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Title: The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates, Richard Russo ISBN: 0-312-42081-1 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 03 May, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.93 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Yates was criminally overlooked.
Comment: It's perfectly understandable, I guess. His novels and stories move through detail after detail -- always thoroughly entertaining & bittersweet, but also muted. BIG MOMENTS don't scream at you; they happen & are absorbed into the fabric of each characters' lives -- simultaneously changing them and leaving them with every flaw perfectly in tact. His message is an unromantic one: pain doesn't create character; pain creates pain. Very few writers handle darkness as surely and poetically as Yates.
In every story & novel, Yates wastes no time getting to the matter at hand. This creates the impression that his will be an A-->B storyline, but Yates' detours are completely rewarding and earned. Rarely does anything feel forced or contrived in a Yates story. People act as people we know really act. Yates' dialogue is, in my mind, the best of any American post-war fiction writer -- it manages to be loose & realistic without relying on an onslaught of ums... ahs... or wells ...
Many of Yates' stories, as well as the novels "Revolutionary Road" and "A Good School" are nearly perfect, but it's quiet perfection, so he remains unfairly overlooked, while lesser writers get the gold star.
Rating: 5
Summary: AT LONG LAST!
Comment: At long last, a publisher has collected the brilliant stories of Richard Yates in one volume. The fans of Yates' work include Richard Ford, Stewart O'Nan, Michael Chabon, Kurt Vonnegut, and a host of other notable writers, and one would think that with this caliber of support, all of Yates' books would be back in print. Not so. Five novels remain criminally out of print. I can only hope that publishers will realize the mistake they've made and usher those books back into print soon.
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RICHARD YATES includes his two amazing collections, ELEVEN KINDS OF LONELINESS and LIARS IN LOVE, plus nine previously uncollected stories. Among writers, ELEVEN KINDS OF LONELINESS is considered a classic, right up there with Hemingway's IN OUR TIME, and rightfully so. Yates' eye is so precise, so accurate, it'll give you chills. With a single gesture, Yates can bring a character alive, and you'll find yourself cringing for these poor souls as often as you're laughing at how they're conducting themselves. They're human, plain and simple, and Yates, the consummate artist, gives us an unsentimental and, in turn, honest peek into their lives.
In the book's opening story, "Doctor Jack-o'-Lantern," Vincent Sabella arrives for his first day at a new school. The best way to introduce a reader to Richard Yates is to introduce you to his prose. Here's a passage from the first few pages of that story: "Ordinarily, the fact of someone's coming from New York might have held a certain prestige, for to most of the children the city was an awesome, adult place that swallowed up their fathers every day, and which they themselves were permitted to visit only rarely, in their best clothes, as a treat. But anyone could see at a glance that Vincent Sabella had nothing whatever to do with skyscrapers. Even if you could ignore his tangled black hair and gray skin, his clothes would have given him away: absurdly new corduroys, absurdly old sneakers and a yellow sweatshirt, much too small, with the shredded remains of a Mickey Mouse design stamped on its chest. Clearly, he was from the part of New York that you had to pass through on the train to Grand Central -- the part where people hung bedding over their windowsills and leaned out on it all day in a trance of boredom, and where you got vistas of straight, deep streets, one after another, all alike in the clutter of their sidewalks and all swarming with gray boys at play in some desperate kind of ball game."
The day Mr. Yates died we lost one of our greatest writers. It pains me to think that his books, long out of print, might disappear as well. Buy this one. It's a gem.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Dark Side of the 1950's
Comment: When soldiers came home from the war, they wanted everything to be normal, and that's just what they got. But buried underneath all the normalcy was human nature, roiling. This is America at its uncomfortable peak.
My favorite stories are about soldiers and veterans--especially the ones taking place at TB wards in VA hospitals. The men who survived the Depression and fought the war are reduced to waiting and coughing in crowded wards, watched over by nurses and doctors. You could almost say, if you went a little too far, that these stories capture the uniformity and sterility of the '50's in a nutshell.
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Title: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates ISBN: 0375708448 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Bailey ISBN: 0312287216 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Easter Parade : A Novel by Richard Yates ISBN: 0312278284 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 04 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Good School : A Novel by Richard Yates ISBN: 0312420390 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 07 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: A Special Providence : A Novel by Richard Yates ISBN: 0312420404 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 03 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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