The Collected Stories of Richard Yates
Short Fiction from the author of Revolutionary Road
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A literary event of the highest order, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates brings together Yates's peerless short fiction in a single volume for the first time.
Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate, and technically accomplished writers of America's postwar generation, and his work has inspired such diverse talents as Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, André Dubus, Robert Stone, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. This collection, as powerful as Yate's beloved Revolutionary Road, contains the stories of his classic works Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (a book The New York Times Book Review hailed as "the New York equivalent of Dubliners") and Liars in Love; it also features nine new stories, seven of which have never been published.
Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers, the grim humor that attends life on a tuberculosis ward, or the moments of terrified peace experienced by American soldiers in World War II, Yates examines every frayed corner of the American dream. His stories, as empathetic as they are unforgiving, are like no others in our nation's literature. Published with a moving introduction by the novelist Richard Russo, this collection will stand as its author's final masterpiece.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A tinted review in adult Forecasts indicates a book that we believe is of paramount interest to our readers but that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RICHARD YATESRichard Yates. Holt, $28 (496p) Bitterness, loneliness and lack of fulfillment are the central themes of this grim posthumous collection. Yates (1926 1992) was the consummate writer's writer; his fiction influenced a generation of young admirers, including Andre Dubus and Richard Ford, but he has yet to achieve the name recognition of many of his disciples. This collection of 27 stories, seven previously unpublished, but most reprints from two long-out-of-print collections issued in 1962 and 1981, may change that. Yates is a gifted storyteller, particularly skilled at making emotional pain and sadness starkly real as his characters manage to live below even their own meager expectations. Compulsive failure Walter Henderson, the protagonist of "A Glutton for Punishment," plans his life as a series of expected defeats. In "The Canal" two veterans play at macho one-upmanship with phony war stories as their wives snicker with disdain. "A Clinical Romance" tells of the bickering and despair of men confined to a tuberculosis ward in a gloomy Virginia hospital. "Evening on the C te d'Azur" is an achingly sad tale of lonely navy wives with too much time on their hands and too little self-esteem. Pitch-perfect in their gloomy detachment, these stories about the fractured relationships of lovers, friends, parents and children, and husbands and wives ring all too true. Yates's powerful dialogue and narrative make it entirely clear that no matter what, people are going to be only as happy as they have already made up their minds to be.
