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A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates
 
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A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (Hardcover)

by Blake Bailey (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £25.00
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 680 pages
  • Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd (30 Sep 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0413774325
  • ISBN-13: 978-0413774323
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.4 x 6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 217,748 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Synopsis

Tragically ignored during his lifetime, Richard Yates was the great nearly man of American letters, despite producing some of the most bewitching fiction of the late twentieth century, and inspiring writers like Richard Ford, Andre Dubus, and Richard Russo. Born in 1926, his youth was an hysterical odyssey through depression-era America with an unstable mother who would become the basis for several of his most memorable characters. His adult life was scarred by alcoholism, divorce, mental illness and bitterness at his lack of public recognition. Yates always teetered on the edge of some fresh calamity: he chain-smoked through bouts of tuberculosis and emphysema, even when permanently chained to oxygen cylinders, and burned down his own apartment at least once. However, the chaos of Richard Yates' personal life fed directly into his unflinching portraits of American middle-class desperation, leading him to write Revolutionary Road, the novel that made his reputation, The Easter Parade, and his extraordinary short fiction. Blake Bailey's absorbing biography is the story of an unlikely triumph salvaged from the wreckage of an unruly life.

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A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A tragic account of a great writer, 2 Feb 2007
By Heather "star_reader" (Leeds, Yorkshire) - See all my reviews
  
I came across this biography while writing my dissertation on Yates and the post war American suburbs. As very little has been written about Yates since his death in 1992 and his novels have seemingly fallen in and out of print, i was excited to read Blake Bailey's biography and find out more.

Despite its daunting length, the biography is well worth reading for anyone interested in Yates or his fiction. It really helps you to understand why Yates wrote what he did. It seems that some critics have dismissed Yates for his deeply depressing or bleak analysis of post war life in America but this book, with its moving descriptions of Yates's own tragic life (he was an alcoholic for most of his adult life, suffering bouts of mania and depression, and going through two divorces which both ended with his ex- wives taking custody of his daughters) helps you understand why Yates wrote about such tragic and lonely figures.

The biography is extremely moving as it describes Yates at the end of his life living alone, in apparent obscurity, isolated from family and seeming to emulate the tragic end of many of his literary characters.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has read Yates or is interested in the lives of great writers.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Chronicler of Middle Class Disappointment, 14 Aug 2006
By Eugene Onegin (Lincoln England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (Paperback)
One always approaches a biography of a figure held in high esteem with some trepidation especially when he or she is a great writer as it is hard to avoid thinking that the author will fail to have the scope, perception, or eloquence to do his subject justice. This was certainly a concern before starting Blake Bailey's opus but by the end of the 600 plus pages, all such misgivings had been dispelled. In short, this is a magnificent achievement: extensively researched (featuring interviews conducted with nearly all the major players in Yates life), carefully structured, and fluently written, but above all a work where the life of its protagonist is allowed to unfold in all its tortured glory. The result is a page turner: the novels and short stories the writer produced emerge convincingly as the very stuff of life itself, filtered through the pen of a self taught literary perfectionist. Those readers who have marvelled at the authenticity of the dialogue and empathy with disappointed hopes to be found in Revolutionary Road or The Easter Parade will find that so often what they have read is a carefully wrought chapter from Yates own path through prep school, marriage, alcoholism, fatherhood, mental breakdown and literary struggle. The narrative retains clarity and focus throughout, Bailey furnishing the reader with detailed material and observations on nearly all the key events of Yates' life. He also discusses the work itself with insight, but never turns the book into an exercise in personal literary criticism. There is the very occasional disappointment: Yates short lived but significant career as a speechwriter for Robert Kennedy on Civil Rights is not afforded enough attention, and little is said about his critical reception outside of the United States, but these are minor gripes in the context of the whole.

In the final analysis, Yates the man holds as much fascination as his writing-Bailey acts as neither advocate or judge on his subject: his drinking, insecurities and emotional neediness are objectively chronicled as are their damaging consequences for all who knew and loved him. The only stability in a chaotic life was an overwhelming need to write and to make that writing constantly more honest and true to itself. He eschewed the vagaries of fashion frequently at the expense of his critical standing and financial solvency, remaining defiant in the belief that the virtues of craftsmanship, emotional honesty and skilful use of language would win through: all too often like his characters he ended up disillusioned. Some of the images live in the memory not least Yates living in squalor through his later years, short of money, ill and alone hoping that his obituary in The New York Times might extend beyond two lines. It did, just, but the neglect he feared and had already endured did fall like a curtain in the years following his death in 1992. Salvation in life and death came in the form of respect from fellow writers and their persistent championing has yielded modern editions over the last half dozen years which have afforded new readers the opportunity to discover some of the best writing of recent decades. Bailey hints at the reasons for Yates neglect throughout the book: he writes about the things we do not what we should have done, our need for love not the successful pursuit of it, and what we are not what we would like ourselves to be. This is a brilliant portrayal of a man who succeeded in facing the realities we prefer to avoid on the page if not always in life. A mandatory purchase for anyone remotely interested in Yates, good writing or fine biography.




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