On June 16th, The Hogarth Press published The Frenzy: Stories, Joyce Carol Oates’s 49th collection. The same day, “America’s foremost woman of letters” posted and reposted 40 odd times on X, commenting on, among other things, Dick Cavett, tiger lilies, cats, and, repeatedly, police brutality. A volume of exceptional short stories, The Frenzy has already received appreciative reviews, yet Oates’s tweets will likely garner more attention. With nearly 200,000 followers, the celebrated author commands a social media audience that usually exceeds her reading public.
Stephen King (6.7 million), Margaret Atwood (1.7 million), Gary Shteyngart (487,000), and a few other novelists have more followers on X—bots included—than Oates. Yet Oates has a far greater talent for going viral on the increasingly conservative social media site. In 2022, critics condemned Oates for her infamous tweet asserting the unrecognized value of “young white male writers… who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own ‘privilege.’” Three years later, she basked in online acclaim for a brutal takedown of Elon Musk, the first of several critiques.
“So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates,” wrote Oates. “The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’” Offering scrollers and twitterers a lively mixture of snark, wit, and empathy, Oates consistently attracts an enviable number of views.
