Joyce Carol Oates turned 87 this year, and her current book is evidence that she isn’t slowing down. She has written 58 novels, and Fox: A Novel is a culmination of her daring, her brutal honesty, and her need (I think is the word I’m looking for here) to expose pedophilia in a way I appreciated only about halfway into reading the book. Fox is also a whodunnit murder mystery, so it kept me guessing to the end.
Frances Fox is not evil. Calling him evil misses the point of his narcissism, his perverted need for admiration, his utter inability to empathize with his pre-pubescent victims. Using B. F. Skinner as a model, he earns the love and respect of his victims, the teachers at the fancy prep school, and the women he calls “soulmates” to deflect any hint that he might be an abuser of innocent girls. But boy does he fool EVERYONE around him through obsequious behavior. Decrying Nabokov’s Lolita as pornography, Fox reminds this reader of Lady Macbeth who protests too much. And he is a worse Humbert Humbert, so much so that Nabokov would blush reading about Fox’s exploits.
If you’re looking for a hero in Fox, good luck. Fox is repulsive. The women who fawn over him are blinded to his abuse of the children they are bound by law to protect. The policemen who investigate (sorry, no spoilers from me about what they’re investigating) must be the heroes, you say. Nope! And the parents of the victims are oblivious to their children’s SCREAMS for help.
Oates reminds me, with every page, that pedophiles often evade detection because those around them refuse to entertain that someone they (think) they know could be a pedophile: “Why, __________ couldn’t have done those horrible things to children. Not him/her/they!” Not unlike catholic priests who are shuffled from church to church to evade prosecution, not unlike Boy Scouts of America leaders who betray the trust of young, impressionable boys, not unlike a famous college football sports’ team coach who ignored the abuse of a fellow coach for decades, Frances Fox walks among the oblivious masses destroying the lives of countless innocents. According to Catholic Vote, as of September 15, 2025, a $246 million dollar settlement for abuse survivors was reached between the New York diocese and clergy. And a complete list of settlements throughout the catholic community would fill up several pages, which would be unnecessary in this short blog post, so I think you get the picture. As clueless characters in Fox know of the abuse and choose to ignore it, a certain beloved football coach followed suit, even as “John Doe 150 [an abuse survivor at a certain beloved college] said in a 2014 deposition that he informed [beloved coach] the day after a 1976 incident that Sandusky [abused him]” (Moyer). Even here I cannot write the words that show what this trusted pedophile inflicted on this innocent young man. And as of 2018, the beloved college has paid around $113 million dollars in settlements to abuse victims going as far back as 1971. And finally, Attorneys at Law Pfau, Cochran, Vertetis, and Amala in Seattle, Washington claim that the Boys Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy in 2020 to “manage the influx of sexual abuse lawsuits,” which amount to around $2.46 billion dollars.
But who returns these victims’ innocence? How much does that cost? Oates shows the reader the harrowing consequences of pedophilia, but she can’t answer those unanswerable questions.
The St. Johns River State College Library has many of Oates’ novels, poetry, and short story collections. Check out the trailer for "Smooth Talk: Charming Predator" based on Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" The short story and film are obvious precursors to Fox: A Novel.