Contemporary reaction to Revolutionary Roadwas overwhelmingly positive–raves for Yates’s eye and ear. The few qualms reviewers had reveal more about the uniqueness of Yates’s work than the praise. Some wondered how an author could seem to be sympathetic to his characters at first and then sentence them to such torments, and whether this wasn’t unintentional or unfair, some sort of artistic flaw. Others questioned his use of weak characters to test larger philosophical and social issues, implying that the book’s criticism of the culture was dependent on how heroic Frank and April are (conveniently ignoring the fact that most Americans–and decidedly most of the book’s readers–are probably closer to Frank and April than to any typical fictional hero). But overall the reception was gushy. America had a new major writer. Lasciar andare le cose per il loro verso e prenderle come veniva il più serenamente possibile era stato in un certo senso, il criterio costante della sua vita. Impossibile negare che il ruolo di chi sa perdere con disinvoltura avesse sempre avuto su di lui uno strano fascino. That night she had told Martha, and she could still see the look on Martha’s face. “Oh, Grace, you’re not – surely you’re not serious. I mean, I thought he was more or less of a joke – you can’t really mean you want to –” Well, there is the artistry to admire, and that is considerable. Yates's stories may not be a bundle of laughs (though there is a grim humour in "Builders", the final story here, about a cab driver who hires a young writer to turn his experiences into fiction), but he can describe a world, and the state of mind it creates, so economically, so persuasively, that you stay your hand even as it reaches for the full bottle of paracetamol or opened razor. A man in a TB ward drafts a letter to his daughter, whom he has just discovered is now pregnant (and refusing to name the father): "Your old dad may not be good for much any more but he does know a thing or two about life and especially one important thing, and that is" - and here Yates steps in to say: "That was as far as the letter went." It is an excruciating moment, a joke and not a joke at all; also one would have expected nothing else. The reader recoils even before these scenes begin, like horror movie viewers realizing the victim is going to open the wrong door. In fact, part of the drama–as in Dostoevsky–is anticipating just how terrible the humiliation will be, and how (or if) the characters will survive it.

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates | Goodreads Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates | Goodreads

Yates and Sam Lawrence didn’t hurry another book into print. Buoyed by his new celebrity, and drinking now that he was alone, he accepted John Frankenheimer’s offer to write a screenplay of William Styron’s Lie Down in Darknessand moved to Hollywood, following unwisely in the footsteps of his idol Fitzgerald. After completing the script (it was never shot), in 1963 he made an even stranger leap, signing on with the Kennedy administration to write speeches for then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. After JFK’s assassination, Yates took a teaching job at the University of Iowa, finding time to co-author the script of the World War II movieThe Bridge at Remagen, released in 1969. The B.A.R. Man is about nostalgia for the comradeship and adventures of youth. John Fallon is a succesful clerk in a big insurance company, but he is not happy in his childless mariage. His despair is drowned in alcohol and pathetic attempts to recapture the thrills of his past years carrying a Browning Automatic Rifle in the war. Throughout the decade, his health wasn’t good. He was gaunt, and because of the bout with TB he had difficulty breathing. He also smoked like a stove, drank hard and steadily, and frequently didn’t eat. Apparently he was hospitalized during this period for a nervous breakdown–perhaps several times, according to a comment made in a later interview: “I’ve been in and out of bughouses, yes.” The Best of Everything. The battle of the gender. This explores masculinity and femininity and their different desires and wants. The male comes off as unready for marriage and perhaps immature in his priorities, the female, ready to cut her social ties and place her future husband first. But is she settling? Or is this simply an age old battle of differences.On this album, Tikaram ceased collaborating with Rod Argent and Peter Van Hooke and produced the album entirely by herself. The album did not chart in the UK. [1]

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness - Wikipedia

Still, critics elsewhere conceded that as a novelist, technically Yates had few peers and continued to be true to his own particular vision. But, as with his other books, Young Hearts Cryingdidn’t sell, despite being a Book-of-the-Month Club Alternate Selection. Though he’d published eight challenging and original books to considerable praise,Esquirewas right when it said, “Richard Yates is one of America’s least famous great writers.”Their paths diverge, but Prentice remembers Bernie and his metaphor. In the end, Prentice has tried to write his great tragic novel and failed. His marriage has foundered as well. The close of the story is introspective–a true rarity for a Yates character, and maybe the effect of using the first person. Mr. Yates writes of these characters with sympathy so clear-hearted that it often feels like nostalgia for his own youth, and yet he is also thoroughly uncompromising in revealing their capacity for self-delusion, their bewilderment in the face of failure. Fun With a Stranger Ms Snell is a teacher who's forgotten how to connect with students. And in fact possibly feels more of an animosity towards them. Wrong job.

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness - Penguin Books UK

He was unable to speak over the noise. Miss Price was on her feet, furious. “It’s a perfectly natural mistake!” she was saying. “There’s no reason for any of you to be so rude. Go on, Vincent, and please excuse this very silly interruption.” The laughter subsided, but the class continued to shake their heads derisively from side to side. It hadn’t, of course, been a perfectly natural mistake at all; for one thing it proved that he was a hopeless dope, and for another it proved that he was lying. One feels that his people never have a chance: odd things may happen to them, but they are never odd enough, never tragic and awful enough, to lead to a change of vision. . . . A sad, gray, deathly world–dreams without substance–aging without maturity: this is Yates’s world, and it is a disturbing one. What Wilson doesn’t understand is that the reason it is impossible to dismiss Yates’s characters–the reason they bother and touch us so much–is his refusal to present them as typically sympathetic and strong. Like us, they’re unheroic, rightfully ashamed of their worst selves and hoping to do better. Their failures are tragic because they’re not unexpected. Like Chekhov, Yates has evenmoreaffection for his characters because of their faults, and like Chekhov, he’s willing to admit that life rarely works out the way we planned. The question of what the reader is supposed to do with his or her sympathy and empathy is complex in Revolutionary Road, and also in the later work. As Greek tragedy turns around its characters’ fatal flaws, so does Yates’s fiction. The depth and breadth of characterization is much fuller, of course, but the end result is the same: the characters earn their downfall, seem fated to it. It’s this merciless limning of his people that makes Yates unique and the process of reading his work so affecting (some would say terrifying). We recognize the disappointments and miscalculations his characters suffer from our own less-than-heroic lives. And Yates refuses to spoon-feed us the usual redeeming, life-affirming plot twist that makes everything better. No comedy dilutes the humiliation. When it’s time to face the worst, there’s no evasion whatsoever, no softening of the blows.

About this book

Frank has that very American belief in the possible and in his own untapped potential, and April is all too aware of his pretensions. She tries to go along with him in seeing themselves as somehow special or better than their neighbors the Campbells, but it’s difficult for her. She knows him too well. A fanatical martinet of Jody Rolled the Bones, a consumptive husband and his unfaithful wife of No Pain Whatsoever, an incompetent and cowardly clerk of A Glutton for Punishment…