SOURCE: Loeb, Monica. “La spirale: Joyce Carol Oates's French Connection.” Journal of the Short Story in English, no. 35 (autumn 2000): 85-98.

In the following essay, Loeb compares Oates's “The Spiral” to Gustave Flaubert's outline for an unpublished novel, La

“Pour vivre, je ne dis pas heureux …, mais tranquille, il faut se créer dehors de l'éxistence visible … une autre existence interne et inaccessible.”

Gustave Flaubert

“We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded off with a sleep.”

William Shakespeare

“The Spiral,” a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, was first published in the 1969 winter issue of Shenandoah. With its focus on a man in crisis, it easily fits in with her series of reimagined stories where men and women find themselves facing various life crises that result in breakdowns.

Initially we may be lured into believing that this is a love...