[.ca] A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (ISBN 0312423756)

From Amazon.com:
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

A surprisingly uplifting biography:
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.)

Wow!:
This is the best biography of a writer I've read since the Shirley Jackson biography "Private Demons". I agree with the previous poster who said that this should be a National Book Award nominee/winner.

National Book Award:
In my opinion, Blake Bailey deseves the National Book Award for this work. If you're only going to read one biography of a writer in your lifetime, pick this one. Thanks, Don Pollock

I Can Scarcely Imagine a Better Job:
As a recent inductee to that lucky fraternity of readers whose pleasure it has been to read the work of Richard Yates, I was excited to discover that a large and impressive biography had been written about the man. And I am even more pleased to report that Bailey does his subject no disservice; with the same unflinching honesty and scalpel-sharp prose Yates demanded from himself and his students, Bailey catalogues the many trials and tribulations of Yates' life. Depressing as his life was, and as reprehensible and inscrutable as his behavior sometimes was, Yates still comes across as heroic in his dedication to his craft---and a likable, eccentric and sometimes demented curmudgeon to boot. Not only is Yates' occupation as a writer explored at length, but other important facets of his character are fairly represented, such as his tender dedication to his daughters and the terminal bachelordom of his later years. That such an excellent biography should be written about Yates ten years after his death is testament to this writer's legacy, and hopefully portends the long overdue resurgence of his stock among those of us to whom great literatue matters.

A Moving Portrait of an Outstanding American Writer:
Beautifully written and thoughtfully conceived from start to finish, Blake Bailey's biography of the underappreciated American novelist and short story writer, Richard Yates, deserves considerable attention. Bailey does particularly well in situating Yates' life and work within the broader context of American literary and cultural currents of the time. If you don't know Yates' work, begin with his classic novel, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. As you read his works, consult Bailey's biography for a more complete understanding of how Yates' difficult life informs his art.