Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.

Tricia Ford: Hello, listeners. This is Tricia Ford, an editor here at Audible, and I'm thrilled to be here with Joyce Carol Oates, one of our greatest living American writers. To offer some general background, Joyce Carol Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published more than 58 novels, a number of plays, novellas, volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She's won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize. Today we're here to talk about her new novel, Fox. Welcome, Joyce. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Joyce Carol Oates: Thank you.

TF: Now, Fox has been described as a hypnotic tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim versus predator, illuminating the dark corners of the human psyche. How would you describe the book?

JCO: It's such a complex novel, and it took quite a while for me to figure out the plot. Most writers live with the work for so long, it's so intimate, it's like describing your own life. Well, it's a very intimate look at a community centering around a prestigious prep school. It's modeled after a very famous prep school in the Princeton area. I live in Princeton. So, I've been in the academic world for many decades, and I feel very, very attached to it emotionally. But also critically, sort of seeing where there are blind spots.

The novel, I think I could say very generally, it's about a community in which there is a predator, and how does a community respond to a very toxic predator in their midst? And, of course, some people deny it, and some people are actually enabling it, and some people perceive it. There're different reactions.

TF: And it is told from different points of view. I must say that the audio version is just brilliantly produced with these multiple voices, full cast. Obviously, I guess you'd call him the main character, Francis Fox, who is the predator you spoke of, [it] goes right into his point of view, and that is quite disturbing. And it goes beyond him. I just wanted to get your sense of what was it like embodying these different characters? Which one was the hardest? Which one was the easiest for you?

JCO: Oh, well, I don't think that's anything that writers necessarily think about. It's sort of the presentation of a story. I thought I would write it as if it's a movie. The first two chapters have a setting, sort of contiguous. First, we're in the setting, which is an area where people walk and sort of a hiking trail, and there's a marshy area. We're in that setting, and then a vehicle drives into it. If it were a movie, we would see the vehicle driving along a roadway and it parks, and a woman gets out and a little dog gets out. So, we're seeing that. And then the camera moves at the person and a little dog. And then we're with a little dog for a while, and then we're with the owner of the dog.

"I do like to explore the complexities of ethical behavior and human behavior."

Then the second chapter is in almost the same setting. In the third chapter, too. Not literally the same place, but it's about half a mile away. In the sky there are these turkey buzzards. So, that's how I got into the novel, imagining it as a place. And then people come into the place, and then there's a discovery of a dismembered body in the third chapter. So, the reader is placed in a position of, almost, like, ferreting out a mystery. You know, “What's the reason for the vultures? Why are we in this place?” That was exciting for me to imagine because I hadn't written a novel from that point of view before.

TF: It is captivating, that beginning. It's such a strong sense of place.

JCO: You don't really know why you're in that place until it's sort of explained. In the second chapter, there's a lot of talk about Mr. Fox, and of course the title of the novel is Fox, but he doesn't really appear in the novel until later, and suddenly we're in his classroom and we're with him, and so he comes into the picture. I don't at all begin with Fox. He's sort of like the specimen who's going to be examined, but I don't begin with him at all.

TF: The main character in the beginning is almost that setting that you spoke of.

JCO: Yeah, in the very beginning, the first chapter, a woman who's a headmistress—she's quite a respected person in the community—she discovers what seems to be a human body part, but she doesn't report it. So, I'm creating a character probably a little like myself, who's so wary and sort of cautious, doesn't want to leap to a conclusion, doesn't want to cause an alarm. She probably should report that, but she doesn't. She sort of runs away and goes home. I wanted to show the complicated personalities of people who are very good, decent, intelligent people in the community. She's a headmistress, she has a PhD, and yet she doesn't maybe behave quite as ethically as she could. Not to say that she's a bad person. But I do like to explore the complexities of ethical behavior and human behavior.

TF: Part of that is the complicity that's talked about and that is experienced at this academy that's in a very remote part of New Jersey. You mention New Jersey so much throughout the book. And once Francis Fox comes along, he seems a little, you know, a slight sense of disdain for the wonderful state of New Jersey.

JCO: Oh, yes, of course.

TF: Why is that?

JCO: Well, he would rather be at a more prestigious school in New England. In another way, he is very grateful to have any job because he's gotten in trouble in most of the positions he's had. He's been made to resign, but he gets in a position where the schools will recommend him and just want to get rid of him.

TF: Do you think his brand of charm is unique, or do you think there's a lot of people like him in this world?

JCO: Well, I think the only successful con men, or pedophiles, or maybe serial killers, too, they're people who are able to pretend. Sometimes they're very friendly. Ted Bundy was very charming. He was handsome and attractive. And there are many politicians who are very charismatic, but they often lie. It's almost as if people know they're lying, but they don't care because they're so infatuated with them.

America has a complicated history with confidence men. Because the 19th Century, for instance, was a great century of all kinds of confidence games. And some businesses are so shady, they're kind of shading into something like a confidence game, selling people products that are really not what they're advertised, or selling services, even sometimes health services. So a lot of pretense in life, American life.

And so Francis Fox is just always concerned with his image. He dresses like a preppy. He wears a certain kind of clothing. He has his hair cut in a certain way. He knows how to flatter people. He's very flattering. He finds out people's weaknesses and predilections, and he plays up to that, which is, of course, what politicians do.

TF: I don't want to give too much away, but in terms of the characters who kind of figure him out and take care of him eventually, they come from a different class. That has to be intentional.

JCO: Yeah, the detective would definitely be from a different class. He's sort of, in a way, working class. The detective, Zwender, is from that area. He lives there. That's where he was born and went to school. He does feel some resentment for a different class of people who have moved into South Jersey. Most of them are much more affluent than he is. Yes, definitely. That was one of the elements of the novel that interested me.

A prep school, like any school, has all sorts of employees. The faculty is very visible, and the administration, but then there are all these other people on the staff. There are groundskeepers, there are custodians, people who work in the cafeteria. There are all sorts of people who are keeping the institution going, but they're kind of invisible. So, one of my characters is a young man who's helping his father, who is a custodian at the school. And he wears work clothes, and he's sort of invisible, like the students wouldn't even notice him because he's got this uniform of a certain class. But at one point in the novel, near the end, the girl looks at him and thinks, "Well, he's wearing work clothes. He's a custodian. He's used to cleaning up messes that we make." And I thought that was speaking for a lot of people.

TF: Yeah, he was one of my favorite characters. That was Demetrius, right?

JCO: Oh, yes, thank you. I did want him to be a very, very positive character. He's sort of a real Christian, a really, really good, self-sacrificing person who helps people. He took care of his mother when his mother was dying of cancer. His father didn't want to be involved, and his older brother didn't want to be involved, but he kind of gave up his life at one point for his mother. And then he's so helpful to his father, and then he's helpful to a girl who needs help. So, he was very sympathetic.

TF: Well, in many ways, this story could be considered genre-bending. It's definitely a dark thriller with a strong mystery. What were you hoping to explore in this genre?

JCO: Well, it is a police procedural. It is a mystery. It's sort of like a detective novel in the sense that somebody has been murdered and somebody obviously is the murderer. And so the detective is trying to figure that out. But there's so many complications because the people who've been victimized by Fox will not admit it. The girl victims will not incriminate him. So, it's a very difficult situation where you have a number of people who just will not tell the truth, or maybe they don't want to tell the truth, or they can't remember it, or they've been traumatized. So, it's about victimhood of serial predators and pedophiles and the hold that they can have on their victims. If other people don't protect them, like adults, they really are quite vulnerable.

"America has a complicated history with confidence men."

TF: There are some good people in there, like you mentioned. And again, without wanting to give too much away, there is somewhat of a satisfying ending.

JCO: Yes, I wanted Demetrius to be rewarded, so at the end of the novel, he has a job that will pay him a little more, and he may be sent to a community college. And then Detective Zwender gets promoted to the police chief. It's all very ironic because, in a way, the official release of, well, I don't want to give away the novel, but in the community, nobody really knows what happens. Even the detective doesn't really know what happens because you have to read the final chapter of the novel to know what really happened.

Now, I think that's true in life, that a certain news is released and people believe it, they accept it. It could be just within a family you're told something. And then 20 years later you find out, “Oh, there was something else that was going on that nobody knew about.”

TF: That is what makes it, I don't want to say oddly, but entertaining, and like I said, satisfying in a way for such a heavy topic.

JCO: I wanted it to be funny. I meant the humor, like dark humor.

TF: That definitely comes through. And it's a slow burn, so you have to wait for it, be patient, stay with it, enjoy the beautiful prose as you're listening, because it is brilliantly written, and beautiful. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk today, Joyce. And listeners, you can find Fox by Joyce Carol Oates on Audible now.

JCO: Thank you so much. Very nice talking with you.