I have been an early fancier of Joyce Carol Oates's fiction, which struck me as that always admirable thing: writing possessed of feminine sensitivity that in no way harps on such sensitivity but simply and hardheadedly puts it to work. And surrounds it with other good, solid virtues, neither feminine nor unfeminine, such as looking at the world steadily and long, and blinking only when absolutely necessary. (p. 284)

[It] is with mixed pleasure and apprehension that I watch Miss Oates wildly sowing her gifts in all directions: essays, reviews, poetry, plays, film criticism, and probably a few other genres that slipped by me on the pages of every known and several unknown magazines. It is so much the variousness as the sheer bulk of these outpourings that worries me: I respect a polymath but not a polygrapher. And I wonder whether this material, as uneven as a fever...