025. Oates, Joyce Carol. 1973. Childwold. Vanguard Press, New York.