The Assassins: A Book of Hours is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates first published in 1975 by Vanguard Press. A Fawcett Publications paperback edition was issued in 1976.Johnson, 1994 pp. 218-222: Selected Bibliography, Primary WorksCreighton, 1979 pp. 161-169: Selected Bibliography
Plot "The Assassins is the story of Andrew Petrie, a wealthy right-wing political figure with a reputation for ruthless honesty. More, it is the story of his surviving brothers, Hugh and Stephen, and of his young widow Yvonne. Members of a large, prominent family, they are nevertheless isolated, each alone with his own enemy, his own assassin. In a state of frozen panic, they realize that Andrew's death has robbed them of the object of their hatred, love, religious compassion—all-consuming emotions that had previously cushioned them against the nightmare of their own emptiness. Their conflicting interpretations of reality—as well as the baffling, tragic events that overtake them—constitute a revelation of the contemporary world, both political and private."Creighton, 1979 pp. 94-106: Synopsis and analysis
Reception Contemporary reaction to the novel varied widely. Newsweeks Peter S. Prescott deemed The Assassins "a very bad, nearly incoherent novel." Critic Leo Robson at The New Yorker characterizes The Assassins as an "unfairly derided mystic-politico-psycho-sexual thriller."Robson, 2020
Retrospective appraisal Critic G. F. Waller calls Oates's dystopian vision of America an inflection point in her fiction and "her most forbidding novel to date."Waller, 1979 p. 167 Waller summarizes its thesis:
Biographer and literary critic Joanne V. Creighton reports that The Assassins stands in sharp contrast to Oates's previous novel Do With Me As You Will (1973) with respect to "spirit": The Assassins "is a grim book offering no hope for the tormented incompleteness of its characters."Creighton, 1979 p. 94Johnson, 1987 p. 15: "The Assassins, centering on the powerful Petrie family, showed both the idealism and corruption of contemporary American politics." In a novel where "critical facts are obscured," the novel tends to "defy both understanding and credibility.Creighton, 1979 p. 95 Crieghton continues:
Creighton chastens Oates for numerous passages that exhibit "a lamentable verbosity," offering the following as evidence:
Acknowledging the difficulty inherent in conveying in prose "the inchoate emotional experiences of humans," Crieghton registered doubt that Oates's "profuse writing" proves a useful literary approach.Creighton, 1979 p. 149
Footnotes
Sources Creighton, Joanne V.. 1979. Joyce Carol Oates. Twayne Publishers, New York. Warren G. French, editor. Johnson, Greg. 1987. Understanding Joyce Carol Oates. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina. Johnson, Greg. 1994. Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne's studies in short fiction; no. 57. Twayne Publishers, New York. Oates, Joyce Carol. 1973. The Assassins. 1975. Vanguard Press, New York. Robson, Leo. 2020. "The Unruly Genius of Joyce Carol Oates." The New Yorker, June 29, 2020. June 29, 2 020https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-unruly-genius-of-joyce-carol-oates Accessed 10 February 2025. Wagner, Linda W. 1979. Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Waller, G. F. 1979. "Through Obsession to Transcendence: The Laurentian Mode of Oates's Recent Fiction." in Critical Essays on Joyce Carol Oates. 1979. pp. 161–173. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts.