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A Good School

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Richard Yates is one of the few truly great masters of 20th century fiction. His novels and short stories are populated with people who fiercely strive for what is just beyond their grasp, and who must - often quite painfully - suffer the consequences of their hopes and ambitions. The beauty of watching as these lives savagely unfold is the compassion Yates so delicately weaves into his depictions. First we feel a kind of condescending pity for these characters, then we find we are overwhelmed with their plight and their grief. And then finally the line between fiction and reality blurs, and we realize that these characters are not merely so much like us, they are us - with their denial and their fantasy and their unfounded hope in the future - and we grieve for them as we grieve for ourselves.
His short coming-of-age "A Good School" is something of a departure from the typical Yatesian heartbreak and squalor. In fact, the tone here, despite some shockingly grim and disturbing moments, is mostly upbeat. We follow the adolescent adventures of a boy named William Grove, a man with no real father figure (his parents are divorced) who tries to make a man out of himself after he is shipped to a boarding school designed for "individual" children who don't fit in elsewhere. Left to his own devices, without any real encouragement from the school or at home, and after several difficult missteps that nearly cement him as a permanent outcast, Grove slowly and unknowingly begins to make a name for himself by throwing himself into the only small door he is ever offered - the offices of the school paper.
The cast of the book is rounded out by in intriguing hodge-podge of boarding school characters, equally flailing around in their quest to become men. Even though their stories are unfolding off to the side, Yates somehow manages to tell each of their stories with a richness and intensity that belies their sparseness.
This is ground that has been covered before. One cannot help but think of other prep school novels (like Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Hesse's "Beneath the Wheel") but even in familiar territory, Yates stakes out a claim all his own. This is a short, spare book filled with dozens of stories that build and develop throughout the novel. Old Yates fans will be pleased with this surprising detour into the world of adolescence, the unusual lightness of his tone, and the freshness of his view from this familiar literary perch. For new readers, I would definitely suggest reading the novel "Revolutionary Road," or some of the short stories first. But all in all, a must-read for everyone. I recommend it highly.

A lot's been made of the fine "A Separate Peace," but "A Good School" brings Yates' eye -- which was one of the best, most unheralded of 20th century American writers -- to the twists of coming of age in a prep school. Nobody captured the shades and shadows of dialog like Yates, and few have made characters of any age so vivid in their grappling with pain and yearning. Anyone who's ever been a teenager will devour this novel.

That Richard Yates never made the gears of New York turn for him is an error of the publishing industry that's impossible to calculate; that "A Good School" is not mandatory reading for anyone interested in young people is a loss to every reader of the genre.

Yates dedicated this novel to his father, and rightly so. Men dominate this novel -- young men, old men, crippled men. In keeping with his trademark, Yates' characters are the losers of losers, yet you can't help but to feel for them. Even when Yates is describing one horribly embarrassing scene after another (and some are so painful that you almost have to look away from the page), his compassion for his people is ever vigilent.

This novel reminded me a lot of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Like the George Willard in that quasi-novel, we have Will Grove, dipping in and out of the lives of various characters. The town of Winesburg was the center of that novel, and here it's Dorset Academy, the ultimate school for losers (what else would it be?). Although Winesburg was structurally a related collection of short stories while this is more of a novel, you still get that vignette-ish feeling as you read through A Good School, the way Yates joins quick scenes together. It works splendidly.

The book is framed by first-person narration that adds a very gentle touch. Yates always had a soft spot for the first-person narrator -- check out his short stories "Builders," "Jody Rolled the Bones," and "Oh Joseph, I'm So Tired" for further evidence. This novel doesn't nearly have the sheer driving force of Revolutionary Road or the expert precision of Easter Parade, but it's not supposed to. It's a tender, coming-of-age tale, and it's done with a great deal of heart and love.

The late Richard Yates seems to have fallen through the cracks of 20th-century literature, but if you haven't read him, you owe yourself a look. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is considered his masterpiece, but A GOOD SCHOOL is an accessible introduction to his oeuvre as well, especially if you are a fan of prep school books in the tradition of A SEPARATE PEACE and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

That said, readers should know that Yates' book is much more graphic than either Knowles' or Salinger's. No, it's not over-the-top or anything like that (being written in 1978), but it does have its "boys-will-be-disgusting-boys" moments, with the protagonist, William Grove, being one of the victims early in its pages.

The book is set in northern Connecticut -- a typical prep school milieu -- only it's the war years (1941-44) and this school is for boys that most prestigious private schools won't touch. Grove, of course, is perceived as a loser by the other boys and has to make a name for himself as he best can. Meanwhile, Yates treats us to a wide array of characters, from the teachers to the boys to a certain teacher's daughter, and somehow holds it together. We are treated to the usual issues of young love and lust -- as well as to the equally-usual issues of middle-aged love and lust. We also watch Groves as he finds a calling on the school newspaper while trying to fit in with the other boys.

Yates has a straight-forward style and understands the subtleties of the heart. He shows how desperate these boys are for friendship and recognition in the tumultuous "pecking order" of everyday life, and how awkward some of these pleas for friendship become. It's the little things that add up in this book, such as when we watch Groves and other boys trying to be casual as they ask another boy to room with them next year and when we see how crushed and hurt they are by rejection. More than once, he notes how similar the boys' desire for male friendship and acceptance comes to their longing for a girl and love. He is in that strange and sometimes dark terrain we know as the human heart.

I heartily recommend adding Yates to your reading résumé. This "good" school is tuition-free (for you) and will definitely pay off, hopefully leading you to other works by this fine writer.

Richard Yates is simply a master of fiction. Although not as good as "Revolutionary Road" or his short stories, both of which are about as good as it gets, he still manages to take a microscope to the lives and interactions of many students and teachers at Dorset Academy, a small all-boys academy. Yates somehow manages to juggle dozens of characters and how they interact with one another in this small place, all with a war and a draft going on in a background. The book reads like "The Spoon River Anthology" with all of these characters flashing in and out, all the while Yates does a wonderful job of ensuring all of the voices are different. From the outcasts to the class president, each character is shown clearly and you never have what has been a common occurrence with fiction today that juggles multiple characters - that of all of the voices sounding exactly the same. I think what ultimately makes this novel successful is how vulnerable Yates is able to depict everyone. I loved this book and think this writer should forever remain in discussions of the best writers of the twentieth century.

The story told here is a first-person-narrated acccount of a grown man's memories of his school days at a not-so-good or great private boys' school in Connecticut, the tuition for which was paid for by his divorced Dad who sacrificed to afford it. It is an episodic tale, covering three special and historical years, that ends in 1944 (midway between World War II), and a tale that garners the narrator, in the end, hard-won experience as a writer for the school newspaper, transient friendships, and, finally, a deep admiration for his now deceased old Dad.

A lot of what happens in the tale are the typical and gross deeds and misdeeds of teenage boys thrown together in one setting, but Richard Yates also tells tales about the adults, too, who are part of the private school life, whether they be teachers or janitors, adults who are learning about life and love, too, like the teenagers, though perhaps on a less-than-naive adventure.

The only drawback to the novel is that the first-person point of view can have no realistic way of being inside the bedrooms of the teachers to know what was said or what transpired - let alone inside each and every teenage boy's room within the dormitories or within the characters' thoughts. It strained credulity, for example, to be told what La Prade, the French teacher, was saying to Alice, his adultress, in his bedroom or in the last letter he ever wrote her, when the narrator himself is still a student and working overtime to write the school newspaper. A third-person or omniscient point-of-view would have handled this information better and not have made this knowledge realistically impossible.

I don't recommend the Picador issue of this paperback novel. The typeface was faded on many pages throughout the text, so that in no time at all, the pages will be unreadable, and even on some pages the words were "squiggly." The print job for this novel looks as if it came from cheap, generic photocopy galleys and published "as-is" without looking back at the result.

This is a SWEET book, something you could not say about Rev Road and Easter Parade (the other Yates' books that I have read). From what I gather (from reading about all of Yates' books), this is as Hollywood as Yates gets. But this book still contains the trademark Yates' sensitivity and sparse, transparent writing.

This 'coming of age at a boarding school' story has been told many times before in books and movies, but it is real neat to see Yates' take on the genre. Everything just rings true to me here. Yates is considerate of the motivations and anxieties of the main characters. And for the 'only happy when it rains' crowd, this book is still Yates to the core: everything is not 'happy, happy' here.

Also, you get Yates' opinion (well placed within the story) on the value of the 'well rounded education'. Yates is not a fan of the 'well rounded education', preferring a more specialized approach to education. I say AMEN to that.

Richard Yates' "A Good School" is a good book. It takes you through the last days of a declining prep school in the Northeast during World War II. It is less a book about one person than about the chorus of people who make up the community -- from the Coach to the French teacher to the foreign student to the daughter of the Headmaster to the regular students themselves.

I went to a prep school. There's a lot to remind me of that time -- the oddity of being alone in a place that spends so much emphasis on rigid rituals, at a time in life when you need personal attention.

I suppose it reminds me a lot of "Seasoned Timber," another novel about private schools in New England.

It is not just the subject but really the approach. Yates has a way of spending a lot of time telling you what is happening. Some people prefer a writer who shows you things. The benefit is that as a reader you don't miss out on any of the underlying psychological weight among the characters. The cost is that you're one step removed from experiencing the story.

Like many, I only recently discovered Richard Yates. After "Revolutionary Road," I immediately read all of his other published work and am now looking around like a person in shock after a collision, trying to come to grips with the reality that this is it. There is no more.

Yates has a rare talent for making the freakiness of human nature almost beautiful. I found myself falling in love with the characters and forgetting about the plot. His characters are eerily familiar in so many ways, almost like old friends or people you've somehow always known. And their thoughts and actions, as deranged and illogical and pathetic as they often are, just seem natural.

"A Good School" is one of the few exceptions to the old "Truth is stranger than fiction" adage. It's strange, and it doesn't feel like a story. Yates elaborately intertwines the individual tragedies of each of his characters, careful to keep the hideousness bearable and drawing out the beauty at key points to make this an intensely interesting, entertaining read that effortlessly touches the reader's emotions.

This rites of passage tale set in a failing prep school is so subtly written that its 160 pages engage and engross you so fully with its interwoven threads that it is as satisfying as an epic.

Yates inspires a genuine feeling for all the characters from the awkward Grove through to Teacher Driscoll, and even Mrs Hoopers 'cameo' appearence in the book isn't wasted and plays wonderfully.

In short, this is a very good book.