What I Lived For

The stunning, classic portrait of a powerful man's downward spiral to moral ruin

Jerome "Corky" Corcorn. A money-juggling wheeler dealer, rising politico, popular man's man, and successful womanizer. It is a Memorial Day weekend, and we are about to live with him, breathe with him, and sweat with him in a nonstop marathon of mounting desperation as he tries to keep his financial empire from unraveling, his love life from shredding, and his rebellious daughter from destroying both herself and him. Seldom in fiction has a man been brought so vividly to life in all his strength and weakness, hunger and ambition, carnality and corruption. Rarely has the complex web of American society been revealed so rivetingly. And never has one of today's supreme writers, Joyce Carol Oates, written a bolder and better novel than this mesmerizing masterpiece.

The stunning, classic portrait of a powerful man’s downward spiral to moral ruin

Jerome “Corky” Corcoran is a money-juggling wheeler-dealer, rising politico, popular man’s man, and unscrupulous womanizer. Over the course of Memorial Day weekend in 1992, Corky’s illusions—and the life he has built for himself—are about to be shattered as he tries to keep his financial empire from unraveling, his love life from shredding, and himself from succumbing to his violent attraction to his own young stepdaughter.

Originally published in 1994, What I Lived For is a portrait of a man in all his desperate, grasping weakness; his hunger, ambition, and corruption. And through this portrayal, Joyce Carol Oates—one of our most mesmerizing writers—reveals the intricate web of American society in all its tragic and flawed complexity.

“A man on a tightrope that takes you to the edge...ambitious, audacious, masterly, and unforgettable.” - Chicago Tribune

"In What I Lived For Joyce Carol Oates has written a vivid and continuous nightmare: a savage dissection of our national myths of manhood and success, a bitter portrait of our futile effort to flee the weight of the past, a cold-eyed look at our loss of community and family, a shriek at the monsters men and women have become to each other and a revelation of our desolate inner lives. What I Lived For is an American "Inferno."" - New York Times

"A dazzling novel, brilliant both stylistically and in its depiction of a man running desperately for his life." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)