Oates recalls with humor her childhood in Lockport
LOCKPORT — Showing a sense of humor not always displayed in her work, world-renowned author Joyce Carol Oates returned to her childhood turf Friday night, charming an audience of some 700 in the Palace Theatre.
Oates, 71, poked fun at Lockport and at her own reputation as literary America’s princess of darkness in an hourlong talk built around a commission she recently received to write an article about Lockport for Smithsonian magazine.
“I’m often asked, ‘Why is your writing so dark?’ And I say, ‘Have you ever visited Lockport?’ ” Oates cracked.
But that was just for laughs. Most of Oates’ reminiscences of her Lockport days in the 1940s and 1950s were fond as well as funny, during her talk in the first John S. Koplas Memorial Lecture sponsored by Lockport Public Library.
“I probably got some of my first ideas for writing by walking around the city and sitting in the bus station,” she said.
Oates said that characters in a female gang in one of her novels are based on “girls I knew a little bit. . . I don’t think I should mention the names of these people because it might be embarrassing for them.”
Oates took a bit of time thumbing through a book of her poems looking for a few to read aloud.
“I’m looking for cheerful poems,” she explained amid a gust of laughter.
Oates was born in Millersport, seven miles south of Lockport, just over the Erie County border. She attended a one-room schoolhouse on Tonawanda Creek Road for five years before being sent to school in Lockport.
“It’s so strange that between the ages of 11 to 15 — sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades — I was a commuter student to John Pound [Elementary School] and then to North Park [Junior High School]. . . . Why someone from Erie County was sent to Niagara County public schools, I have no idea,” Oates recalled. “I was yanked away from that and sent to Williamsville High School.”
She said some images in her work, including frequent appearances of buses, canals and creeks, stem from Lockport.
Oates said, “Many of my memories of Lockport are blurry and morose, but they’re kind of romantic.”
She remembered, “In junior high, I was allowed to stay in Lockport to see movies after school, even a double feature. I can’t actually believe I’m here. The Palace Theatre when I was young was this opulent place.
“Men would sit by me, not that I was ravenously beautiful. They couldn’t see me. Nothing ever came of it.”
She recalled one day, sitting in the second or third row, a man in front of her reached back and grabbed her foot.
“It was my first and last romance in the Palace Theatre,” Oates said. “I think I gave a little scream. The man ran out. The usher came and I said, ‘A man grabbed my foot.’ I don’t think I’ve included this incident in any story of mine. It was just too bizarre.”
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