We read about Richard Yates

The American critic Blake Balei wrote a thorough biography of the writer Richard Yates (about Yits. See my essay “ We read Richard Yates ” in the Trv-Fuck No. 257 of July 3, 2018). I turned to this book, knowing very little about her hero (and nothing at all - about the author).

By the genre and style, Bailey’s book is similar to the best samples of our ZhZL - the actual material is balanced by the heat of the author’s intonation, so 600 pages of dense text are easily read.

I must say that Yates as a writer for a wide audience (for General Reader) is available to us - the best of Yates is in Russian translations - however, the tragedy of his fate is much less known.

Yeats’s personal circumstances were largely determined by the fact that he was a severe alcoholic and, in addition, as it was once customary to say, he had “weak lungs”. Chronic pneumonia acquired in the trenches of World War II in combination with nicotine addiction not only did not promise Yeitsu a “long and happy life”, but they could quickly reduce it to the grave ...

Nevertheless, Yeats created seven novels, two collections of his stories were also published. Although most of the life of Yates was unhealthy, frankly poor and unsettled, he remained a demanding teacher and attentive friend, was invariably open to his students, with some of them they kept constant connection, was ready to critically read them of their still immature experiments, and he was merciless in their assessments.

After two unsuccessful marriages, Yates lived alone, and in a rented room where there was only a table for a typewriter; There was nothing in the refrigerator but alcohol and coffee; on the wall -photo of three daughters; And everywhere - dead cockroaches.

It would be an exaggeration to say that a chronically ill Yates turned to the doctors: his attitude to his own health was, to put it mildly, “peculiar”. For example, in order to maintain clarity of thought, he pushed the intake of vital drugs for the night hours, or even avoided them even.

In the last year of his life, Yates could breathe only with the help of an oxygen mask, but nevertheless continued to smoke continuously - and to write continuously. At the same time - as far as one can judge from excerpts from his letters and stories of colleagues and friends - Yates could indignant, but not complain.

In 1974, to the question of what the pathos of the novel “Revolutionary Road” was, Yates replied that the fate of the heroes confirms that the spirit of great changes in 1776 was dispelled, so by the end of the 1950s the country was at a dead end ... The tragic directness with which this worldview was expressed today is read today.

In conclusion - a few words about the book of Blake Balei. Not to mention how scrupulously the presentation is documented, the book was remarkably written: Bailey happily escaped the stylistic “standard” , teaching, entertaining, which should be so many authors with the best intentions. I got used to reading a lot and read quickly, but the “light” texts cause me suspicion or irritation ...

It seems to me that Bailey has reached a successful balance in the presentation of the details of the difficult fate of Yates and the unchanging faith in the importance of writing efforts.

Rebekah Frumkin