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A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates
Blake Bailey's A Tragic Honesty is the first biography of acclaimed American novelist and story writer Richard Yates
Celebrated in his prime, forgotten in his final years, only to be championed anew by our greatest contemporary authors, Richard Yates has always exposed readers to the unsettling hypocrisies of our modern age. Classic novels such as Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade are incomparable chronicles of the quiet and not-so-quiet desperation of the American middle-class. Lonely housewives, addled businessmen, desperate career-girls and fearful boys and soldiers, Yates's America was a panorama of high living, self-doubt and self-deception. And in the tradition of other great realistic writers of his time (Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Cheever and Updike), Yates's fictional world mirrored his own. A manic-depressive alcoholic and unapologetic gentleman, his life was a hornets' nest of childhood ghosts, the horrors of war, money woes, and ebullient cocktailed evenings in New York, Hollywood, and the Riviera.
A Tragic Honesty is a masterful evocation of a man who in many ways embodied the struggles of the Great American Writer in the latter half of the twentieth century. Fame and reward followed by heartbreak and obscurity, Richard Yates here stands for what the writer must sacrifice for his craft, the devil's bargain of artistry for happiness, praise for sanity.
Celebrated in his prime, forgotten in his final years, only to be championed anew by our greatest contemporary authors, Richard Yates has always exposed readers to the unsettling hypocrisies of our modern age. Classic novels such as Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade are incomparable chronicles of the quiet and not-so-quiet desperation of the American middle-class. Lonely housewives, addled businessmen, desperate career-girls and fearful boys and soldiers, Yates's America was a panorama of high living, self-doubt and self-deception. And in the tradition of other great realistic writers of his time (Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Cheever and Updike), Yates's fictional world mirrored his own. A manic-depressive alcoholic and unapologetic gentleman, his life was a hornets' nest of childhood ghosts, the horrors of war, money woes, and ebullient cocktailed evenings in New York, Hollywood, and the Riviera.
A Tragic Honesty is a masterful evocation of a man who in many ways embodied the struggles of the Great American Writer in the latter half of the twentieth century. Fame and reward followed by heartbreak and obscurity, Richard Yates here stands for what the writer must sacrifice for his craft, the devil's bargain of artistry for happiness, praise for sanity.
688 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2003
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1358 people want to read
About the author
Blake Bailey
23 books88 followersBlake Bailey is the author of biographies of Philip Roth, John Cheever, Richard Yates, and Charles Jackson. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians, and a finalist for the Pulitzer and James Tait Black Prizes. His 2014 book, The Splendid Things We Planned, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
May 18, 2009
Richard Yates was a self-loathing, bipolar, impotent, alcoholic hot mess who could write like nobody's business. I think I'm in love.
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August 19, 2021I always knew Richard Yates was something of a tragic figure -- he'd have to be, given the content of his novels, and this biography largely confirms it. Now I'm not entirely on board with the biographer's technique of extrapolating details of his life from his novels, and using his novels as a means of constructing his life story, even if Yates drew heavily from his own experience. But that's a secondary quibble. The storytelling itself is great, and who knew that not one but two of modern TV's greatest showrunners (David Milch and Larry David) would make appearances?
It's also -- if you're any kind of writer -- unspeakably depressing. It confirms the loneliness and futility of the writer's craft, even if you're a Yates-level genius. You see him through as he writes one great work after another, and fail again and again and again in every possible way. In his family life. In his finances. In his love life. In his relationships -- even the most mundane -- with others. Until his eventual lonely death in Tuscaloosa.
When I saw my father -- who was also tweedy and boozy and charismatic and frequently self-destructive, and only a bit younger than Yates, a proud member of the Anxious Generation -- for the last time, I put him to bed in the reeking second-rate nursing facility where he was supposed to be recovering and where I somehow knew he'd spend his last few days, which I somehow knew were imminent, I got properly beer-drunk with my brother in my dad's apartment out on the edge of the cornfields, fed his cat, and really felt mortality in my bones for the first time in my life. I looked at the vodka bottle on the kitchen counter and the four pictures of his four progeny on the shelf. And that's all I pictured when I read A Tragic Honesty.
It's also -- if you're any kind of writer -- unspeakably depressing. It confirms the loneliness and futility of the writer's craft, even if you're a Yates-level genius. You see him through as he writes one great work after another, and fail again and again and again in every possible way. In his family life. In his finances. In his love life. In his relationships -- even the most mundane -- with others. Until his eventual lonely death in Tuscaloosa.
When I saw my father -- who was also tweedy and boozy and charismatic and frequently self-destructive, and only a bit younger than Yates, a proud member of the Anxious Generation -- for the last time, I put him to bed in the reeking second-rate nursing facility where he was supposed to be recovering and where I somehow knew he'd spend his last few days, which I somehow knew were imminent, I got properly beer-drunk with my brother in my dad's apartment out on the edge of the cornfields, fed his cat, and really felt mortality in my bones for the first time in my life. I looked at the vodka bottle on the kitchen counter and the four pictures of his four progeny on the shelf. And that's all I pictured when I read A Tragic Honesty.
February 24, 2009
In retrospect this may not have been the ideal book to read immediately on the heels of Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr. Long about page 300 I found myself wondering if there was ever such a thing as a happy biography of a writer, one that doesn't go gonads-deep into ego, depression, bitterness, etc etc. Of course, there's no drama in being well-adjusted (or so I'm told). I was struck reading this life story alongside a new article in Poets and Writers that basically laments the absence of Keith Richardsonian excess among writers of the post-McInerney/Ellis generation. Why do we glamorize the wreckage? Is there not a method of creativity that can be seen as positive, invigorating, enlivening? Or are we so accustomed to the trainwreck that the smooth operator seems mechanical? I guess we'll wait for the recently announced Updike bio to answer those questions.
None of these concerns should detract from Bailey's well-researched and written bio of Richard Yates, who twenty years after his death is finally enjoying the acclaim that he spent his last thirty years bitterly resenting he'd been denied. Yates remains a fascinating if somewhat repellant character if only bc the slow march to oblivion that basically occupied him from 1961 when Revolutionary Road first appeared to his death in 1992 (in Alabama no less) would seem to preclude any writing at all. And yet Yates was productive, with sterling successes such as The Easter Parade and competent if not epochal stuff like Young Hearts Crying. Unlike a lot of bios, Bailey does talk about the art, so in between descriptions of alcoholic seizures, emphysematic hacking, nuthouse stays, and endless cocklobbing (debilitated in later years by the impotence inflicted by the aforeskinmentioned), there are fine descriptions of the priestly revising and exactitude for which Yates lovers love him. In the end, what comes through is how emotionally stunted men of RY's generation were---a thesis one could glean from Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, of course, but nevertheless sad and frustrating. That said, it's also clear that Yates was a devoted if distant father, and the best quotes of the book come from his two oldest daughters, who talk honestly about their struggles. (One daughter, Monica, dated Larry David, which is how Yates came to be depicted as Alton Bennes on Seinfeld). There's also testimony aplenty here about how inspiring a teacher Yates was, which is good to see.
In the hands of someone who cared less about his subject, the life of RY could've been sensationalized. Then again, the ideal for this audience won't be the Kitty Kelley sort. They'll be fans of RR and Eleven Kinds, and they'll probably read this shuddering at how capricious literary reputation is and how cruel not the Bitch Goddess of Success but her mythology is to our authors.
None of these concerns should detract from Bailey's well-researched and written bio of Richard Yates, who twenty years after his death is finally enjoying the acclaim that he spent his last thirty years bitterly resenting he'd been denied. Yates remains a fascinating if somewhat repellant character if only bc the slow march to oblivion that basically occupied him from 1961 when Revolutionary Road first appeared to his death in 1992 (in Alabama no less) would seem to preclude any writing at all. And yet Yates was productive, with sterling successes such as The Easter Parade and competent if not epochal stuff like Young Hearts Crying. Unlike a lot of bios, Bailey does talk about the art, so in between descriptions of alcoholic seizures, emphysematic hacking, nuthouse stays, and endless cocklobbing (debilitated in later years by the impotence inflicted by the aforeskinmentioned), there are fine descriptions of the priestly revising and exactitude for which Yates lovers love him. In the end, what comes through is how emotionally stunted men of RY's generation were---a thesis one could glean from Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, of course, but nevertheless sad and frustrating. That said, it's also clear that Yates was a devoted if distant father, and the best quotes of the book come from his two oldest daughters, who talk honestly about their struggles. (One daughter, Monica, dated Larry David, which is how Yates came to be depicted as Alton Bennes on Seinfeld). There's also testimony aplenty here about how inspiring a teacher Yates was, which is good to see.
In the hands of someone who cared less about his subject, the life of RY could've been sensationalized. Then again, the ideal for this audience won't be the Kitty Kelley sort. They'll be fans of RR and Eleven Kinds, and they'll probably read this shuddering at how capricious literary reputation is and how cruel not the Bitch Goddess of Success but her mythology is to our authors.
January 21, 2019
Blake Bailey has brought Richard Yates back from the grave (where he isn't actually - his ashes are in his daughter's Brooklyn apartment's basement).
What an astonishing achievement this book is. With piety, observingly, tenderly Bailey lets Yates life unfold in front of our eyes. He is right there, when you open “A Tragic Honesty” - having a drink with you, sweet talking yet another young admirer, revising a passage from his manuscript for the 100th time, eating yoghurt cos “it goes down easy”. Sometimes you get so close to him, that it is uncomfortable to read. Especially knowing how private Yates was in some regards.
As a biographer, Bailey has found the perfect balance - staying neutral but yet caring to his subject. The book is so detailed but not once in its 600 pages failed it to keep my interest. Yates was an alcoholic suffering from bipolar disorder. He was often misogynistic. But he had an underlying gentle nature, he was so vulnerable that it was heartbreaking.
There is a passage in the book where a friend of Yates says that “Dick grew up in a time, when men couldn’t be sensitive”. This contradiction is there, throughout the book. The denial about being ill, hitting rock bottom, being lonely (Yates and one of his numerous drinking buddies called it “the loneliness shit”) yet being very “manly” about it. But great art requires sensitivity and there is no doubt Yates was one of the great ones. He gave his health to his art, his relationships, even his sanity.
I cried like a baby when reading about the last weeks of his life. I will keep pestering everyone, always, to read his work, like I have been doing for years. He will be sitting in the corner of my heart, quietly, with a drink and a cigarette in hand, writing the perfect English sentence.
What an astonishing achievement this book is. With piety, observingly, tenderly Bailey lets Yates life unfold in front of our eyes. He is right there, when you open “A Tragic Honesty” - having a drink with you, sweet talking yet another young admirer, revising a passage from his manuscript for the 100th time, eating yoghurt cos “it goes down easy”. Sometimes you get so close to him, that it is uncomfortable to read. Especially knowing how private Yates was in some regards.
As a biographer, Bailey has found the perfect balance - staying neutral but yet caring to his subject. The book is so detailed but not once in its 600 pages failed it to keep my interest. Yates was an alcoholic suffering from bipolar disorder. He was often misogynistic. But he had an underlying gentle nature, he was so vulnerable that it was heartbreaking.
There is a passage in the book where a friend of Yates says that “Dick grew up in a time, when men couldn’t be sensitive”. This contradiction is there, throughout the book. The denial about being ill, hitting rock bottom, being lonely (Yates and one of his numerous drinking buddies called it “the loneliness shit”) yet being very “manly” about it. But great art requires sensitivity and there is no doubt Yates was one of the great ones. He gave his health to his art, his relationships, even his sanity.
I cried like a baby when reading about the last weeks of his life. I will keep pestering everyone, always, to read his work, like I have been doing for years. He will be sitting in the corner of my heart, quietly, with a drink and a cigarette in hand, writing the perfect English sentence.
July 5, 2008
Oh, what a good and awful book. It was like reading one of Yates's own novels, so sweet and good and misguided and horrible and sad and inevitable. Purrr. Made me re-pick up Revolutionary Road. Which is even fucking stunning-er on a second go-round, if that's believable. Lord, what a darling.
April 19, 2023
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It seems almost impossible to me that Richard Yates lived to be sixty-six years old. Without his enabling friends he would never have made it alive so long. Of course, also because of them, he remained as mentally and physically sick as ever in the throes of alcohol and drug addiction. His personal relationships all suffered because of these addictions and for most, if not all of his life, he blamed his crazy behavior and mental condition on his other health problems and never the drugs of choice he was using. His coughing fits were legendary and extremely intrusive by default. I loved that he always wanted to live an opulent life like F. Scott Fitzgerald and jump into the water fountain with his suit on and his pockets crammed with paper bills. The fact that he died almost penniless and deep in debt did not surprise me as I figured even if he got the fame and money in the end he would have blown it all anyway.
Often I have argued that the personalities of writers such as David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Thompson, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Bernhard, and Gordon Lish are what I am so enamored with in my reading of them. The fact that Richard Yates was loved by so many, even though he was such a wreck of a man, says something to his charm and intellect holding court with a crowd or individual admirer.
Richard Yates based his work almost verbatim on what he perceived happened, or should have happened in his life and relationships. Yates also had a brilliant memory for song lyrics, and it is quite possible he remembered voices and their words in context to the same degree of accuracy. People usually don't talk the way most writers have them speak. Sound recordings show the actual way people say what they mean which is usually around-the-bush and paused, stuttering and clamoring for words, and revising along the way through the conversation.
A reviewer wrote that if one were to read this six hundred page monster and not want to read his novel Revolutionary Road again, or even for the first time, then that person might just as well be dead. Or something to that effect. I have not read it.
It seems almost impossible to me that Richard Yates lived to be sixty-six years old. Without his enabling friends he would never have made it alive so long. Of course, also because of them, he remained as mentally and physically sick as ever in the throes of alcohol and drug addiction. His personal relationships all suffered because of these addictions and for most, if not all of his life, he blamed his crazy behavior and mental condition on his other health problems and never the drugs of choice he was using. His coughing fits were legendary and extremely intrusive by default. I loved that he always wanted to live an opulent life like F. Scott Fitzgerald and jump into the water fountain with his suit on and his pockets crammed with paper bills. The fact that he died almost penniless and deep in debt did not surprise me as I figured even if he got the fame and money in the end he would have blown it all anyway.
Often I have argued that the personalities of writers such as David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Thompson, J.D. Salinger, Thomas Bernhard, and Gordon Lish are what I am so enamored with in my reading of them. The fact that Richard Yates was loved by so many, even though he was such a wreck of a man, says something to his charm and intellect holding court with a crowd or individual admirer.
Richard Yates based his work almost verbatim on what he perceived happened, or should have happened in his life and relationships. Yates also had a brilliant memory for song lyrics, and it is quite possible he remembered voices and their words in context to the same degree of accuracy. People usually don't talk the way most writers have them speak. Sound recordings show the actual way people say what they mean which is usually around-the-bush and paused, stuttering and clamoring for words, and revising along the way through the conversation.
A reviewer wrote that if one were to read this six hundred page monster and not want to read his novel Revolutionary Road again, or even for the first time, then that person might just as well be dead. Or something to that effect. I have not read it.
December 5, 2020
I always had a suspicion from reading Richard Yates's books that his life must have been sad, but I was not prepared for the heartbreaking experience that it was reading this book. I never liked reading biographies, but this time I made an exception because, for the life of me, I could not understand why this brilliant writer hadn't managed to succeed in his lifetime. Blake Bailey's account is beautifully written and researched. One cannot help but feel lucky to be a reader of Yates - in my opinion the best and most forgotten writer of 20th century America -, and especially grateful to be sharing a wonderful "literary handshake" with Blake Bailey. A must-read for any fan of Richard Yates.
February 20, 2017
“A Tragic Honesty” started off slow, but about a third of the way in, once Richard Yates sets out on his writing career, the biography soared with detailed accounts of his life that were insightful, incredibly sad, and sometimes funny.
Richard Yates wrote nine books, most notably the American classic “Revolutionary Road,” but also the well received novel “Easter Parade” and the exceptional short story collection, “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.”
Yates suffered for his work until the end. Even though “Revolutionary Road” is now considered a classic, sales were poor upon its initial release. Yates often subsisted on advances for his next book, and when the money ran out, as it often did, he was forced to take jobs teaching or writing PR copy, screenplays, or speeches. Through his life, which consisted of two marriages and several other romances, Yates was consistently consuming vast amounts of alcohol and dealing with frequent mental health issues.
His life had some amazing twists and turns. At the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 1962, the drunken Yates climbed onto the roof and loudly proclaimed he was the Messiah. He was led away in a straightjacket. A year later, the novelist William Styron was asked to recommend a speechwriter for US Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Styron recommended Yates for the job, and when Styron called Yates about the position, Yates replied, “I don’t even know if I like the f*cking Kennedys.” Yates got the job, and four months in, after the security clearance research revealed his recent hospitalization, Bobby Kennedy personally questioned Yates about his mental issues but agreed to keep him on as a writer.
Yates also spent time in Los Angeles writing screenplays for Roger Corman and John Frankenheimer. Yates bounced around the country throughout his life; Iowa, Kansas, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Alabama, all in attempts to pay his child support and rent while carving out time to write his next novel. He was also physically ill throughout his life. Yates was a chronic smoker - and throughout the biography, his fellow writers and family recalled his constant coughing fits and how his lips were continually dry from the combination of ant-depressants and alcohol.
The biography is filled with anecdotes about his unruly behavior while drinking and pursuing women, but there are also stories about how desperate his friends were to get him the help he sorely needed. At one point, friends tried to admit Yates into a mental facility. After the administrator realized Yates had no money for the stay, he claimed they had no beds open and wouldn’t accept the patient. Exasperated, the friend pushed a wheelchair with the sedated Yates down the hall and, when nobody was looking, abandoned the writer in a janitor’s closet.
The research that went into this biography is amazing. Much of Yates' life made its way into his writings, and the biographer notes which characters were inspired by family members and friends and often gets their reaction to the realization they had been written about.
As he grew older, Yates doubled down on his writing. He lived in squalor above a Boston pub and focused on cranking out novels and short stories. I loved learning about Yates and the biography has inspired me to re-read his books.
Richard Yates wrote nine books, most notably the American classic “Revolutionary Road,” but also the well received novel “Easter Parade” and the exceptional short story collection, “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.”
Yates suffered for his work until the end. Even though “Revolutionary Road” is now considered a classic, sales were poor upon its initial release. Yates often subsisted on advances for his next book, and when the money ran out, as it often did, he was forced to take jobs teaching or writing PR copy, screenplays, or speeches. Through his life, which consisted of two marriages and several other romances, Yates was consistently consuming vast amounts of alcohol and dealing with frequent mental health issues.
His life had some amazing twists and turns. At the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 1962, the drunken Yates climbed onto the roof and loudly proclaimed he was the Messiah. He was led away in a straightjacket. A year later, the novelist William Styron was asked to recommend a speechwriter for US Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Styron recommended Yates for the job, and when Styron called Yates about the position, Yates replied, “I don’t even know if I like the f*cking Kennedys.” Yates got the job, and four months in, after the security clearance research revealed his recent hospitalization, Bobby Kennedy personally questioned Yates about his mental issues but agreed to keep him on as a writer.
Yates also spent time in Los Angeles writing screenplays for Roger Corman and John Frankenheimer. Yates bounced around the country throughout his life; Iowa, Kansas, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Alabama, all in attempts to pay his child support and rent while carving out time to write his next novel. He was also physically ill throughout his life. Yates was a chronic smoker - and throughout the biography, his fellow writers and family recalled his constant coughing fits and how his lips were continually dry from the combination of ant-depressants and alcohol.
The biography is filled with anecdotes about his unruly behavior while drinking and pursuing women, but there are also stories about how desperate his friends were to get him the help he sorely needed. At one point, friends tried to admit Yates into a mental facility. After the administrator realized Yates had no money for the stay, he claimed they had no beds open and wouldn’t accept the patient. Exasperated, the friend pushed a wheelchair with the sedated Yates down the hall and, when nobody was looking, abandoned the writer in a janitor’s closet.
The research that went into this biography is amazing. Much of Yates' life made its way into his writings, and the biographer notes which characters were inspired by family members and friends and often gets their reaction to the realization they had been written about.
As he grew older, Yates doubled down on his writing. He lived in squalor above a Boston pub and focused on cranking out novels and short stories. I loved learning about Yates and the biography has inspired me to re-read his books.
June 28, 2007
Partying on holidays is pretty crucial for me. Christmas night after spending all day with the unchosen family. Another birthday without a chosen family. A fifth on Decoration Day. That's why it was completely moronic that I began reading this biography of beloved author Richard Yates at 9:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve. "Oh, I'll just read a few pages of whatever I'm into at the time--like I always do before going out--to, you know, get me in that proper state of misanthrope-y and self-loathing, or are they the same thing, I dunno. Whatever, no big deal." All I could do was lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, feeling like a depressed 13-year-old. Heavy, heavy stuff. But, yeah, I eventually went out that night.
August 20, 2010
I thought Richard Yates's novels were depressing and gut-wrenching enough, but the story of his life is more so. I fell in love with Richard Yates's writing when I read Revolutionary Road. I proclaimed him my favorite author when I continued on to his other novels. Reading the story of his proud, stubborn, brilliant man made me love him and his commitment to his art even more. Blake Bailey engaged me as a reader the way most biographers can't. Yates came to life and I watched the horror show of his life. Definitely, if you're interested in learning more about the life of this great author, pick up this excellent biography.
August 15, 2018
What a beautiful/horrible, talented/forced, productive/self-destructive, generous/misanthropic, family man/loner, liberal/bigoted guy Yates was. Yes, a simple man. After reading this accessible biography, you realize Yate's books were almost straight up autobiography with some fun house mirror melds of his family. His novels were wonderfully bleak. His life was much bleaker and ...wonderful? Hmm, still chewing on that. Fascinating read on an author that honestly never got his due.
August 14, 2016
Overall, A Tragic Honesty is an engrossing page-turner. However, although the book is occasionally warm, it's too often frigid. Bailey seems overly flip in exposing the man's failures--literary, marital, social, mental, sexual. He tells us he was impotent, drunken, filthy, raging, but without the tenderness of a biographer who cares for his subject. He admits that he suffered from manic-depressive disorder, but steps in frequently to inform the reader of his personal disappointment with Yates' behavior. The reader knows bad behavior when he sees it. What he wants is greater understanding.
The perspective is often judgmental, referring to the elderly Yates as a "wretch" with "derelict" furniture. It's true that many who knew Yates disliked his many lightless and dirty apartments, but when Baily himself chimes in with his own disgust here and there, it's too much.
Yates wasn't a great housekeeper? He misbehaved at that Christmas party? So what. He was a great artist who never quit, and this fact ought to inspire awe, as well as tender love and concern.
The perspective is often judgmental, referring to the elderly Yates as a "wretch" with "derelict" furniture. It's true that many who knew Yates disliked his many lightless and dirty apartments, but when Baily himself chimes in with his own disgust here and there, it's too much.
Yates wasn't a great housekeeper? He misbehaved at that Christmas party? So what. He was a great artist who never quit, and this fact ought to inspire awe, as well as tender love and concern.
May 30, 2011
As a lover of Yates, I read this book in less than a week. There are few things sadder than a great writer who remains underrated through the majority of his career, especially when he so desperately desires recognition. The last chapter indeed brought tears to my eyes. This is a must read for any true Yates fan. I cannot wait to read Blake Bailey's next biography.
July 30, 2018
Blake Bailey writes some really, really, really good literary biographies, and this is perhaps his very best. Richard Yates was a literary near-great (his REVOLUTIONARY ROAD narrowly lost the National Book Award to Walker Percy's THE MOVIE GOER, for example). I agree with the consensus of reviewers here that Blake Bailey's literary bio of Richard Yates is top-notch in all departments. If you're at all interested in learning about Yates's life and literary times, by all means get this book! It has a high "can't-put-it-down" quality and will teach you more than you can imagine. Or at least, that's what it did for me. Perhaps this book will restore some luster to Yates up-and-down career, too.
January 23, 2020
Blake Bailey does an absolutely great job with this absorbing chronicle of the life of Richard Yates, a writer so fully committed to his craft that he was simultaneously bolstered and destroyed by it. Yates was a fascinating hot mess of a man, author of a few classic books like Revolutionary Road, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and The Easter Parade, and essentially good at heart, but plagued with addictions, afflicted with Bipolar disorder, and haunted by a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing (his mother was also an alcoholic mess, with a tremendous talent for self-delusion—and that self-delusion is perhaps the most recurrent theme in Yates' body of work). Yates wrestled with his demons and put them all on the page with vision and gravitas—and an often excruciating honesty.
Bailey is a fine writer in his own right. In particular, he wrings out a surprising amount of dark humor when discussing the final years of Yates' life, where Yates' self-destructive habits occasionally reached operatic levels of slapstick (a committed chain-smoker and major klutz, he accidentally set himself on fire at one point).
As a bonus, Bailey does an excellent job of analyzing and assessing Yates' individual novels and stories—even when I disagree with his final assessments I always appreciate the thought behind them (I actually loved Young Hearts Crying but I totally understand its shortcomings, as pointed out by Bailey). I look forward to reading Bailey's own memoir, and his Cheever bio as well (after I read a bit more of Cheever's oeuvre).
At any rate, this book is a must-read for any Yates devotee. 5 stars.
Bailey is a fine writer in his own right. In particular, he wrings out a surprising amount of dark humor when discussing the final years of Yates' life, where Yates' self-destructive habits occasionally reached operatic levels of slapstick (a committed chain-smoker and major klutz, he accidentally set himself on fire at one point).
As a bonus, Bailey does an excellent job of analyzing and assessing Yates' individual novels and stories—even when I disagree with his final assessments I always appreciate the thought behind them (I actually loved Young Hearts Crying but I totally understand its shortcomings, as pointed out by Bailey). I look forward to reading Bailey's own memoir, and his Cheever bio as well (after I read a bit more of Cheever's oeuvre).
At any rate, this book is a must-read for any Yates devotee. 5 stars.
August 20, 2011
This was my first introduction to both author Blake Bailey, and the subject of this biography, novelist Richard Yates. Thanks to Bailey's thorough and meticulous research, and what appears to be an objective treatment of his material, I now feel I know as much about Robert Yates as there is to know. Maybe it’s putting the cart before the horse, but now I hope to enjoy reading the books written by Yates as much as I enjoyed reading about the story behind their creation.
I’ve always found it intriguing that with many successful creative people there is an apparent correlation between creative genius, pronounced personality flaws, and self-destructive tendencies, which seem to simultaneously foster and threaten their work. Yates is a case study which seriously challenged any budding cause-and-effect theories I may have held regarding writers. Coming from a rather unusual childhood, chain smoking from his teenage years and later in spite of the lung damage he suffered in World War II, a growing dependence on alcohol, and eventually occasional hospitalizations for apparent psychotic breaks – I wonder if any of these contributed to his imaginative abilities, or if his creative abilities were in spite of them. Perhaps there was some underlying heightened sensitivity, or maybe an obsessive drive that led to both the negative attributes and his abilities.
There were two or three sets of photo plates in this book, and they were very critical to me in reaching a complete concept of this man. While reading the text only, I found myself imagining him in a very unfavorable light – an unhealthy hermit, hidden away in a squalid hole, drunk and chain-smoking over his typewriter. But then I would revisit the photographs, see that he was very handsome and well-dressed, and I would again remember why he usually had a woman wanting to be a part of his life. Here again I thank author Bailey for his thoroughness, as he brought to this book the personal recollections of those close to Yates, which were necessary in making these two versions of Yates complementary, not contradictory.
I learned of this book from a delightful interview with Blake Bailey on the radio program KUOW2 Presents on 03/25/2009. Bailey was promoting his new biography of John Cheever, but made several references to this book, the research behind it, and Richard Yates himself.
I’ve always found it intriguing that with many successful creative people there is an apparent correlation between creative genius, pronounced personality flaws, and self-destructive tendencies, which seem to simultaneously foster and threaten their work. Yates is a case study which seriously challenged any budding cause-and-effect theories I may have held regarding writers. Coming from a rather unusual childhood, chain smoking from his teenage years and later in spite of the lung damage he suffered in World War II, a growing dependence on alcohol, and eventually occasional hospitalizations for apparent psychotic breaks – I wonder if any of these contributed to his imaginative abilities, or if his creative abilities were in spite of them. Perhaps there was some underlying heightened sensitivity, or maybe an obsessive drive that led to both the negative attributes and his abilities.
There were two or three sets of photo plates in this book, and they were very critical to me in reaching a complete concept of this man. While reading the text only, I found myself imagining him in a very unfavorable light – an unhealthy hermit, hidden away in a squalid hole, drunk and chain-smoking over his typewriter. But then I would revisit the photographs, see that he was very handsome and well-dressed, and I would again remember why he usually had a woman wanting to be a part of his life. Here again I thank author Bailey for his thoroughness, as he brought to this book the personal recollections of those close to Yates, which were necessary in making these two versions of Yates complementary, not contradictory.
I learned of this book from a delightful interview with Blake Bailey on the radio program KUOW2 Presents on 03/25/2009. Bailey was promoting his new biography of John Cheever, but made several references to this book, the research behind it, and Richard Yates himself.
March 16, 2009
bailey is a great biographer, and i would recommend this to anyone who's read richard yates and is interested in seeing how his life, in many ways, resembled his fiction. however, this story is familiar: the tragic addictions, and massive egoism of a great writer: the broken marriages, and empty promises. it seems american literature can't produce top notch writers without then having them slowly (or quickly and violently in some cases) self-destruct. but as bailey points out toward the end of this heavily researched and even-handedldy composed biography: without his writing dick yates would have been just some random drunk, manic-depressive; yet his art turned his curse into his personal, heroic struggle to write, which ultimately gave his life some sort of meaning - and in the process - enriched ours.
August 7, 2018
Richard Yates has been adding to my reading list. While learning that he was a troubled soul, I also learned his favorite unknown writers and have been tracking down some of the out-of-print books to add to my reading list.
My, my. What a smashed up man. I could just see him tumbling out of The Crossroads making his way to his cluttered little apartment. Flying down south in his oxygen charged smoking bomb of a car to the dreaded Tuscaloosa. But finding that southerners love a drunk troubled writer and they welcomed him up on the front porch with a big ol' tumbler of Rebel Yell.
My, my. What a smashed up man. I could just see him tumbling out of The Crossroads making his way to his cluttered little apartment. Flying down south in his oxygen charged smoking bomb of a car to the dreaded Tuscaloosa. But finding that southerners love a drunk troubled writer and they welcomed him up on the front porch with a big ol' tumbler of Rebel Yell.
May 13, 2019
This thorough and well-researched biography of the cultishly revered American realist writer, Richard Yates (1926-1992), is both moving and often excruciating. Yates was an unapologetic drunk and chain smoker, with consequent life-limiting severe health problems, which made his chosen profession all the more arduous as he often struggled to make a living. Yates suffered frequent and often humiliatingly public mental breakdowns which made work of any sort impossible for months at a time. He was bi-polar, but refused all advice to give up alcohol, which completely wiped out the benefits of the medication, and led to seizures and epilepsy. Following a torrid childhood and two failed marriages combined with the lack of professional recognition he deserved, Yates was destitute and depressed for most of his life, depending on graduate teaching work and often the generosity and sorely tested kindness of friends. He published nine novels, always at a painstakingly slow rate - partly from his ruthless re-writing and self editing, and partly because of his desperate alcoholism.
His first novel, Revolutionary Road, is an acknowled modern masterpiece which was nominated for the National Book Award, but Yeats struggled to replicate its minor success with his subsequent works despite their quality. The bleak and brutal honesty of their largely autobiographical subject matter, was often hard to for the reader to endure, with repetitive themes of failure and the death of hope. However, the actual quality of he writing is so great that all his novels deserve to be read and admired.
His first novel, Revolutionary Road, is an acknowled modern masterpiece which was nominated for the National Book Award, but Yeats struggled to replicate its minor success with his subsequent works despite their quality. The bleak and brutal honesty of their largely autobiographical subject matter, was often hard to for the reader to endure, with repetitive themes of failure and the death of hope. However, the actual quality of he writing is so great that all his novels deserve to be read and admired.
October 29, 2020
Well, that puts to rest any notion I had of becoming a writer, of fiction at least. I can't help to think back to the time I had entered Knausguards world, and on more than one occasion, because of that, I mentioned to several people it was my ambition to be a writer. Including a spurned lover, who in turn right away said, please don't. I still remember that day, and the coffee we had. I didn't quite understand her response then, but now, I do. Damn, that girl knew a lot.
"Writing fiction is the hardest and loneliest profession in the world", according to Yates. Perhaps I could have swallowed this, but currently amidst Dutch downpours during the Covid lockdown, I have experienced brief moments of agonizing loneliness, and I wouldn't wish this feeling upon anyone. It has to be just about the worst thing in the world. And to read about Yates' loneliness, alcoholism, psychotic breakdowns didn't help.
Having read his biography, I'm curious to move on to his works. Themes of middle class mediocrity and meaningless suburban lives are personally relatable. But you know what, give me that life, meaningless and boring, over loneliness.
"Writing fiction is the hardest and loneliest profession in the world", according to Yates. Perhaps I could have swallowed this, but currently amidst Dutch downpours during the Covid lockdown, I have experienced brief moments of agonizing loneliness, and I wouldn't wish this feeling upon anyone. It has to be just about the worst thing in the world. And to read about Yates' loneliness, alcoholism, psychotic breakdowns didn't help.
Having read his biography, I'm curious to move on to his works. Themes of middle class mediocrity and meaningless suburban lives are personally relatable. But you know what, give me that life, meaningless and boring, over loneliness.
February 18, 2017
A comprehensive and judicious account of the troubled life of Richard Yates. The prose is almost as readable and precise as that of the author himself, and Yates comes off very much like one of his own characters: someone whose personal tragedies come about simply because he can't help being who he is.
For anyone who has read the novels and short story collections, it's fascinating to see quite how rigourously autobiographical his fiction was. The names of characters are barely changed; real letters are reproduced word for word. The circumstances under which most of it was written make his life's work even more unlikely and extraordinary.
How about this for a compliment? I enjoyed this book so much that I'm going to start reading John Cheever, just so I can eventually read Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever.
For anyone who has read the novels and short story collections, it's fascinating to see quite how rigourously autobiographical his fiction was. The names of characters are barely changed; real letters are reproduced word for word. The circumstances under which most of it was written make his life's work even more unlikely and extraordinary.
How about this for a compliment? I enjoyed this book so much that I'm going to start reading John Cheever, just so I can eventually read Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever.
March 18, 2020
A depressing yet thoroughgoing bio of one of the greats including every drink and mental episode that sent Yates over the edge. How he had as many friends as he did at the end who cared for him as much as they did is a wonder. Apparently many people knew at the time, though I didn't until reading this that almost all Yates' writing was strongly autobiographical and Bailey points out all the connections and cross references. Paying close attention and reading the books chronologically one could get the bio from the fiction alone. It's a long book but somehow the reading is easier for all that.
July 27, 2020
Excellent book about a very tragic American writer. Very interesting and well written. I plan to read some of his books in the future. I found Richard Yates interesting and very sad!
May 3, 2021
If you have an interest, as I do, in scouring the lives of talented, depressed, witty, alcoholic American writers, do not miss this dirge on Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road.
August 2, 2020
Tragedy is a horrendous thing for any human to endure, and yet we all do endure it to one extent or another: adverse childhood experiences, deaths, career failures, and more. The author of this exhaustive literary biography, Blake Bailey, does not employ the word lightly, neither in the title nor how he uses it throughout the book. Bailey’s subject, novelist Richard Yates, born in 1926, has about as tragic life as one can live, yet Yates uses it to formulate his fiction with a high degree of success, perhaps too well, to listen to some critics, many of whom are put off by his lack of “happy endings” or his “dim view” of humanity.
No matter what, Yates comes by his viewpoint honestly. In short, his parents’ divorce, not to mention he is raised by a mother who probably has a better opinion of herself than her real talents manifest themselves in her life. She believes herself to be an “artist,” and because of her opinion, her two children (Richard and sister Ruth) are always at the bottom of her priorities. On the other hand, she is a highly seductive person, among other things, encouraging her young son to sleep in her bed. On nights that she stays out late or all night, the boy child lies in bed, wondering where she is. And when she comes home and falls in next to him and vomits on his pillow, his rage is stoked in a way that remains with him his entire life.
Some nuggets:
Anyone wanting to get inside the head of one of the greatest American twentieth-century novelists must consider reading this book. It’s that great. My second-hand copy is marked with a “WITHDRAWN” stamp from the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library in Indiana. Guess it wasn’t much of a hit there.
No matter what, Yates comes by his viewpoint honestly. In short, his parents’ divorce, not to mention he is raised by a mother who probably has a better opinion of herself than her real talents manifest themselves in her life. She believes herself to be an “artist,” and because of her opinion, her two children (Richard and sister Ruth) are always at the bottom of her priorities. On the other hand, she is a highly seductive person, among other things, encouraging her young son to sleep in her bed. On nights that she stays out late or all night, the boy child lies in bed, wondering where she is. And when she comes home and falls in next to him and vomits on his pillow, his rage is stoked in a way that remains with him his entire life.
Some nuggets:
“. . . he fixed on his round eyes and plump lips as physiognomic signs of weakness; more to the point, he thought they made him look feminine, ‘bubbly,’ and he had a lifelong horror of being perceived as homosexual” (39). Hm, I wonder why, with the mother thing he has going on.
Friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut writes about war: “People don’t recover from a war. There’s a fatalism that he [Yates] picked up as a soldier. Enlisted men are surprisingly indifferent to survival. Death doesn’t matter that much” (75).
Friend and former student DeWitt Henry notes: “Dick cultivated an anti-intellectual manner, but there was nothing phony or affected about it. In places like the army and tuberculosis wards he was put in contact with unlettered people, who were just as sensitive as anybody else” (78). Yates did his best to capture natural intelligence in characters, and, in life, in his teaching at the Iowa Workshop, he landed hard on any, any arrogant student who put another’s writing down.
Yates discovers what the term “objective correlative” means: “I had never understood what Eliot meant by the curious phrase ‘objective correlative’ until the scene in Gatsby where the almost comically sinister Meyer Wolfsheim, who has just been introduced, displays his cuff links and explain that they are ‘the finest specimens of human molars.’ Get it? Got it. That’s what Eliot meant” (109). He now gets that Wolfsheim, true to his naturalistic name, traffics in human flesh and uses his understanding to find such tokens for his own characters.
“Flaubert offered a further tutorial on the proper use of the ‘objective correlative’—the telling detail that transmits meaning and emotion without laboring the point” (175).
“The only hope of escape was to write a successful novel—the raw material of which, he already sensed, would be the stuff of his own predicament. But he wanted to transcend the merely personal, to avoid the pitfalls of sentiment and self-pity” (175).
Bailey comments on claims of French critic, Jacques Cabau, that Yates is a master: “Not surprisingly the Frenchman was especially pleased by Yates’s insights into the hollowness of American life: ‘Eleven Kinds of Loneliness—a courageous theme in America, where loneliness is a sin, where success is obligatory and happiness is the first duty of every citizen’” (271).
Long-term friend and publisher, Sam Lawrence, says at Yates’s funeral (more of a come-as-you-are wake): “‘He drank too much, he smoked too much, he was accident-prone, he led an itinerant life, but as a writer he was all in place. He wrote the best dialogue since John O’Hara, who also lacked the so-called advantages of Harvard and Yale. And like O’Hara he was a master of realism, totally attuned to the nuances of American behavior and speech. You know what I think he would have said to all this? ‘C’mon, Sam, knock it off. Let’s have a drink’” (607).
Anyone wanting to get inside the head of one of the greatest American twentieth-century novelists must consider reading this book. It’s that great. My second-hand copy is marked with a “WITHDRAWN” stamp from the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library in Indiana. Guess it wasn’t much of a hit there.
April 27, 2020
Dt. Bewertung von HansBlog.de:
Biograf Blake Bailey hatte offenbar perfekten Quellenzugang: Alle Kinder, alle Ex-Frauen, viele Ex-Freundinnen, Schüler, Literaturbetriebler, aber auch Kellnerinnen und Wirte redeten mit dem Biografen, sogar Richard Yates' Psychiater packte aus. Das Archiv stand uneingeschränkt offen.
Kunst und Leben:
Wann möglich – also fast immer -, zieht Blake Bailey Parallelen zwischen Yates' Leben und Kunst. Dabei sollte man Yates' Geschichten möglichst gut kennen, zum Beispiel wissen, welche Figur welche Rolle in welchem Roman spielt. Für Yates' frühe Erwachsenenjahre sind seine Kurzgeschichten sogar noch wichtiger als die Romane.
Bei solchen Fiktion-Leben-Vergleichen setzt Bailey zu genaue Yates-Kenntnisse voraus. So sagt Bailey z.B. über einen Yates-Bekannten (S. 168):
He served as the model for Ralph Morin in Young Hearts Crying
ohne die Romanfigur näher zu erläutern – zu knapp. Am besten lieferte Bailey gleich ein Register aller Yates-Bekannten und ihrer Verwendung in allen Geschichten. Auch sonst erwartet Bailey gelegentlich zu viel kulturgeschichtliche Kenntnisse (z.B. wann Arthur Miller welche Verbindung zu Marilyn Monroe hatte).
Bailey reportiert zuweilen winzige Kleinigkeiten, um dann in einer Fußnote anzumerken, dass es auch anders gewesen sein könnte. Manchmal spekuliert er, das klingt so:
S. 71: perhaps for the purpose of… probably the two marked…
S. 72: except perhaps in… one suspects he was…
Mehr oder weniger interessant:
Richard Yates (1926 – 1992) hat allerdings nur ein mäßig interesssantes Leben, das nicht unbedingt eine 600-Seiten-Biografie rechtfertigt, speziell im Vergleich zu seinen Helden F. Scott Fitzgerald und vor allem Ernest Hemingway. Yates lebte nicht nur weniger interessant, sondern teils verhält sich Yates regelrecht abstoßend, zum Beispiel mit übermäßigem Alkoholkonsum und räudigen Ausfällen schon ab der 200. von 600 Seiten Haupttext ("the steady, all-but-lethal flow of bourbon", S. 225) – gerade, als sein Romanerstling Revolutionary Road/In Zeiten der Aufruhr mit allerlei Vorschusslorbeeren herauskommt.
So versaut sich Yates viele berufliche und private Chancen per Suff, verkommt schon in jungen Jahren zum Ekelpaket und degeneriert über Jahrzehnte und hunderte Biografieseiten zum "cranky old man" (S. 505). Das quält den Biografieleser.
Zu den interessanteren Details gehören
- die vielen angedachten Titel für Yates' erfolgreichen Romanerstling Revolutionary Road/In Zeiten des Aufruhrs
- Frauen wie die erste Ehefrau Sheila und die Agentin Monica McCall, deren Zitate immer ansprechen
- Yates' Zeit als Redenschreiber für Robert F. Kennedy
- Yates' Unterrichtsstil als Schreiblehrer in Iowa
- Yates als Vater
- Reime und Cartoons aus Yates' Feder
Blake Bailey, der Yates' Bücher sehr schätzt, liefert zu jedem Roman erst einen Pressespiegel und dann eine mehrseitige eigene Diskussion mit plausiblen Begründungen. Bailey mag besonders Revolutionary Road/In Zeiten des Aufruhrs. Young Hearts Crying/Eine strahlende Zukunft ist sicher nicht Baileys Lieblingsbuch, doch er schreibt (S. 535):
Is it a bad novel? It is not. Yates didn't write (or publish anyway) bad novels, and a work of fiction is not to be condemned outright on the basis of unlikable characters.
Deswegen verurteile ich auch ja auch diese Biografie nicht.
Stil:
Blake Bailey (*1963) schreibt flüssig und angenehm, aber nie auffällig geschriftstellert oder sonstwie speziell beeindruckend. Bailey erzählt uneitel, ohne Dramatisierung oder Zeitsprünge. Insgesamt habe ich das Buch sehr gern gelesen, fand es sogar trotz des mäßig ansprechenden und teils abstoßenden Yates-Lebens und -Gebarens oft spannend – auch wegen der teils sehr privaten Einblicke. (Aufgrund einiger Kritiken und Stichproben hatte ich angenommen, die Biografie lese sich so ähnlich wie eine Yates-Geschichte. Das stimmt jedoch nicht – nur die inhaltlichen Parallelen zwischen Yates' Leben und Literatur frappieren .)
Die Mehrzahl der Akteure einschließlich Yates nennt Blake Bailey dabei mit dem Nachnamen – nicht unbedingt typisch für angelsächsische Biografen (so schreibt etwa Mary Dearborn über "Ernest" Hemingway, Norman Sherry über "Graham" Greene und Patrick French' über "Vidia" Naipaul). Frauen erscheinen bei Blake Bailey oft mit Vornamen (u.a. "Martha and Yates… Yates and Martha… Martha, Yates and Monica" im nicht paginierten Bildteil). Die Agentin Monica McCall figuriert generell mit Nachname (vielleicht auch, um sie von Yates' Tochter Monica zu unterscheiden, oder weil sie deutlich älter als Yates ist).
Ausstattung:
Ich hatte die englische Taschenbuch-Ausgabe des Picador-Verlags. Letzte Seite Normalpapier: "Printed in Poland by Amazon Fulfillment". U4: "Printed in the United States of America".
Gewicht: ca. 932g
Höhe: ca. 43mm
Gesamttext inkl. Anhang u. Inhaltsverz.: ca. 676 S.*
Nur Lauftext ohne Anhang: ca. 613 S.*
Anhang u. Danksagung gesamt: 60 S.*
Nicht paginierte SW-Fotoseiten: 16 (auf Textdruckpapier)
Vorhanden: Index und nicht-nummerierte, nach Seiten auffindbare Endnoten
Nicht vorhanden: Stammbaum (nicht wichtig), Jahreszahlen oder Alter als lebende Kolumnentitel (jedoch Jahreszahlen in allen Kapitelüberschriften), Literaturverzeichnis (weder Primär- noch Sekundär-)
*inkl. einiger halbleerer Seiten
Das Schriftbild war unsauber, die Buchstaben fransten leicht aus fast wie bei einem fotokopierten Raubdruck aus Saigon. Die Fotos auf Textdruckpapier waren schlecht reproduziert, womöglich von gerasterten Vorlagen neu gerastert reproduziert. Bei den Bildern zeigt Bailey weder Typoskripte oder Handschriftliches noch Titel von Erstausgaben.
Quellenangaben markiert Bailey im Lauftext nicht durch hochgestellte Ziffern – man muss nach hinten in die Endnoten blättern und gucken, ob (anmoderiert durch ein paar Wörter a.d. Lauftext) eine Quellenangabe erscheint. So entsteht eine ruhigeres Schriftbild ohne hochgestellte Ziffern, doch der interessierte Leser weiß nie, ob sich die Suche nach einer Quellenangabe lohnt. Einige wenige Hintergrundanmerkungen bringt Bailey als Fußnoten direkt auf den betreffenden Haupttextseiten.
Freie Assoziationen
Alle Geschichten von Richard Yates, der sein Leben oft 1:1 in Literatur umsetzte
Das Leben der US-Autorin Paula Fox: eigentlich nicht sonderlich interessant, ähnlich wie bei ihrem Landsmann Yates; doch ähnlich wie bei Yates will man auch bei Paula Fox wissen, wie viel selbst Erlebtes in ihren scheinbar sehr lebensnahen Romanen steckt – und darum liest man vielleicht doch ihre Biografie
Die Biografien von F. Scott Fitzgerald und Ernest Hemingway, die ebenfalls in Alkohol und – zumindest Hemingway – psychischen Problemen versanken
Der späte, vollbärtige Yates erinnert physisch an den späten, vollbärtigen David Gates – und damit auch an den späten, vollbärtigen Hemingway
Wegen des Verlagsbetriebs in New York: James Salters Roman Alles, was ist/engl. All that is (2013) und Jay McInerneys Roman Alles ist möglich/engl. Brightness Falls (1992)
Biograf Blake Bailey hatte offenbar perfekten Quellenzugang: Alle Kinder, alle Ex-Frauen, viele Ex-Freundinnen, Schüler, Literaturbetriebler, aber auch Kellnerinnen und Wirte redeten mit dem Biografen, sogar Richard Yates' Psychiater packte aus. Das Archiv stand uneingeschränkt offen.
Kunst und Leben:
Wann möglich – also fast immer -, zieht Blake Bailey Parallelen zwischen Yates' Leben und Kunst. Dabei sollte man Yates' Geschichten möglichst gut kennen, zum Beispiel wissen, welche Figur welche Rolle in welchem Roman spielt. Für Yates' frühe Erwachsenenjahre sind seine Kurzgeschichten sogar noch wichtiger als die Romane.
Bei solchen Fiktion-Leben-Vergleichen setzt Bailey zu genaue Yates-Kenntnisse voraus. So sagt Bailey z.B. über einen Yates-Bekannten (S. 168):
He served as the model for Ralph Morin in Young Hearts Crying
ohne die Romanfigur näher zu erläutern – zu knapp. Am besten lieferte Bailey gleich ein Register aller Yates-Bekannten und ihrer Verwendung in allen Geschichten. Auch sonst erwartet Bailey gelegentlich zu viel kulturgeschichtliche Kenntnisse (z.B. wann Arthur Miller welche Verbindung zu Marilyn Monroe hatte).
Bailey reportiert zuweilen winzige Kleinigkeiten, um dann in einer Fußnote anzumerken, dass es auch anders gewesen sein könnte. Manchmal spekuliert er, das klingt so:
S. 71: perhaps for the purpose of… probably the two marked…
S. 72: except perhaps in… one suspects he was…
Mehr oder weniger interessant:
Richard Yates (1926 – 1992) hat allerdings nur ein mäßig interesssantes Leben, das nicht unbedingt eine 600-Seiten-Biografie rechtfertigt, speziell im Vergleich zu seinen Helden F. Scott Fitzgerald und vor allem Ernest Hemingway. Yates lebte nicht nur weniger interessant, sondern teils verhält sich Yates regelrecht abstoßend, zum Beispiel mit übermäßigem Alkoholkonsum und räudigen Ausfällen schon ab der 200. von 600 Seiten Haupttext ("the steady, all-but-lethal flow of bourbon", S. 225) – gerade, als sein Romanerstling Revolutionary Road/In Zeiten der Aufruhr mit allerlei Vorschusslorbeeren herauskommt.
So versaut sich Yates viele berufliche und private Chancen per Suff, verkommt schon in jungen Jahren zum Ekelpaket und degeneriert über Jahrzehnte und hunderte Biografieseiten zum "cranky old man" (S. 505). Das quält den Biografieleser.
Zu den interessanteren Details gehören
- die vielen angedachten Titel für Yates' erfolgreichen Romanerstling Revolutionary Road/In Zeiten des Aufruhrs
- Frauen wie die erste Ehefrau Sheila und die Agentin Monica McCall, deren Zitate immer ansprechen
- Yates' Zeit als Redenschreiber für Robert F. Kennedy
- Yates' Unterrichtsstil als Schreiblehrer in Iowa
- Yates als Vater
- Reime und Cartoons aus Yates' Feder
Blake Bailey, der Yates' Bücher sehr schätzt, liefert zu jedem Roman erst einen Pressespiegel und dann eine mehrseitige eigene Diskussion mit plausiblen Begründungen. Bailey mag besonders Revolutionary Road/In Zeiten des Aufruhrs. Young Hearts Crying/Eine strahlende Zukunft ist sicher nicht Baileys Lieblingsbuch, doch er schreibt (S. 535):
Is it a bad novel? It is not. Yates didn't write (or publish anyway) bad novels, and a work of fiction is not to be condemned outright on the basis of unlikable characters.
Deswegen verurteile ich auch ja auch diese Biografie nicht.
Stil:
Blake Bailey (*1963) schreibt flüssig und angenehm, aber nie auffällig geschriftstellert oder sonstwie speziell beeindruckend. Bailey erzählt uneitel, ohne Dramatisierung oder Zeitsprünge. Insgesamt habe ich das Buch sehr gern gelesen, fand es sogar trotz des mäßig ansprechenden und teils abstoßenden Yates-Lebens und -Gebarens oft spannend – auch wegen der teils sehr privaten Einblicke. (Aufgrund einiger Kritiken und Stichproben hatte ich angenommen, die Biografie lese sich so ähnlich wie eine Yates-Geschichte. Das stimmt jedoch nicht – nur die inhaltlichen Parallelen zwischen Yates' Leben und Literatur frappieren .)
Die Mehrzahl der Akteure einschließlich Yates nennt Blake Bailey dabei mit dem Nachnamen – nicht unbedingt typisch für angelsächsische Biografen (so schreibt etwa Mary Dearborn über "Ernest" Hemingway, Norman Sherry über "Graham" Greene und Patrick French' über "Vidia" Naipaul). Frauen erscheinen bei Blake Bailey oft mit Vornamen (u.a. "Martha and Yates… Yates and Martha… Martha, Yates and Monica" im nicht paginierten Bildteil). Die Agentin Monica McCall figuriert generell mit Nachname (vielleicht auch, um sie von Yates' Tochter Monica zu unterscheiden, oder weil sie deutlich älter als Yates ist).
Ausstattung:
Ich hatte die englische Taschenbuch-Ausgabe des Picador-Verlags. Letzte Seite Normalpapier: "Printed in Poland by Amazon Fulfillment". U4: "Printed in the United States of America".
Gewicht: ca. 932g
Höhe: ca. 43mm
Gesamttext inkl. Anhang u. Inhaltsverz.: ca. 676 S.*
Nur Lauftext ohne Anhang: ca. 613 S.*
Anhang u. Danksagung gesamt: 60 S.*
Nicht paginierte SW-Fotoseiten: 16 (auf Textdruckpapier)
Vorhanden: Index und nicht-nummerierte, nach Seiten auffindbare Endnoten
Nicht vorhanden: Stammbaum (nicht wichtig), Jahreszahlen oder Alter als lebende Kolumnentitel (jedoch Jahreszahlen in allen Kapitelüberschriften), Literaturverzeichnis (weder Primär- noch Sekundär-)
*inkl. einiger halbleerer Seiten
Das Schriftbild war unsauber, die Buchstaben fransten leicht aus fast wie bei einem fotokopierten Raubdruck aus Saigon. Die Fotos auf Textdruckpapier waren schlecht reproduziert, womöglich von gerasterten Vorlagen neu gerastert reproduziert. Bei den Bildern zeigt Bailey weder Typoskripte oder Handschriftliches noch Titel von Erstausgaben.
Quellenangaben markiert Bailey im Lauftext nicht durch hochgestellte Ziffern – man muss nach hinten in die Endnoten blättern und gucken, ob (anmoderiert durch ein paar Wörter a.d. Lauftext) eine Quellenangabe erscheint. So entsteht eine ruhigeres Schriftbild ohne hochgestellte Ziffern, doch der interessierte Leser weiß nie, ob sich die Suche nach einer Quellenangabe lohnt. Einige wenige Hintergrundanmerkungen bringt Bailey als Fußnoten direkt auf den betreffenden Haupttextseiten.
Freie Assoziationen
Alle Geschichten von Richard Yates, der sein Leben oft 1:1 in Literatur umsetzte
Das Leben der US-Autorin Paula Fox: eigentlich nicht sonderlich interessant, ähnlich wie bei ihrem Landsmann Yates; doch ähnlich wie bei Yates will man auch bei Paula Fox wissen, wie viel selbst Erlebtes in ihren scheinbar sehr lebensnahen Romanen steckt – und darum liest man vielleicht doch ihre Biografie
Die Biografien von F. Scott Fitzgerald und Ernest Hemingway, die ebenfalls in Alkohol und – zumindest Hemingway – psychischen Problemen versanken
Der späte, vollbärtige Yates erinnert physisch an den späten, vollbärtigen David Gates – und damit auch an den späten, vollbärtigen Hemingway
Wegen des Verlagsbetriebs in New York: James Salters Roman Alles, was ist/engl. All that is (2013) und Jay McInerneys Roman Alles ist möglich/engl. Brightness Falls (1992)
June 26, 2008
'There never was a good biography of a good novelist,'Fitzgerald says somewhere in his notebooks. 'How could there? He's too many people, if he's any good.' Fitzgerald has yet to be proven wrong, but at least this wasn't a sour, hectoring dressing-down of its subject. Bailey himself said that he aimed for an bemused, ironical tone, a tone that seems a perfect vehicle for Yates's own gruffly hilarious remarks and letters. The story ain't pretty--mental illness mixed with alcoholism mixed with divorces--but who gives a shit? The work--the little of it that I've read--is lucid and luminous and wise. For decades, the typical Yates apartment was a squalid hole barren save for his typewriter, nailed-up pictures of his daughters, and his obsessive devotion to being the best writer he could be. The high point of this book is the excerpt from the memorial speech Andre Dubus read at one of the memorial services. Referring the Yates books on his shelf, Dubus says, "it's a sweetheart of a life's work, a sweetheart."
Read
December 16, 2016Compulsively readable--though I felt slightly guilty about delving into Yates' messy life, I still couldn't put down this portrait of the artist in self-destruct mode. Among the hundreds of wretchedly wacky anecdotes: Yates was picked up in LA by cops once & told them he was Jesus and Lee Harvey Oswald. A victim of the Roman Empire and a victim of the American Empire, how apropos. Bailey has an occasional lapse--a reference to "a book called ON BEING HUMAN" is obviously meant to refer to Carl Rogers' ON BECOMING A PERSON--but never mind. Just make sure to read Yates' novels and COLLECTED SHORT STORIES before reading this--he wrote no bad novels, only good and less good ones, and both his shorter short-stories (in ELEVEN KINDS OF LONELINESS) and the longer ones collected in LIARS IN LOVE are great. (Unfortunately, one of his finest later stories, "The Right Thing", is not included in COLLECTED STORIES since it was incorporated in slightly different form into Yates' novel YOUNG HEARTS CRYING. It works better as a short story, in my opinion.)
June 13, 2007
What I love about this book is that it is a very upfront biography of one of my favorite and most underappreciated authors in American Literature.
He did have a tragic life, but what Yates left behind was really worthwhile and wonderful. I recommend reading this and then following it with some of his short stories or a novel.
He did have a tragic life, but what Yates left behind was really worthwhile and wonderful. I recommend reading this and then following it with some of his short stories or a novel.
September 6, 2008
I'm glad I finished it. So tragic and awful. But a fascinating read. Yates was never published by The New Yorker--what idiots not to publish his stories.
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