The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

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      JOYCE CAROL OATES

      

       The Accursed

DEDICATION

      for my husband and first reader, Charlie Gross;

      and for my dear friends Elaine Pagels and James Cone

EPIGRAPH

      From an obscure little village we have become the capital of America.

      —ASHBEL GREEN, SPEAKING OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, 1783

      All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons.

      —ST. AUGUSTINE

      CONTENTS

Dedication

Epigraph

Author’s Note

Map

Prologue

Part One - DEMON BRIDEGROOM

Ash Wednesday Eve, 1905

Postscript: “Ash Wednesday Eve, 1905”

Narcissus

The Spectral Daughter

Angel Trumpet; Or, “Mr. Mayte of Virginia”

Author’s Note: Princeton Snobbery

The Unspeakable I

The Burning Girl

Author’s Note: The Historian’s Confession

The Spectral Wife

       The Demon Bridegroom

       Part Two - THE CURSE INCARNATE

       The Duel

       Postscript: The Historian’s Dilemma

       The Unspeakable II

       The Cruel Husband

       The Search Cont’d

       October 1905

       “God’s Creation as Viewed from the Evolutionary Hypothesis”

       The Phantom Lovers

       The Turquoise-Marbled Book

       The Bog Kingdom

       Postscript: Archaeopteryx

       The Curse Incarnate

       Part Three - “THE BRAIN, WITHIN ITS GROOVE . . .”

       “Voices”

       Bluestocking Temptress

       The Glass Owl

       “Ratiocination Our Salvation”

       The Ochre-Runnered Sleigh

       “Snake Frenzy”

       Postscript: Nature’s Burden

       “Defeat at Charleston”

       “My Precious Darling . . .”

       “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass . . .”

       Dr. Schuyler Skaats Wheeler’s Novelty Machine

       Quatre Face

       “Angel Trumpet” Elucidated

       “Armageddon”

       Part Four - THE CURSE EXORCISED

       Cold Spring

       21 May 1906

       Lieutenant Bayard by Night

       Postscript: On the Matter of the “Unspeakable” at Princeton

       “Here Dwells Happiness”

       The Nordic Soul

       Terra Incognita I