I'm reading this guy named Richard Yates. His stuff is absolutely amazing. I bought a collection of his short stories, but for now I'm trying to finish his book Revolutionary Road. It's about a couple in their late 20s living in the 1950s. They kind of go through a mid-life crisis. The book speaks volumes about the potential we have to be something, and the web of obligations and misrelations ot others that more often than not defines who we actually turn out to be. The book is kind of a downer, but it speaks volumes to me. For your enjoyment here are two favorite selections.
“And he was gradually aware that she felt it too; there was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications. They stood that way for a long time.”
“Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort….’I’m afraid I’m booked solid through the end of the month,’ says the executive, voluptuously nestling the phone at his cheek as he thumbs the leaves of his appointment calendar, and his mouth and eyes tat that moment betray a sense of deep security. The crisp, plentiful, day-sized pages before him prove that nothing unforeseen, no calamity of chance or fate can overtake him between now and the end of the month. Ruin and pestilence have been held at bay, and death itself will have to wait; he is booked solid.”
Posted by matt at June 25, 2003 11:46 PM | TrackBackOh my! How perfectly he describes the executive...a favorite species for the rousing my befuddlement...esp at airports.
Posted by: Jeannette at June 26, 2003 5:38 PMI wish I could afford their cool cell phones and laptops though...
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 26, 2003 7:56 PMI read a review of "Tragic Honesty: the Life and Works of Richard Yates," a biography by Blake Bailey. in the Wash Post on Sunday. Lowenthal (the reviewer) points out an interesting irony betweem the novelist's life and work. "The muse of the manque," as Lowenthal calls him, is shown by Bailey to be an author whose thematic motifs of "artists whose dreams exceed their talents," mirror his own plights. "Almost all of Yate's fiction was painstakingly (emphasis on pain) faithful to his own experiences," says Lowenthal. He was an alcoholic who struggled through divorce, mental illness, and poverty. Profound struggles, indeed, haunted the life of this artist carving a deep myre of adversity around his life's pursuits. This being the plight of his protagonists, its ironic that they never really surmounted these odds and he did. "Despite an almost ridiculous constellatin of hardships that would have thwarted many a lesser artist, he persevered to produce lasting classics of AMerican fiction. THe real tragedy of RIchard Yates' life, then, may be that he never realized just how un-Yatesian he was." This is good for you Matt- that he was un-Yatesian in practice- since this fingerpring he was able to create by surmounting such odds is currently stroking your interest. THank GOd for artists who aren't quitters! I'm going to bed now.
Posted by: vincenT at July 1, 2003 2:39 PMI just tore through another of his books today, Easter Parade, much more melancholy to me. But I really soaked it up all the same. I think I want to check out that review.
Posted by: matt at July 2, 2003 12:19 AMRead a book! Have more sex!
Posted by: mesh at November 5, 2003 11:16 AM