Something you can say about Joyce Carol Oates: As a writer, she's like a trolley car. If you miss her new book, there will always be another one along soon -- sometimes two.

Lately, the irrepressible Oates has been releasing two titles a year, as she did last year with a novel, "The Gravedigger's Daughter," and a collection of her journals.

The board of the National Book Critics Circle decided to wave the white flag of surrender at her earlier this month by nominating both for its prizes in fiction and autobiography.

The members were simply following the lead of book columnist Michael Dirda, who surrendered in the face of her resolute determination in his Dec. 20 New York Review of Books capitulation.

Critics nip at the writer because she's too prolific, he believes. Oates' short-story output alone is staggering: 22 collections in 44 years. Novels, plays, poems, essays and children's books flow without letup. At last count, the novels number 38 and her nonfiction titles, 14.

"Surely so many books can't be that good, that deeply felt, truly authentic?" Dirda asks rhetorically. In thrall to her output, he thinks they are, labeling her a "major American novelist."

Reviewers, including me, I suppose, simply don't know JCO and appreciate her because we haven't read enough of her work, Dirda believes, overlooking the fact that we might need to sleep from time to time.

Don't judge her on the basis of, say, six titles, or 10, or even 24. Keep reading and her talent will emerge eventually.

That approach is like the one a relative of mine used to find the Brazil nut piece in the box of chocolates, taking bites out of all the other pieces until the right candy was found.

And, following Dirda's reasoning further, book reviews should hire an Oates' specialist to immerse his- or herself into this huge oeuvre and read her yearly multiple releases.

One mustn't fall behind, or end up like Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory, overwhelmed by the endless flow of "product."

Like so many essayists writing today, Dirda states his generalities without specifics. What critics, for example, reject Oates simply because she's a word machine? Why not cite a review or comment with attribution to prove his vague sense of opposition to Oates?

Take me, for instance. I've read what I consider my share of JCO and no longer feel the need to continue. While her settings, characters, plots and language have long settled into a familiar groove, my disinterest in her work comes from not from her production figures, but her sloppiness, a condition that might be attributed to her immense output.

There's need for revision and rewriting, yes, even editing, in Oates, but if you're churning out the prose, maybe you don't take the time.

For example, I was reading an advance copy of her latest short-story collection, "Wild Nights: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway," to be published by Ecco Press in April.

Like a lot of people in the writing game, Oates is familiar with Emily Dickinson, a mysterious figure who has piqued the curiosity of many.

Billy Collins, the poet of the commonplace, tried to invest the hermetic woman with a sexiness in his smart-aleck poem, "Undressing Emily Dickinson:"

So I could plainly hear her inhale

when I undid the very top

hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, ...

Oates takes the image to her usual bizarre extreme by imagining a man raping the poet:

"He was pulling up the nightgown, tearing the flimsy cotton fabric, how like this prissy woman to wear cotton undergarments beneath her nightgown!"

The joke here is that Emily is a 21st-century robot, programmed with her characteristics, that the would-be rapist's wife has purchased to keep her company, since her husband is the usual brutish Oates male.

As in so many of her works, the story's concept is clever, even original, but the mundane execution disappoints.

Joyce Carol Oates is the Niagara Falls of writers. That's not a bad thing, but even a wonder of nature needs to be given a rest from time to time to appreciate it all the more.