To say that Richard Yates lived a troubled life would be an understatement. In fact, after learning of his life, it is easy to see just where he got all his material, and why he writes so well about alcoholics. In many ways his troubles were not only cliché (the tortured, depressed, lonely, mentally unstable, financially struggling artist that no one appreciates or understands), they were also self-induced.
Blake Bailey’s A Tragic Honesty: The Life And Work of Richard Yates is easily one of the most readable biographies on a writer I’ve read, where the narrative is both thorough yet not turgid and too weighed down by facts. Born in 1926, Yates was brought up in a rather modest upbringing, and was also the son of an alcoholic mother. He had one sister, Ruth, who later suffered the fate of alcoholism herself; so clearly Yates was not the only one who inherited the problem. His constant smoking, drinking, and lack of exercise eventually led to his physical demise, and he often lived in dank and poorly lighted squalor, writing at a small desk surrounded by both living and dead roaches. One might have to ask, was this really necessary? Objectively speaking, it ultimately is his work that matters in the end - that he wrote his books while lonely, hacking a cough and surrounded by vermin and their droppings is beside the point, but after reading about it, pulling out the old dust mop suddenly doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Though setting all this aside, much of what A Tragic Honesty focuses on are the novels and short stories for which Yates is known, though he was somewhat an underappreciated writer in his day. He lost the National Book Award, (but at least was nominated one might claim), he never in his lifetime got a story published in The New Yorker (yet regularly appeared in The Atlantic and Esquire), and his books never sold more than 12,000 copies (except for The Easter Parade, which sold more than 100,000 in paperback, and was noted by many critics and writers, including a mention in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters). Although one can appreciate Yates’ dislike for pretension, his craving for fame and approbation does begin to annoy, as does his obsession for Fitzgerald. With Yates, everything goes back to The Great Gatsby, and I don’t know what it is with writers who feel the need to bow to those that came before them, but sorry, Yates is better than Fitzgerald. Too bad he never realized that while he was alive.
Article comments
1 - DeWitt Henry
Bailey's biography ranks with Carlos Baker's on Hemingway, and is remarkable for telling Yates's life so much in Yates's own words, a tactic that doesn't work as well in his new Cheever biography. I hope you read Yates's collected stories! Here is a succinct review of Revolutionary Road, followed by an interview with his daughter Monica (where she points out that Yates and Shiela, his first wife, DID get to Paris).