The Gravedigger's Daughter, by Joyce Carol Oates. (Provided by HarperCollins Publis for The Star)

"I think our emphasis is not so much on literacy today as our facility with different kinds of electronics. People who are not naturally readers have to make their way in life and learn to do it in ways that are expedient." - Joyce Carol Oates (Frank Espich for The Star)

"My next novel is about tabloids and tabloid culture. There's always some scandal of the night, but behind those scandals are real people and some innocent children." - Joyce Carol Oates (Frank Espich for The Star)

"Are you a workaholic?"

It was a question put to prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates by a New York Times reporter as far back as 1975.

"I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all," she replied.

More than 30 years -- and dozens and dozens of novels, plays, essays, young adult titles and collections of short stories later -- Oates is still not working hard.

Her most recent novel, "The Gravedigger's Daughter," about a woman on the run from an impending murder, was published to good reviews earlier this year.

Also new from Oates is "The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982," somewhat less favorably received by critics.

Oates is a National Book Award winner (for "them," published in 1969), and she has taught creative writing at Princeton University since 1978. She was in Indianapolis Oct. 31 to speak at Butler University.

Do you write too much, as people accuse you?

It depends on who's saying it. It may be that Mozart wrote too much. What was that joke -- too many notes! Nobody really has to listen to Mozart if it's so offensive, and they don't have to read the words. Maybe it's too much for some people. But then, Jane Austen didn't write enough. Emily Dickinson wrote 1,775 wonderful poems. That's a lot. Many of them are so brilliant. I wish she had written twice as many poems.

Why are you publishing your journal?

I think it was because it was suggested to me. ..... I don't think I'll publish the next installment of my journal. I feel very self-conscious about it. I didn't edit it. My biographer edited it. I didn't actually read all of it. I start reading it and then I have a feeling of self-consciousness and then I turn the pages and I think, well, I'll read it some other time, the coward's way out.

What's your next novel going to be?

My next novel is about tabloids and tabloid culture. I did some research for that. My novel is not called tabloid hell, but it's about being in tabloid hell. Say you were the son of an infamous person, a very innocent young man, a boy, say 11 years old, but your parents are notorious. How would you live?

I was watching Fox News and some cable programs for quite a while. Nancy Grace? There's always some scandal of the night, but behind those scandals are real people and some innocent children.

Do Americans read enough?

That's a difficult question to answer. I guess you would compare it maybe to the past. I think our emphasis is not so much on literacy today as our facility with different kinds of electronics. People who are not naturally readers have to make their way in life and learn to do it in ways that are expedient. So maybe today being able to use the Internet and doing a job search or sending out a resume on the Internet, that may be more important than an old way of writing and typing. .....

You've written about boxing before. Why do important writers such as yourself or (the late) Norman Mailer write about boxing?

I was in the Catskills training camp of Mike Tyson and I watched Mike Tyson train for an hour and I'll tell you it was exhausting to watch him. .....

I wrote "On Boxing" (published in 1987). My 8father had been interested in boxing. If I had not had a father who was interested in it, I don't think I would be. I found it fascinating because it's part of American culture. Norman Mailer wrote a wonderful, long essay about George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. It's all Mailer's obsessions and predilections that were being projected onto these two very interesting boxers. .....

When I write about boxing, I'm sort of examining it as a drama, maybe a tragic drama. I'm looking at it almost as a story, Tyson as a character in a story. I don't have that identification. It's a different impulse and a different motive. So my writing tends to be much more cool. Norman's is much more intense.

You were invited to be on Stephen Colbert's television show?

I was invited to be on "The Colbert Report." I didn't want to go on it. I think he's brilliant. He's a wonderful comedian, but would you want to go on his show? All my friends said, "Oh, Joyce, you should go on the Colbert show." I said, "Would you go?" They said, "Oh, no." He just makes mincemeat of people. He makes them into straight men. You're just sort of sitting there and he's being outrageous and saying these ridiculous things. I think they need a regular fodder of material. It's not that hard to get on the show. They have to get people willing to go on the show.

Kurt Vonnegut also was to speak at Butler University earlier this year, but died two weeks before his appearance. Did you know him?

I knew Kurt Vonnegut a.little bit. A very decent, striking personality. Everyone who knew Kurt Vonnegut felt very warm toward him, very warm and sympathetic. ..... He would say these things that were very pessimistic, like, "The human race is the syphilis of the world or something and we should be stamped out." I.said, "Ku-u-u-rt, do you mean that? What about your grandchildren?" and he kind of laughed. It was all kind of a show. He would say these outrageously pessimistic things, but he didn't mean it.

All successful writers get asked this -- what advice would you give to aspiring writers?

I would ask why would anyone want to be a writer because it's actually a lot of work. ..... Almost nobody has a comprehension of the arduousness of training that you have to do if you want to be a serious athlete. They see someone winning a competition, but they don't see all the hours and hours and hours of training and dieting and exercise that go into it. So if you said to people, "Would you want to a famous writer?" they would say yes, but if you say, "Would you want to do all this other work leading up to it?" they would say, "Well, I don't think I really want to do it," because the motivation isn't that strong."

An excerpt

From A Visit With Doris Lessing, an essay by Joyce Carol Oates, originally published in the Southern Review, October 1973.

"It is a bright, fresh, cold day in London, one of those excellent winter days that seem to promise spring. But it is already spring here, by the calendar, the spring of 1972, not winter, and one's expectations are slightly thrown off -- everything has been blooming here for months, and now trees are in full leaf, the sun is a very powerful presence in the sky, but still it is strangely cold, as if time were in a permanent suspension. Walking along Shoot-Up Hill in Kilburn, London, I am aware of people's steamy breaths -- in mid-May -- and as always I am a little disconcerted by the busyness of main thoroughfares, the continual stream of taxis and shiny red double-decker buses and private automobiles, and the quiet that attends this commotion. It seems so unexpected, the absence of horns, the absence of noise. Americans in London are disoriented by the paradox of such enormous numbers of people crowded into small areas without obvious intrusions upon one another, or even obvious visual displays of their crowdedness. It is usually the case that a one-minute walk off a busy road will bring one to absolute quiet -- the pastoral improbability of Green Park, which is exactly like the country and even smells like the country, a few seconds stroll from Piccadilly on one side and the Mall on the other -- and Doris Lessing's home, only a few hundred yards from Kilburn High Road, incredibly quiet and private, as remote a setting as any home deep in the country...."

Interview by Abe Aamidor / The Star