Joyce Carol Oates, the 82-year-old winner of the National Book Award, the National Humanities Medal, and five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, did something on Twitter Saturday night that may not have technically violated the terms of service, but certainly caused many to hurl their phones in horror.
The respected author of them, We Were the Mulvaneys, and The Gravedigger’s Daughter, who maintained a professorship at Princeton University for over 35 years, took a walk in the woods without proper shoes and ended up with what looks like a series of heirloom tomatoes growing from her foot. She shared a snap on Twitter and, well, to stay culturally aware at this moment, it has been determined that you need to see it, too.
After careful consideration we have decided not to embed the picture here, but it can be viewed by clicking this link.
Welcome back. Sorry about that.
In a later update, Oates said she had gone to see a doctor and received a tetanus shot. Though pain and itching had subsided, it remained unclear if the problem was due to a “venomous weed or an insect.”
Sunday morning she noted with seeming amusement that her late husband Charlie Gross was an avid hiker who always stressed proper footwear. “He would be scandalized,” she said about this latest development.
Oates’s foot-selfie (felfie?) is a true nightmare, but it did bring out some quality Twitter comedy. Here’s what you can find just by dipping your toe.
Oates has been known to fire off what could safely be called unusual tweets in the past, like wondering if there was anything joyous about ISIS, displaying a keyboard almost as mangled as her foot, and tsk-tsk-ing a big game hunter which was actually Steven Spielberg on the set of Jurassic Park, making it really unclear if she was joking or not. Oates’s tweets have already been analyzed as literature.
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