A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates [Paperback]

Blake Bailey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

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. In Blake Bailey’s masterful and entertaining biography, Yates himself serves as the fascinating lens into mid-century America, a world of would-be artists, depressed housewives, addled businessmen, high living, wistful striving, and self-deception. The story of Richard Yates here stands as a singular reminder of what the writer must sacrifice for his craft, the devil’s bargain of artistry for happiness, praise for sanity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Richard Yates worked his way down from the top. His brilliantly pitiless 1961 classic about exploded '50s suburban dreams, Revolutionary Road, made him a peer of Cheever and Updike (though Natalie Wood broke his heart by scuttling the movie version). William Styron got him a gig writing civil rights speeches for Bobby Kennedy: "He used RFK s a ventriloquist's dummy," says Kurt Vonnegut, who, like Yates's future employer, David (NYPD Blue) Milch, met him at the celebrated Iowa writing program. Yates's dark gift casts a colossal shadow enriching our culture: he was a profound influence on Richard Ford, Mary Robison, Ann Beattie, and the Minimalist literary movement. He also inspired the "Alton Benes" Seinfeld episode (his daughter, who apparently shares her dad's mordant wit, helped inspire the character Elaine). Blake Bailey soberly records Yates's rather stylishly bleak spiral from fame into drunkenness and self-imposed obscurity, despite the loyalty of his famous friends. He drunkenly set fire to his beard, succumbed to writer's block and delusions that he'd killed JFK, heedlessly and needlessly alienated even people he admired. But one reason he died poor, with the manuscript of his RFK novel, Uncertain Times in his freezer, was precisely his gift: an honesty that ranks with the greatest of tragedians. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Richard Yates's most famous novel, Revolutionary Road, set the tone for most of his later fiction: it was, for biographer Bailey, a thinly veiled depiction of Yates (1926-1992) and his immediate surroundings, in many cases with the names barely changed, and was widely praised at the time of its release only to fade into semi-obscurity except for a small group of devotees. Bailey's (The Sixties) massive biography strip-mines Yates's fiction for details of his life; on more than one occasion, the abundance of story elements with real-life parallels is used to suggest that another element, such as the protagonist's affair with a prostitute in the short story "Liars in Love," might also have some basis in fact. These conjectures are offset by extensive interviews with surviving family and acquaintances. At times the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming, in part because the reader is subject to an unrelenting depiction of Yates's life as "a parody of the self-destructive personality." He smoked heavily for decades despite tuberculosis, emphysema and pneumonia, and was often barely able to breathe, and eyewitnesses recall numerous provocative outbursts and emotional breakdowns brought on by the potent combination of manic-depression and alcoholism. And there's the repeated heartache of an author pushing himself time and time again to complete a book, never quite obtaining the success he so desperately wants. Apart from a tendency to throw in disruptive foreshadowing asides, Bailey has done a great job of sorting through the facts of Yates's difficult life, assembling them into a story that mirrors the best of his subject's fiction.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312423756
• ISBN-13: 978-0312423759
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Blake Bailey is author of "A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates," finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and "Cheever: A Life," winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and finalist for the Pulitzer and James Tait Black Memorial Prizes. He edited a two-volume edition of Cheever's work for the Library of America, and, in 2010, he received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His next book, "Farther & Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson," will be published by Knopf on March 12, 2013. He lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb Book, Worthy of Its Subject July 22, 2003

By Kenneth E. Steinfield

Format:Hardcover

Richard Yates is not for everybody. To read Yates's novels and short stories is to be confronted with irrefutable evidence of the inescapable bleakness, futility, and self-delusion inherent in modern human existence. Most people prefer stories about anthropomorphic bunnies who get into danger -- light danger -- overcome it, and get home in time for supper. This is not surprising, given the inescapable bleakness, futility, and self-delusion inherent in modern human existence. But for masochists, lovers of exquisitely crafted and unforgettable prose, and those capable of receiving and accepting harsh truths (without committing suicide), reading the works of Richard Yates is a rewarding (if unarguably depressing) experience.

The same is true of Blake Bailey's superb "A Tragic Honesty," the first biography of Yates. The book does full justice to its enigmatic subject, who died in relative obscurity and absolute penury in 1992. In the decade since, Richard Yates has come to exemplify the brilliant and tormented writer -- the "writer's writer," the consummate crafstman -- who achieves posthumously some of the recognition and adulation largely (and unfairly) denied him in life, rendering him, of course, all the more tragic. Getting rich and famous only after you're dead and can't enjoy it is quintessentially Yatesian; while Yates would have appreciated the irony, he probably would rather have had the cash. If there is cash now to be had, I'm glad it's going to Bailey and (I hope) Yates's heirs, his three beloved daughters.

Like Claire Tomalin's excellent recent biography of Samuel Pepys, "A Tragic Honesty" is both aided and constrained by the writings of the subject himself. Every word of "fiction" Yates wrote was autobiographical, often painfully and obviously so, and not even Bailey, a skillful writer, would presume to tell Yates's story better than Yates told it himself in his work. Bailey ably weaves the lives of Yates's thinly-veiled fictional "characters" into Yates's own tragic private life, which included his shabby-genteel upbringing, his unheroic experiences in World War II, his hatred of and embarrassment over his irresponsible "artistic" mother (an amateur sculptor with delusions of grandeur), his sadness at the mediocrity of his father's life and work, his lifelong raging alcoholism, his mental instability and repeated hospitalizations, his lung problems (TB and emphysema), his need of and failure to get and hold onto money, and his abuse and alienation of all (and there were many) who sought to help or love him (including two wives and three daughters, various agents and editors, other writers, and many, many impressionable and adoring young coeds). While never declining into tedium himself, Bailey details the years of tedious and painstaking craftsmanship that went into the production of some of the most devastating prose ever written, especially Yates's masterpiece, his first novel, "Revolutionary Road." It's always helpful (and somewhat chastening) to be reminded that great books do not simply spring forth fully-formed from the heads and hands of great writers, but rather are often the product of years of anguished and uncompensated effort. Bailey's biography manages to capture all of the contradictions of the great man -- his good humor (usually when not smashed), his vicious cruelty (usually when smashed), his personal generosity, both to young writers and young women (and especially when the two were one), his love of his art, and his abiding anger at the humiliating and pointless writing jobs at which he toiled for years merely to pay his bills -- without resorting to caricature or rendering Yates anything less than fully human. Bailey has steeped himself in Yatesiana, and, with the assistance of many thoughtful and caring people who knew Yates, has given us a valuable portrait of one of the twentieth-century's most under-heralded writers. Buy and read Yates's books first, and then this one.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Richard Yates: The Novel June 26, 2003

By John McNally

Format:Hardcover

Blake Bailey masterfully captures the sad life of Richard Yates. Yates' work was far more autobiographical than I had ever realized, and Yates himself -- his actions, the things he says -- often resembles a character from one of his own books. The haunting effect of this biography is that it reads, at times, like a lost Yates novel. This is the good new for Yates fans. The bad news is that Yates' life was even sadder than I had anticipated (and I had anticipated a very sad life). I have read much of the source material used in this book beforehand, and it is to Blake Bailey's credit that he synthesized it into something much more powerful and affecting than straight reportage: He has given us flesh and blood, Mr. Yates himself, a man as tragic as any figure in literature. Kudos to Mr. Bailey. This book should appeal to Yates' fans, as well as anyone who wants to read a gripping tale of an artist's troubled life.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A surprisingly uplifting biography August 6, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Blake Bailey's lucid and surprisingly uplifting biography draws attention to a much-admired but much-neglected novelist. Richard Yates's life was a relentless series of hopes, disappointments, and recoveries. Each time his life took another turn for the worse, he devoted himself more manically to his work.

That work - seven novels including "Revolutionary Road," "Disturbing the Peace," and "The Easter Parade," as well as the short story collections "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" and "Liars in Love" - has earned a lasting place in post-war American literature. In it Yates probed the flawed dreams of the middle-class. Each book was acclaimed for its craftsmanship and denounced for its bleakness. Sales were usually modest.

Yates's first novel, "Revolutionary Road," appeared in 1961. Borrowing his blueprint from Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," Yates constructed the story of a Connecticut couple who are perilously dissatisfied with a 1950s variation of the American dream. In that book, Bailey writes, "deceptively simple language is like the glassy surface of a deep and murky loch. The first thing one may see is a rippled image of oneself, and then the churning shadows beneath."

Yates was acquainted with murky depths. He was raised in New York City by an improvident and alcoholic sculptor who divorced his salesman father (once an aspiring tenor singer) in her dubious quest for artistic freedom. Drafted into the army as he graduated from high school in 1944, Yates never attended college.

Always clumsy, Yates tried to prove his worth on a German battlefield by volunteering to be a runner even though he had pneumonia. Thus he permanently damaged his lungs and developed TB. After the war, with disability benefits, he quit a publicity job and went to France to learn to write. In this he emulated his hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was likewise intrigued by the tarnished romance of American ambition.

Yates did teach himself to write. He also compounded his lung disease by smoking four packs a day and exacerbated his manic depression with alcohol. His nervous breakdowns became frequent and legendary. Physical and mental illness went hand-in-hand with stubborn irascibility that got worse as he aged, making it impossible for him to sustain a marriage or any of his liaisons with younger women, though he craved female companionship. Later, two of his three daughters kept their distance too, letting their contact lapse to Sunday morning phone calls when they knew Yates would be sober.

He did most of his writing in the mornings as well. He lived in penury and squalor, but supported and educated his daughters by doing corporate publicity, teaching in universities, or writing screenplays and speeches. He died in 1992, leaving in his rental apartment freezer an unfinished novel about his stint as a speechwriter for Attorney General Robert Kennedy. The manuscript was the only object of value he possessed.

Was Yates's art worth such suffering? Reading the biography of a troubled artist may allow saner people to feel superior, to adopt a position of relief that we have not been so burdened with talent. Bailey doesn't let us off with such an easy conclusion. With his intelligent respect for Yates's work, he grants us another way to look at the man: what would Yates have been without his writing, the one thing of which he was proud, the thing he could do extraordinarily well?

Writing did not make Yates mentally ill - it saved him from total collapse. Bailey's excellent biography may do the same for its subject's reputation.

(This review first appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.)