So I can’t really put any of her writing in the full context of her career, and I don’t think we’ll know the extent of her achievements until the next generation or two has had time to sort through her work. Yet even if she’d written nothing but What I Lived For , published in 1994, is the Oates novel I always recommend to people, and it’s worth the minor trouble of tracking it down. The main character, Corky Corcoran, is a 43-year-old real estate hustler from the imaginary Union City in New York. Over the years, Corky has managed to grow rich and well-connected, a city council member who knows all the most powerful local business and political leaders. He perpetually overextends himself, however, with multiple women and risky business deals, and lives in constant crisis. For 600 pages we keep pace with him through the long weekend of his final collapse. Oates views his out-of-control energies with a mixture of admiration, amusement, sympathy, distaste, and horror, and then finally with a clear-eyed sense of tragic acceptance.