The Lost Landscape

To my brother Fred Oates

And in memory of those who have gone away

The Lost Landscape
is not meant to be a complete memoir of my life—not even my life as a writer. It is, for me at least, something more precious, as it is almost indefinable: an accounting of the ways in which my life (as a writer, but not solely as a writer) was shaped in early childhood, adolescence, and a little beyond. Its focus is upon the “landscape” of our earliest, and most essential lives, but it is also upon an actual rural landscape, in western New York State north of Buffalo, out of which not only much of the materials of my writing life have sprung but also the very wish to write.

Because it is essential to
The Lost Landscape
, “District School #7, Niagara County, New York” has been reprinted from
The Faith of a Writer
(2003), in a slightly different form. In a more substantially altered form, an updated “Visions of Detroit” ([
Woman
]
Writer
, 1988) has been reprinted under the title “Detroit: Lost City 1962–1968.” Other chapters have been revised significantly from memoirist pieces published in a variety of magazines, journals, and books, often in response to an editor's invitation.

To the editors of these publications, heartfelt thanks are due:

“Mommy & Me” originally appeared, in a shorter form, in
Civilization
, February 1997.

“Happy Chicken” originally appeared in
Conjunctions 61: A Menagerie
, 2013.

“Discovering
Alice
” originally appeared in
AARP Magazine
, 2014.

“Piper Cub” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in
Rhapsody
, November 2013.

“After Black Rock” originally appeared in the
New Yorker
, June 2013.

“Sunday Drive” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in
Traditional Home
, March 1995.

“They All Just Went Away” originally appeared in a substantially different form in the
New Yorker
, October 1995. Reprinted in
The Best American Essays 1996
and in
The Best American Essays of the 20th Century
. This essay incorporates “Transgressions,” originally published in the
New York Times Magazine
, October 1995.

“Where Has God Gone” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in
Southwest Review
, Summer 1995, and was reprinted in
Communion
edited by David Rosenberg, 1995 under the title “And God Saw That It Was Good.”

“An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in
Between Friends
edited by Mickey Pearlman, 1994.

“Start Your Own Business!” originally appeared in substantially different forms in the
New Yorker
under the title “Bound,” April 2003; and in
Conjunctions
63 (2014) under the title “The Childhood of the Reader,” which will be reprinted in
Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses 2016.

“The Lost Sister: An Elegy” originally appeared in
Narrative
.

“Nighthawk: Recollections of a Lost Time” appeared originally in
Yale Review
, 2001, and in
Conjunctions
, 2014; reprinted, in a substantially different form, in
Narrative
, 2015.

“Story into Film: ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?' and
Smooth Talk
”appeared originally in the
New York Times
, March 23, 1986.

Detroit: Lost City 1962–1968” appeared originally, in a shorter form, in
(Woman) Writer
, 1988.

“Photo Shoot: West Eleventh Street, New York City, March 6, 1970” originally appeared, in a shorter form, under the title “Nostalgia” in
Vogue
, April 2006; reprinted in
Port
, 2014.

“Food Mysteries” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in
Antaeus
1991; reprinted in
Not By Bread Alone
edited by Daniel Halpern, 1992.

“Facts, Visions, Mysteries: My Father Frederic Oates, November 1988” originally appeared, in a substantially different form, in the
New York Times Magazine
, March 1989; reprinted in
I've Always Meant to Tell You
, edited by Constance Warloe, 1996.

“A Letter to My Mother Carolina Oates on Her Seventy-eighth Birthday, November 8, 1994” originally appeared, in a slightly different version, in the
New York Times Magazine
, 1995; reprinted in this version in
I've Always Meant to Tell You
edited by Constance Warloe and in
The Norton Anthology of Autobiography
edited by Jay Parini, 1999.

“My Mother's Quilts” originally appeared, in a slightly shorter form, in
What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-One Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most
, edited by Elizabeth Benedict, 2013.