's Best of 2001
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

From Publishers Weekly
Bitterness, loneliness and lack of fulfillment are the central themes of this grim posthumous collection. Yates (1926-1992) was the consummate writer's writer; his fiction influenced a generation of young admirers, including Andre Dubus and Richard Ford, but he has yet to achieve the name recognition of many of his disciples. This collection of 27 stories, seven previously unpublished, but most reprints from two long-out-of-print collections issued in 1962 and 1981, may change that. Yates is a gifted storyteller, particularly skilled at making emotional pain and sadness starkly real as his characters manage to live below even their own meager expectations. Compulsive failure Walter Henderson, the protagonist of "A Glutton for Punishment," plans his life as a series of expected defeats. In "The Canal" two veterans play at macho one-upmanship with phony war stories as their wives snicker with disdain. "A Clinical Romance" tells of the bickering and despair of men confined to a tuberculosis ward in a gloomy Virginia hospital. "Evening on the Cte d'Azur" is an achingly sad tale of lonely navy wives with too much time on their hands and too little self-esteem. Pitch-perfect in their gloomy detachment, these stories about the fractured relationships of lovers, friends, parents and children, and husbands and wives ring all too true. Yates's powerful dialogue and narrative make it entirely clear that no matter what, people are going to be only as happy as they have already made up their minds to be. (May 3)Forecast: A heartfelt introduction by Richard Russo expresses just how much Yates once meant to younger writers. If reviews make the stories' appeal similarly plain to today's readers, the collection should do well; in any case, it will remain a strong backlist title for years to come. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Yates, who died in 1992, was never commercially successful, but his work was highly respected by other writers. This book includes stories from his collections Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love, as well as nine other stories, seven of which have not been previously published. Autobiographical threads are found throughout: young soldiers in the waning days of World War II, tuberculosis patients, struggling writers, alcoholism. Despite the general pessimism of the stories, they never seem contrived or self-indulgent. The earlier stories' economy gives way to a relatively formless later style, which presents more character development and subtext than is found in many novels. Recommended for all academic and larger public libraries. Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
No public library catering to short story lovers should be without this career-encompassing collection of the work of an important American story writer. Yates never sold very well during his life (he died in 1992), but he is remembered among literary-fiction readers for at least one of his novels, Revolutionary Road (1961), as well as for his short stories. Without ever seeming to retread the same story, Yates nonetheless worked and reworked the theme of personal failure, exploring its ramifications and explanations. But with each new story, each new variation on that theme, he brings his readers to a closer, clearer picture of frustration and loneliness--and how they relate to lack of achievement. Many of his stories are set during World War II, notably among them "Jody Rolled the Bones," about how an army platoon came to appreciate its training sergeant. All of his stories have an old-fashioned air about them--not necessarily in their telling, but in the settings and situations. That said, Yates still deserves a wider audience among contemporary fiction readers. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

A literary event of the highest order, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates brings together Yates's peerless short fiction in a single volume for the first time. Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most accomplished writers of America's postwar generation, and his work has inspired such diverse talents as Richard Ford, Ann Beattie, André Dubus, Robert Stone, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. This collection, as powerful as Yates's beloved Revolutionary Road, contains the stories of his classic collections Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (a book hailed as "the New York equivalent of Dubliners") and Liars in Love; it also features nine new stories, seven of which have never been published.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers, the grim humor that attends life on a tuberculosis ward, or the moments of terrified peace experienced by American soldiers in World War II, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates examines every frayed corner of the American Dream. Yates's stories, as empathetic as they are unforgiving, are like no others in our nation's literature. Published with a moving introduction by the novelist Richard Russo this collection will stand as its author's final masterpiece.

Author Biography: Richard Yates is the author of the novels Revolutionary Road, A Special Providence, Disturbing the Peace, The Easter Parade, A Good School, Young Hearts Crying, and Cold Spring Harbor, as well as the story collections Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love. He died in 1992.

FROM THE CRITICS

Anthony Quinn - New York Times Book Review

Yates's marvelous short stories . . . are collected here for the first time in a single volume. . . . Yates [was] a laureate of romantic loneliness . . . [a] superb collection . . .

Publishers Weekly

Bitterness, loneliness and lack of fulfillment are the central themes of this grim posthumous collection. Yates (1926-1992) was the consummate writer's writer; his fiction influenced a generation of young admirers, including Andre Dubus and Richard Ford, but he has yet to achieve the name recognition of many of his disciples. This collection of 27 stories, seven previously unpublished, but most reprints from two long-out-of-print collections issued in 1962 and 1981, may change that. Yates is a gifted storyteller, particularly skilled at making emotional pain and sadness starkly real as his characters manage to live below even their own meager expectations. Compulsive failure Walter Henderson, the protagonist of "A Glutton for Punishment," plans his life as a series of expected defeats. In "The Canal" two veterans play at macho one-upmanship with phony war stories as their wives snicker with disdain. "A Clinical Romance" tells of the bickering and despair of men confined to a tuberculosis ward in a gloomy Virginia hospital. "Evening on the C te d'Azur" is an achingly sad tale of lonely navy wives with too much time on their hands and too little self-esteem. Pitch-perfect in their gloomy detachment, these stories about the fractured relationships of lovers, friends, parents and children, and husbands and wives ring all too true. Yates's powerful dialogue and narrative make it entirely clear that no matter what, people are going to be only as happy as they have already made up their minds to be. (May 3) Forecast: A heartfelt introduction by Richard Russo expresses just how much Yates once meant to younger writers. If reviews make the stories' appeal similarly plain to today's readers, the collection should do well; in any case, it will remain a strong backlist title for years to come. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal