[.ca] Collected Stories of Richard Yates (ISBN 0413771261)

From Amazon.com:
Although nobody would describe the unflinching stories of Richard Yates as beach reading, a sunny day and a soothing breeze may provide the best possible antidote to the author's trademark gloom. But even if you open the book in the dead of winter, don't expect to put it down, for Yates will draw you in despite yourself. Like the English novelist Anita Brookner--or, more to the point, like his protégé Raymond Carver--he is attracted to small lives. And like a diviner, he seeks out and locates precisely those moments when this smallness is sensed by his characters. The protagonist of "The Canal," for example, spent most of World War II behind a desk, serving on the European front only during the final months of the conflict. At a postwar cocktail party, however, Miller and his wife encounter a former military officer, and the two begin to exchange stories. It turns out that the officer was decorated for valor in the very same battle that occasioned a major dressing-down for Miller. "I'll put it this way," he was told by his exasperated superior. "You give me more goddamn trouble than all the rest of the men in this squad put together. You're more goddamn trouble than you're worth. You got an answer for that?" Obviously he didn't--and still doesn't. In an introduction to the 27 stories collected here, Richard Russo celebrates Yates's influence as a teacher at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Any reader of Raymond Carver, to take just one conspicuous example, will recognize the atmosphere of lonely despair, coupled with small ambitions, that he absorbed from his mentor. It's a fascinating study in literary ancestry, and offers yet another reason to pick up this essential and long-overdue volume. --Regina Marler

Yes Pain Whatsoever:
The first piece of writing I read by Richard Yates was "The Canal," which was featured in the New Yorker earlier this year, at about the time this collection came out (I'm sure it was entirely coincidental). It wasn't a flashy story, just a tale that's set in the 50's about two couples at a party and the personal embarrassment that ensues as the main character remembers what a woeful soldier he was, especially compared to the decorated soldier to whom he ends up talking for the good part of the night. What I remember best about this story are two moments: one, where the platoon commander tells the main character that he gives him more trouble than anybody else, more trouble than he's worth, and two, the cold ending where nothing is resolved. After reading this story, I read Revoluationary Road and then The Easter Parade (both amazing works), and then came back to finish what I'd started. "The Canal" is a good story, but it pales against the gems in this collection. Almost all of the stories from the first book, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, are just plain awesome. I'd say outside of "A Wrestler with Sharks" and "The B.A.R. Man," it's perfect. "Dr. Jack-O-Lantern" sets the stage for the black-comedy humiliations all the characters will be forced to endure. Yates spares no one from their designated doom, and boy, is it ever refreshing. The last story, "Builders," ends not as bitterly as the ones preceeding it, a fantastic way to finish the collection. The second book, Liars in Love, differs from Eleven on both structural- and scope-levels. These stories are fuller and longer, and the histories of the characters more fleshed out -- and yet thematically, they are identical to Eleven: characters' foolish dreams are all squashed, obliterated -- and deservedly so. There are two related stories in this collection that are just laugh-out-loud funny -- one of them is "Oh Joseph, I'm So Tired," and the title of the other one escapes me. They both feature the same batty mother, one who is not unlike Pookie of The Easter Parade. The gorgeous image of last story in the collection, "Saying Goodbye to Sally," may leave you in tears, so brace yourself. The third book is the uncollected stories, and while it's more uneven than the first two, it is still very enjoyable, and for writers, invaluable. It's wonderful to see how some of these stories, like "A Clinical Romance," didn't quite work; finding ways to fix it up is a nice little exercise. Both "An Evening at the Cote d'Azur" and "A Convalescent Ego" are fantastic, right up there with the best of the other two collections. Richard Russo's introduction is excellent -- his own "Yates story" is a nice personal tie-in, and everything he says is on the mark. Some might complain that Yates wrote too many stories using the same locale (the TB ward probably being the most prominent repeat offender), but I didn't feel that way. "No Pain Whatsoever" and "Out with the Old" may both take place in the ward, but they are completely different stories. If I had to pick a favorite, it'd probably be "A Glutton for Punishment." What a perfect last line! - SJW

Yates is always engaging.:
He's a little heavy and obvious, I suppose, but he still writes like an angel and takes you places you want to go. You may not think you want to go, but you do. He had a tough writer's life and was a nasty guy as a result, which is one reason everybody loves him. Said to have influenced Carver and company, but if you figure Carver's over-rated that's no compliment. Read a story in the bookstore before you order this one.

The Dark Side of the 1950's:
When soldiers came home from the war, they wanted everything to be normal, and that's just what they got. But buried underneath all the normalcy was human nature, roiling. This is America at its uncomfortable peak. My favorite stories are about soldiers and veterans--especially the ones taking place at TB wards in VA hospitals. The men who survived the Depression and fought the war are reduced to waiting and coughing in crowded wards, watched over by nurses and doctors. You could almost say, if you went a little too far, that these stories capture the uniformity and sterility of the '50's in a nutshell.

THE RING OF TRUTH. LIFE AS IT IS!:
A marvelous collection of short stories. I enjoyed it even more than his outstanding novel,"Revolutionary Road". Each of these slices of life caused me to recognize the truth of the interactions and the ultimate problems of human communication. As Richard Russo notes in his introduction, Yates focuses on our dreams and aspirations; mostly to be frustrated by the reality of day to day living. I rate this a "must read".

A 20th Century Master:
All the accolades describing Yates as a master of the short story form are correct. His work surely deserves a place alongside other greats of the form, including Delmore Schwartz, J. F. Powers, and Alice Munroe, to name a few. He writes about loneliness, ambition and failure better than almost anyone, and is, in the best sense of the word, a writer's writer. But not only can you learn a great deal about writing from him: you also learn a lot about the human heart. The publication of these stories together is a literary event of the first order.