Reflecting on Self

from "The Enigmatic Art of Self-Criticism
in The Faith of a Writer
Joyce Carol Oates

To have a reliable opinion about oneself, one must know the subject, and perhaps that isn't possible.  We know how we feel about ourselves, but only from hour to hour; our moods change, like the intesity of light outside our windows. But to feel is not to know; and strong feelings will block knowledge. I seem to have virtually no opinion of myself. I only publish work that I believe to be the bes I can do, and beyond that I cna't judge. My life, to me, is transparent as a glass of water, and of no more interest. And my writing, which is far too various for me to contemplate, is an elusive matter, that will reside in the minds (or, as Auden more forcefully says, the guts) of others, to judge.

By now I expect even the most patient reader is just about sick-to-death of Joyce Carol Oates.  But I really am amazed at how proximate our thoughts, how convergent.  When she writes, I can find traces in my own writing and journals that track, if not word for word, so closely as to be mistaken for a draft of her final essays.

Here again, she traces much of my thought--though I do think that it may be more possible to know oneself than Ms. Oates intimates.  On the other hand, I may still be in the throes of self-delusion.