them

Praise for The Wonderland Quartet, four early novels by Joyce Carol Oates <br>A Garden of Earthly Delights<br>Expensive People<br>them<br>Wonderland <br>"Protean and prodigious are surely the words that describe Ms. Oates. From the very beginning, as these impressive and diverse novels make clear, her talents and interests and strengths have never found comfort in restraint. She's sought, instead, to do it all -- to face and brilliantly, inventively transact and give shape to as much of experience as possible, as if by no other means is a useful and persuasive gesture of moral imagination even conceivable. For us readers these are valuable books." -- Richard Ford"<br>"<br>"These four novels reveal Oates' powers of observation and invention, her meticulous social documentation joined to her genius for forging unforgettable myths. She is one of the handful of great American novelists of the last hundred years." -- Edmund White <br>"This rich, kaleidoscopic suite of novels displays the young Joyce Carol Oates exercising her formidable artistic powers to portray a turbulent twentieth-century America. They offer the reader a singular opportunity to experience some of Oates's best writing and to witness her development, novel by novel, into one of our finest contemporary writers." --Greg Johnson, author of "Invisible Writer: A Biography of Joyce Carol Oates" <br>"As a young writer, Joyce Carol Oates published four remarkable novels, "A Garden of Earthly Delights "(1967), "Expensive People "(1968)," them "(1969), and "Wonderland" (1971). They were all nominated for the National Book Award, and Oates won the award for "them" in 1970....Reprinting the series in modern paperback editions nearlyforty years after their composition allows us a new perspective on their collective meaning and illuminates their place in Oates's overall career...The Wonderland Quartet, written in the "white heat" of youthful imagination and fervor, remains not only relevant but prophetic about the widening social and economic gulf in American society, the self-destructive violence of political extremism, and the terrifying hubris of science and technology. Bringing to life an unforgettable range of men and women, the Wonderland Quartet offers a compelling introduction to a protean and prodigious contemporary artist." -- Elaine Showalter, from her introduction, which appears in all four of these new Modern Library editions <br>Praise for" them"<br>"A superbly accomplished vision."-John Leonard, "The New York Times" <br>"That rarity in American fiction, a writer who seems to grow with each new book."-"Time "Magazine <br>"A superb storyteller. For sheer readability, Them is unsurpassed."-"Atlanta Journal-Constitution" <br>"When Miss Oates' potent, life-gripping imagination and her skill at narrative are conjoined, as they are pre-eminently in Them, she is a prodigious writer."-"The Nation" <br>Praise for Joyce Carol Oates<br>"If the phrase 'woman of letters' existed, she would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it." <br>-John Updike, "The New Yorker<br>"<br>"Oates writes prose of striking directness and simplicity. . . . She invests everything she touches with the qualities of her own voice, which is nervous, fast, febrile and hot as an iron. I'd unhesitatingly say that she is one of the most important living American writers." -Peter Straub, "New Statesman" <br>"Oates's novels work best whenthe action is set off by one terrible mistake. . . . These novels are hypnotically propulsive, written in the key of What the Hell is Going to Happen Next? Oates pairs big ideas with small details in

Joyce Carol Oates¿s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today as it on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous lives of a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, from the 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her ¿potent, life-gripping imagination,¿ Oates traces the aspirations and struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who is filled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequent destinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight to survive in a world of violence and danger.