Customer Reviews

Disturbing the Peace: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Some have said this is Yates' weakest work, and I suppose it might be, but I think credit has to be given to Yates for even managing to pull this off. This is a tough story to write, a man's journey from sanity to insanity. Yates stays in his usual third person narration all the way, even when the main character goes completely nuts, so his delusions become our delusions.

It's not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination - we get a no-holds-barred view into Bellevue and the complete breakdown of the protagonist. There isn't a likeable character in the entire novel, which isn't that different from Yates' other works, but the problem here is that it's very tough to have any sympathy for the main character, John Wilder. In Yates' more successful books, no matter how nasty the characters, we can't help but to feel for their faults. Not so here.

Disturbing the Peace may not have the amazing pace of The Easter Parade or the driving power of Revolutionary Road, but it's still a pretty good read. It's a tough book to find nowadays, so if you can get your hands on it, pick it up.

This novel, by one of my favorite late 20th century writers, is a compellingly realistic story of the downward spiral of an alcoholic. It's power comes from the exacting insights into the mundane existence of the characters trying to survive and thrive in modern society; along a view into the mind of a man making a step-by-step descent into a private hell. As Yates draws you into Wilder's mind, you find yourself,like the main character, unable to see the bottom, until you have made the slow descent into insanity.

I found the book incredibly insightful, with accurate representations of the madness of addiction. The book never descends to the level of moralizing or sermonizing, and that makes it all the more powerful. Yates creates an empathy between reader and character, and that makes the outcome all the more gripping.

This is the story of John C. Wilder and his descent into insanity. Wilder is a highly strung hard drinking affluent salesman, a husband and father. He tries to hide his low self-esteem which stems from a mild dyslexia and being somewhat short in stature. He seeks to fill the void in his life through drinking and women.

At one point, all of Wilder's ambitions seem within his grasp. He falls in love with a woman who encourages him to pursue his dream of producing films, and it seems he has a real talent for it. However, the seeds of insanity are sown within him. Time after time, he reaches out for help, to his family, to psychiatry, to AA, looking for understanding and support, but every reed breaks at his grasp. It is a disturbing novel. We are left doubting if anything could have averted his fate.

Yates always gets everything right. The dialogue, speech cadences, observations, structure: his writing is a beautiful thing to observe. He is never simplistic. Yates has a reputation for being a devasting chronicler of American suburbia. He is that, but in this novel he shows that he can deliniate urban angst and despair as well.

In his writing classes, Richard Yates said that the most important thing to him, as a writer, was "telling the truth." He wasn't interested in pyrotechnics. He was interested in technique as an instrument to be used in "telling the truth." He had us read "In Our Time" and "Nine Stories." He respected accuracy, economy, the telling detail. He had no interest in the fancy, the glib. He was obviously deeply influenced by Hemingway. For my money, Yates is better. This masterpiece will tell you what it's like to crack up. No Hollywood, nothing fancy, no self-pity. Just "telling the truth." Read this, then read the rest of Yates. You won't be sorry. The guy knew what he was talking about.

Richard Yates is one of the great American authors, in there with John Cheever and John O'Hara, His book 'Revolutionary Road' is the best chronicle of the cancer in the bowel of the American dream ever written,(read the book, avoid the lousy movie). Disturbing the Peace is a gripping, impossible-to-put-down novel of an alcoholic on a self-induced downward path to madness; and while I appreciate that this doesn't sound like much fun, which it isn't, it is nevertheless superbly written and is a treat to read; rather like Phillip Roth but without the Jewish sensibility. It also teaches anyone who has had the experience of alcoholism in their life that the people who embrace it do so out of an almost willing self-destructiveness.. In the 34 years since it was written it has not dated by a word - it's a painful read but it's a fine novel by a great novelist.

There are books that make you think, and there are books that make you feel. Disturbing the Peace is both. It is the story of a man and his descent into insanity. But it is so much more than that. It is the story of ourselves, told quite plainly, and in such a way that, as a reader, it's very easy to slip in and out of the minds of all the characters, because they are us.

Disturbing the Peace made me think, feel, and believe that I was not simply watching this story unfold as it was told to me, but rather, I was a part of the story as it unfolded around me.

The brilliance of Yates is not in the writing. Rather, it's in the non-writing, that is, what he doesn't put on the page. And opening this book - and any of his books - you are invited to join in and watch or partake as the world crumbles.

Why the genius of Yates has never caught on, we'll never know. Perhaps people were afraid to peer into the stories and see such bold and disturbing representations of themselves and their lives.

Highly Recommended.

Five Stars.

Judging purely on writing quality and style, I would have to give this book five stars rather than four, but it having left me more bummed than introspecting and given that this is, after all, a subjective review I've got to leave it with four stars. When reading Yates' books I'm always left with the impression that a mirror is smoothly and deftly being held to my face. Perhaps I won't dwell on what that may say about my personality or character.

Richard Yates tells the story of a man disconnected from a life that one could argue is successful and satisfactory. The man is not satisfied, though. He has a vague sense that he has missed out, been cheated of greatness, or at the very least deserves more than what he has settled for. He's an average guy in an average, yet successful, life and he just doesn't know how to cope with the feeling that something is missing. I reckon it doesn't help that he's also an alcoholic with significant mental issues. The intervention and guidance of friends and loved ones only makes things worse for him; after all, it's not the bottle's fault that he didn't get a prettier wife or the career that he wanted. One bad decision follows the next and the reader can't help but sense the dread and foreboding as each wrong turn brings his downward spiral into greater relief. I found myself thinking often, 'oh, this isn't going to be good...'

The troubling story of John Wilder ultimately felt like one man's desperation, one man's plight, leaving me sympathetic but slightly removed from his situation. The other thing that left me less absorbed in his character was that I felt that some of his individual and societal circumstance felt dated. Is it because alcoholism feels so much better understood today than forty years ago? Is it that therapy is less of a stigma now than it might have been then? Am I simply jaded? I can't put my finger on it, but Wilder's state just didn't feel as urgent, contemporary, and relevant as it might have. I can't help but compare at this point Yates' Revolutionary Road, where the theme of disenchantment from chasing the suburban American Dream seems just as compelling today as the day it was written.

Still, one doesn't have to be a schizophrenic alcoholic to suffer feelings of disillusionment, to sense that opportunities for something better, more fulfilling have escaped our grasp, to wonder how we got to where we are and ask the question 'Am I better than this?' In that sense, this is an effective allegory for 'everyman' that ought to give at least a moment's pause for most. It is a good, if heavy, read that will keep you turning pages even as you see John Wilder running headlong toward the precipice.

I'm a YATES sycophant ... this isn't his best, but it sure is his funniest. Yates is an American master ... I put him up there with Malamud and Steinbeck ... a notch above Hemingway, Updike & Roth.

READ EVERYTHING BY RICHARD YATES, AMICI ... YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED.

John Wilder sells advertising space and has a comfortable but boring life in Manhattan. He's disappointed - with his family, his job, his life, himself. To mask the disappointment and alleviate the boredom, he drinks and has affairs. Away from home at a convention he has a breakdown and, on his return to New York, he calls his wife from a bar and tells her that if he comes home he'll kill her and their child. As a result of his threats he's commited to Bellevue. This is a great tale of delusion and paranoia, which feels a lot like a cross between One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Mad Men. The beginning, in particular, is depressingly wonderful and the book is heartbreaking, simple and raw. For god's sake don't read it if you're feeling miserable.

This novel captures in form and content our fragile,tenuous connection to reality. It's a mad world out there. It seems that post- industrial morals and values continue to repress humanity. The 'dreams' we are encouraged to nurture, by society and for Yates I think, Hollywood movies, are impossible and lead only to depression, alcoholism and ultimately insanity. The deliberate break down of the story itself shows Yates in a postmodern frame of mind and demonstrates his extraordinary skill. Take the ride.