Why You Should Read Richard Yates
The year 2007, among other things, will be known for me as the year I discovered the fiction of Richard Yates. His 1961 novel "Revolutionary Road" is probably the most penetrating "suburban novel" I've ever read.
The Guardian profiles him, and the renaissance his work is now enjoying, here:
According to David Hare: 'Yates belongs with Fitzgerald and Hemingway as the three unarguably great American novelists of the 20th century. The highest compliment I can pay him is to say that he writes like a screenwriter, not like a novelist. He wants you to see everything he describes. Dramatic writers find novels unbearable because novelists mostly junk word on word, incident on incident... Yates describes everything with deadly precision, then goes on cutting everything closer and closer to the bone.
That jives with my reading of the novel. There are scenes in there that are just plain uncomfortable to read, because you rarely see authors willing to get that emotionally unflinching.
The Guardian profiles him, and the renaissance his work is now enjoying, here:
According to David Hare: 'Yates belongs with Fitzgerald and Hemingway as the three unarguably great American novelists of the 20th century. The highest compliment I can pay him is to say that he writes like a screenwriter, not like a novelist. He wants you to see everything he describes. Dramatic writers find novels unbearable because novelists mostly junk word on word, incident on incident... Yates describes everything with deadly precision, then goes on cutting everything closer and closer to the bone.
That jives with my reading of the novel. There are scenes in there that are just plain uncomfortable to read, because you rarely see authors willing to get that emotionally unflinching.
posted by Mike at 10:19 PM
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