.Search By FlairsWho Is Lyle Stevik?It's a mystery that baffled law enforcement for years. In 2001, a man was found dead in a motel room. He said his name was Lyle Stevik. As of 05/08/18, he has been identified.
What's This Sub All About?This sub is now a restricted read-only sub until we can figure out our next steps. Where Do I Start?our Google doc. It's the perfect primer to this unsolved mystery. Please Respect PrivacyUnder NO circumstances will we allow any posting about the Name/Photos of the man known to us as Lyle Stevik. Please respect the family at this time. Further ReadingHere are some Lyle-related links from around the web. I never read the book, maybe I should.
Recent Story Collections by Joyce Carol Oates. Daddy was one who thought you should die. Happen for the first time because they won't remember us.
The following is from in 1987.Lyle Stevick is a superfluous man. He runs a perpetually faltering used-furniture store in a rough section of the city. The family lives in part of a rented duplex near the U.S. Steel and Swale Cyanamid factories. Lyle's wife, Hannah, is always taking to her bed with obscure ailments.The trouble did not start with Lyle. His own father, a prominent local businessman, deserted Lyle's mother to take up with a flashy showgirl. He fathered another son, Felix, before shooting himself in a hospital bed.Lyle would not deny it.
One night he goes so far as to hang a rope from the basement rafter of his store; he then sips Early Times and stares at the rope's shadow, 'vague as a smudge on the damp stone.' '.For in Lyle, Ms. Oates has given failure a habitation and a name. We feel the punishing sameness of his routines; we sit with him through the beers and shots that blur them for a few hours. His decline begins when a McCarthyite zealot denounces him as a Communist sympathizer because he keeps books in his shop and knows where the Soviet Union is. Lyle's morale never fully recovers from the police interrogation. And later, when a pretty client rejects his attentions, he all but collapses.However, the stage machinery creaks audibly when she has Lyle find salvation through the building of a backyard bomb shelter.
We watch this confused, embittered man scurrying about like the ant in the old parable. We also know that there was a 'real' Lyle Stevick fairly nearby in Seaside, Oregon. The police called his wife and confirmed that he wasn't missing. But maybe John Doe and Lyle had crossed paths at some point, and John Doe 'borrowed' Lyle's identity?If John Doe had been travelling up the west coast by car or bus, it seems pretty likely that he could have been in Seaside at some point. Seaside and Amanda Park are both close to US-101N, less than 150 miles apart.Edit to add - I saw that info here:Police Report part 2 PDF - page 9 (74):. It's an odd one.
Identifying with the character and what he went through would suggest familiarity with the book - it's unlikely he would misspell the name if this was the case. However, anything's possible here it seems.I wonder who this book appeals to. A particular age group or social class? Maybe it was on a reading list at college.
I always through JCO appealed more to women, but maybe I'm wrong - I'm not overly familiar with her as an author. Wonder if she's aware of this case.
A member of the WebSleuths forum contacted the person who runs Joyce Carol Oates' official website - someone who has an in-depth knowledge of her work. He said this:I've heard of this, but I can't make a relevant connection.I looked at the wikipedia page — 'Lyle Stevick' in the JCO novel does not commit suicide, as the wikipedia page suggests. The girl protagonist in the novel attempts suicide by pills, but no major character in the novel dies. The novel is set in the 50s during the McCarthy era, and Lyle Stevick is the father of the family and he is rather obsessed with building a bomb shelter in case of nuclear attack. He does think about suicide.It's possible You Must Remember This was on a college reading list, but less likely than other more well-known JCO novels.With so few facts to go on, it's hard not to grasp at any possible connection. I would say, however, that the JCO connection is pretty tenuous.
What strikes me, actually, is the proximity of the 9/11 attacks. I'm sure others have commented on that.
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