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| Richard Yates, illustration by Bill Russell for SF Chronicle |
At this point of the semester, I'm struck by the anti-ephiphanic endings of the first two stories. As O'Nan says, they're "plain and sad and inescapable." There's a sense of present and future failure. I'm caught like a deer-in-headlights before the dirtiness of the characters and their talk and their lives, especially in such quick succession after Flannery O'Connor. As I read, my head fills with Mad Men antics and attitudes, and it doesn't make me feel superior or in the least nostalgic--instead, I get the whiff of today's American culture as well--could I (or you) ever depict our own era with this clarity?
Then I reach this passage and I feel Alison's panic about being just one person in a world without end. Yates, in the character of a ten year old girl, writes: "I'm talking about something else. Because you see there are millions and millions of people in new York--more people than you can possibly imagine, ever--and most of them are doing something that makes a sound. Maybe talking, or playing the radio, maybe closing doors, maybe putting their forks down on their plates if they're having dinner, or dropping their shoes if they're going to bed--and because there are so many of them, all those little sounds add up and come together in a kind of hum. But it's so faint--so very, very faint--that you can't hear it unless you listen very carefully for a long time."
Here's to ending blog posts with an epiphany! Because I'm still addicted, and because this story sinks/rises/deigns (depending on how you look at it) to confer a kind of "knowledge" for one to live with: Richard Yates feels like someone who knows how to listen.
Then I reach this passage and I feel Alison's panic about being just one person in a world without end. Yates, in the character of a ten year old girl, writes: "I'm talking about something else. Because you see there are millions and millions of people in new York--more people than you can possibly imagine, ever--and most of them are doing something that makes a sound. Maybe talking, or playing the radio, maybe closing doors, maybe putting their forks down on their plates if they're having dinner, or dropping their shoes if they're going to bed--and because there are so many of them, all those little sounds add up and come together in a kind of hum. But it's so faint--so very, very faint--that you can't hear it unless you listen very carefully for a long time."
Here's to ending blog posts with an epiphany! Because I'm still addicted, and because this story sinks/rises/deigns (depending on how you look at it) to confer a kind of "knowledge" for one to live with: Richard Yates feels like someone who knows how to listen.
I’m sure I could have guessed that Yates’s style is predominantly 50s/60s realism without reading the O’Nan introduction. The heavily stylist dialogue in “The Best of Everything” and “No Paint Whatsoever” made me think of “The Catcher in the Rye”. (As contrived as it is, that novel is my primary reference for that setting.) Everything’s slow-moving, calm, but for unexpected bursts of emotion. The two stories had very similar dynamics, what with the characters being unclear of their own feelings and seeming to have no true control over their own emotions. This made me think of “The Catcher in the Rye” as well.
ReplyDeleteThe introduction compared Yates to Fitzgerald, and it’s interesting to look at Yates’s style in these stories as a middle-class, decades-older take on “The Great Gatsby”. I would say that “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” might accomplish that feeling more thoroughly, if only because it encompasses a broader range of feelings and a broader scope of characters in a setting that is made familiar to the reader over time. It strives to instill a sense of normalcy to abnormal circumstances. The narrator has his opinions of events, but doesn’t take part in the main action, like Nick Carroway.
“Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” also made me think of a musical I was in during high school, “Wonderful Town”. It was about a Greenwich Village apartment complex in the 1950s and starred the sort of wacky come-and-go cast introduces exactly the way Sloane plays out her cast list in her radio script. I also thought of the memoir “Running with Scissors,” because of the characterization of the mother.
What I find interesting about Yates’s stories is that they’re highly stylistic but also relatable – I keep referencing them to other things I’ve read. I almost feel as though I’ve read these stories before, even though the plots were new to me.
When O’Nan started listing the characteristics of Yates’s writing, I started highlighting the parts that interested me. Of course, that just lead me to highlight almost half of page 1097—the “people on the fringes still aspiring to conventional success,” the “downtrodden” people, those who “want to believe in their own unrecognized promise,” and those who feel that “Middle-class life is spiritually vacant,” etc. To me, these combine to create fascinating characters, and when topped with the promise for a world that was “purposefully not quirky or picturesque, just plan and sad and inescapable,” I was ready to dive in.
ReplyDeleteThe text itself proved to be satisfying too. It obviously reflected Yates’s not-so-embraced title of being a “realist,” as there aren’t any cavemen (Richter, “Cavemen in the Hedges”), no in-your face, graphic scenes (Gaitskill, “Secretary”), and no impossible odysseys (Cheever, “The Swimmer”). These stories are “real” in that they have no fireworks or shock-and-awe, but are about relatively normal people with relatively normal problems. This works for and against these stories, as some of them can feel dragged-down and dull, and make me ask questions like “so what,” (like in real life), yet they also give “the little things” more weight (like in real life). I’m thinking of “The Best of Everything,” where I thought the story had something of a slow start, and I didn’t find myself caring about Ralph’s anticlimactic day of work at Friday. However, when he opened the door to the house and everyone he loves is there singing to him, I felt it. Nothing wild or extraordinary was happening, but I believed in the emotion, the characters, and, at the risk of being too flowery about this, in the capability of real-life people to surprise me.
I’m definitely agreeing with Alexis when she says that “Everything is slow-moving, calm, but for unexpected bursts of emotion.” The slowness of the action and apt description of human interaction (“His mouth was smiling and his eyes frowning to show it had been a foolish question” (1113)), provide no fanfare, but work to build up to the more intense, dramatic moments.
Ah, finally, an author (although not contemporary) that I have not read yet. I enjoyed these stories quite a bit. Specifically I liked how Yates nailed his characters' voices. Of course, I feel like if I tried to write characters like this, it would come off as gimmicky and inauthentic. But because Yates lived in and knew so well the time period he was writing from, it works. I agree with Catherine these stories have a sort of Mad Men quality to them. Also, I had no idea Revolutionary Road was a story by Yates. But man, I can see it now. That movie left me feeling the same way these stories did: profoundly empty. I can do nothing but sit in bed and wonder "well, what am I supposed to do now?"
ReplyDeleteBesides the distinct character voices, I enjoyed the inevitability of these stories. I liked how they just dropped off at the instead of trying to come to some profound conclusion. In "The Best of Everything" it's clear Grace and Ralph are not meant for each other, even before the marriage. And yet in the end I think it's inevitable that they will be married, that the distance between them can only grow. And in "No Pain Whatsoever" the story ends with Myra leaving her sick (husband?) at the hospital and going home with her lover, not that she's happy, she's quite miserable, but what else is there to do? Nothing. Life just keeps going forward on the same downward trajectory. Man, that's "deeeepressing" as Liz Morris would say.
I sort of wonder if he hated the label of "realist" what did he consider himself? What else could he be besides a realist? Or was it just that he didn't want to be labeled as anything at all?
In other news, I read the O'Nan story in the Neil Gaiman anthology. It's very short and I'd suggest others check it out as well. I don't really think it's doing the same sort of thing as Yates, though. At least, I don't think O'Nan captures the essence of a time period the same way Yates does. I guess they are similar in that they are both realistic stories? Maybe someone else who read it could point out the ways which you see Yates influencing O'Nan because it isn't 100% apparent to me.
I wanted to start with my favorite image from these stories, "dirty crust if snow lay shriveled on the sidewalk, and cardboard images of Santa Clause leered out of closed liquor stores." I thought this was perfect in that elusive way that makes a reader imagine exactly what you want without describing everything. I think this is one of Yates strong points. When he sets a scene he only needs a couple details then his dialogue drives the rest of the story. Even the scene where Ralph's buddies (saying friends just doesn't feel right) pile into Eddie's house is driven by their singing. Normally when an author tries this, I get to the end of a passage and feel the need to reread it to get some setting or something to ground me. With Yeats I didn’t even notice. I didn’t even think about the setting until I looked over a project for Living Writer’s on Gary Fincke’s writing where I’d made a note to talk about his stories driven by dialogue.
ReplyDeleteThe voices that everyone has been talking about are the reason it works. At first I tripped Ralph’s voice, when he was talking to Grace on the telephone, but every voice quickly became distinct and normal for me. I was thinking about “The Best of Everything” for a long time after I also recognized the Mad Men qualities, and while I was trying to separate the events in the show from those in the story, I realized even the thoughts of each character were distinct. When either is thinking about the separation between their friends and their significant other, they have vastly different ways of phrasing their thoughts. I’m not explaining this very well.
The point is, I admire Yates for the way he can understand and verbalize everything his characters are thinking and feeling so clearly. It’s not that I question when the characters in other stories by other writers speak, but with all of Yates’ characters I feel like when there is so much more is being said. Their dialogue speaks to the setting, their character, the accumulation of their emotions and thoughts. It just feels so heavy. But it moves the story, pushing toward the end.
Feeling a little inspired this go around. I think Yates is definitely an author I could get into. I particularly like how O'Nan talked about Yates' characters: "No matter how downtrodden his people are, they want to believe in their own unrecognized promise." That really struck me because I feel like I see this sort of person all around me when I'm home. So, I tried my hand at creating that type of character in the flash fiction below.
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Kathy might be promoted to bank manager next week. It meant a lot more work and a raise, thank God, but more than that it meant she was doing good work. She thought Don might appreciate that, but when he came home that night she could tell his back was hurting him. He let his footsteps fall more heavily, like he stomping, when his back hurt.
“When’ll the food be done?” he asked as he set his lunch bag on the table.
Kathy marked her place in the book with her finger and glanced up at him from the couch. “About another half hour. I put the meat in at quarter after five.”
Don grunted and hunted through the fridge for a can of Pepsi. He cracked it open and took a large gulp. “Well, then, I’m going to be in the garage.”
“Okay.”
Don had a friend’s car set up in the garage, parked where he would keep his truck, which was now left outside for the time being. He had been working on it every night for five days. He said he was almost done with it, but Kathy knew he’d find something else wrong with it or something else he could change to improve it. She didn't think it would do anything to help his back to work on the car tonight, but Don did what he wanted.
While he spent his nights in the garage, listening to whatever played on the classic rock radio station, Kathy spent her night inside, reading. She'd curl up on the couch, toss a blanket over her legs, and break in a new romance novel every week. She’d keep the news on at first and turn it off when Entertainment Tonight came on. Sometimes she’d leave it on for Dancing with the Stars when it aired twice a week. Typically, she’d fall asleep on the couch some time after nine. She would wake up when Don came inside for a beer at ten and then she would retreat to the bedroom, read another chapter, and fall asleep.
As she checked the chicken in the pan half an hour later, Kathy tried to plan out her conversation. It was easy to talk about work—his work, especially. She could sneak it in there at some point. He would like to hear about it. He would be proud of her.
I must be hooked on epiphanies, because man, were those first two stories hard to bear. I just read Stewart O’Nan’s introduction, and I like what he says about Yates’s language in “The Best of Everything” because it captures my mixed feelings about the story, as well as “No Pain Whatsoever.” O’Nan writes, “Yates’s language is stripped down, his tone—like their lives—flat and emotionless.” While I recognize the intentionality and the achievement of that use of “stripped down” language, nevertheless its effect on me is that I wind up largely bored. O’Nan continues, “That vague sense of letdown colors the story a dingy gray.” Again, this is apparently what Richard Yates set out to do—to capture life at its most quietly desperate and miserable—ergo, mission accomplished. But who wants to read a story that is accurately described as being the color “dingy gray”? That’s just my opinion, and to be fair to Yates, “The Best of Everything” and “No Pain Whatsoever” did leave me feeling what they should have. I felt the misery, the emptiness, the futility, and all the dingy gray feelings, but among them I also felt somewhat bored. These two stories simply struck me as more of what I’ve come to expect from anthologized short fiction, and they didn’t particularly move me or inspire me or teach me anything. (I must sound like Kim in past weeks, although ironically Kim has spoken more favorably of these stories. Is that ironic? Probably not.)
ReplyDeleteBy now you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t included “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” in my paragraph of disappointment, nor have I said anything about it. This is because this third story actually surprised me, and I quite enjoyed it. I seem to recall that earlier in the semester Catherine mentioned something about teaching nonfiction in one of her other classes, and it has sparked some thoughts about how similar or different these two genres of prose are. I wonder if we might revisit that subject a little bit in the context of “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired,” because what struck me about this story was how much it felt like a memoir rather than a work of fiction. I make that statement partially by virtue of the fact that this story has a first-person narrator, which provided a stark contrast from the “stripped down” omniscient third-person narrators of the previous two stories. The distinction doesn’t end there, however, because I found that so much is made of what the first-person narrator does and does not remember, an arguably necessary consideration for a writer of memoir. On page 1118, “[S]he said Hastings-on-Hudson remained the happiest time of her life, and that made me envious because I could scarcely remember it at all.” On the next page, Edith says Billy is too young to remember their father’s singing, and when he insists he does remember, she says, “But I mean really remember.” On page 1124, “I can never see a jar of Ovaltine on a grocery shelf without remembering those times.” Later on the same page, “The one I remember best was the time Edith told me about the sound of the city.” If I reread this story with an eye toward memory, I could probably find more examples and perhaps even write a decent paper on the subject. It’s all the looking back and the “years later” asides that made the ending somewhat troubling for me. In the final lines, Yates writes, “We would probably never see Bart again—or if we ever did, he would probably not want to see us.” What’s this “probably” all of a sudden? Billy isn’t speaking from that moment in time; he’s reflecting on events that happened many years ago, and he can plainly tell us whether or not he ever saw Bart again. But maybe that’s exclusively the impulse of a nonfiction writer, and perhaps this is an indicator of something that separates the two genres. Yates and other fiction writers can play with memory and perspective and sequence of events (because they never happened) in ways that a nonfiction writer would have more difficulty doing, lest the reader get confused or doubt the accuracy of the material.
This is a creative response based on the reading
ReplyDelete“I ain’t nuthin’ to do with it,” Old Nicky said as he twirled the tooth pick in his mouth. He stared straight into the officer’s eyes, his smile growing bigger as each second passed by. He squinted from the bright lights up above. He pulled down his Yankees ball cap to cover his eyes and flicked the tooth pick away. He pulled another one from his dirty grey shirt pocket and stuck it hard until it almost caused his swollen up gums to bleed.
“Then why are you smiling,” the officer said.
“Ya git somethin’ in yar teeth. It mighty funny if ya ast me,” Old Nicky said. The officer touched his mouth and realized that the suspect was right. Lieutenant James Texen walked from the room behind the glass and walked in telling the officer to leave.
“Hawdy sir. Ya trying to make me talk too?” Old Nicky asked hiccupping in between his sentences.
“Are you drunk or just plain stupid?” Texen said.
“’Xcuse me?”
“You heard me you piece of shit. We have been talking to you for hours on end and still we haven’t gotten anywhere. So you have to tell me now or you aren’t going to ever get out of here.”
“Ya mean aint gunna git. Say it right mista. Ya makin’ me look bad.”
“From where I’m sitting, the only one who is speaking correctly is the one who is sober and with the badge. Now tell me where you were and how you know the victims.”
“Ya mean Richie and Laurie? Hmm…neva heard of them,” Old Nicky said. Texen’s face grew very red and he tried to hold all of his anger inside but the sight of Old Nicky’s smiling face just pushed him over the edge. He grabbed Old Nicky by his shirt and brought him across to him.
“You are going to tell me or I’m beat that stupid smile off your face,” Texen said.
“I like to see ya try. Not any one can,” Old Nicky said. He blew some hot air into Texen’s face and Texen fell back with the sour rotten onion smell flowing to his mouth.
“Argh, what the hell.”
“Hehehe. Shoulda neva gittin’ me dat sandwich. I orda only onionz. Boy ya should see dat look on yar face.”
“We are done here,” Texen said as he got up.
“Aw, cume on. Itz been wha, like three hourz since ya tried to git whateva it iz from me. I ain’t done yet. I gut plenty of time.”
“Well I don’t. I have to find the killer now.”
“Good luck den. Cuz ya won’t find dim.”
“Why not?”
“Cuz I only know where he iz.”
“But you said-”
“I didn’t say I would tell ya. I’m not dat stupid.”
“What will it take to get you talk.”
“Hm…a bribe? datz new. What do ya have?”
“What?”
“Ya know. If ya want a name, ya gotta give me somethin’…somethin’ precious. Ya know like Rumpelstilskin.”
“I’m not making a deal with you.”
I am presenting on Yates tomorrow so I don’t want to give anything way, but, I like him. His vision of daily life is so bleak and depressing, and I adore it. No matter how good the situation, like an impending marriage, he finds a way to show total sadness. In “The Best of Everything” there is nothing terribly wrong with the relationship. There is no abuse or alcoholism. The couple are just two very different people. They are both leaving close friendships to march toward inevitability. They are not angry or deeply saddened, just quietly disappointed. Yates is also fantastic at taking an already miserable situation and finding new ways to make it look even sadder. In “No Pain Whatsoever” Yates takes heartbreaking situation of a man slowly dying from TB in front of his wife and adds the fun of the marriage itself failing. The wife spends a mostly silent, uncomfortable night with her husband and then decides to sleep with the drunken guy outside the hospital. She doesn’t even come off as an evil person. More quiet sadness and totally understandable moral failings. People call Yates a pure realist, and in most ways he is, but I bet most people think that it won’t be realism that applies to them. I certainly hope that if my wife were dying in front of me I could stay faithful but I have no idea what that experience is like. If I really put myself there I can see myself making the same decision. The same goes for if I was marrying someone who I felt wasn’t right for me. Yates puts us in situations we pray we’re never in and shows us how understandable being making mistakes can be. In fact as I write this I’m having a realization that it isn’t very good or insightful. I’m realizing that I can barely read or write. Oh God, the epiphany! (bonus points)
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely sure what sparked the idea for this creative response, but it came to mind while I was reading. Now that I have written it, this response seems a bit more like an opposite style of writing, rather than being similar Yates.
ReplyDelete“Agent Hood, do you copy?”
“In position, sir,” said the girl in her late teens. She wore tight black spandex, with a blood-red cape, attached to the back of a hood. She had an earpiece and attached microphone, so she was able to communicate with her superior officer. She had blonde hair, but it was tightly pulled back and concealed. There were numerous gun holsters on her body; two for pistols on her left thigh, two for revolvers on her right side, and one for another, holding a pistol on her ankle. She also had a utility belt equipped. She was standing atop a skyscraper in Manhattan.
“Your mission is simple, Hood, infiltrate the G.R.A.N.D.M.A. corporation, and plant the poison muffins. If this is successful, we will be able to monopolize the baked goods industry for this city!”
“Very well, Commander Hawking,”
“And Hood, do this with as few casualties as possible.”
“I make no promises.” Hood’s voice was calm and collected, but sounded bored and tired. Hood stood up and walked to the corner of the rooftop. She gazed at the building adjacent to her. It was twice as tall, with all glass windows. There was a large sign about three quarters of the way up. It read: “Grand Recipes AND Muffin Accessories, GRANDMA.”
Hood took a few steps back, and with a running start, she jumped outward, off the building. She fell quickly, past many dark rooms. Hood slid her hands into identical slits in the bottom end of her cape. Outstretching her arms, she glided to a window, with the aide of her cape.
Hood reached into a pocket on her belt to retrieve a glass-cutting knife. She jammed the blade straight through the glass, and began sawing a circular entrance into the Grandma facility. Once cut, Hood gave the circular outline a solid punch, causing the glass to fall inward, leaving a convenient entrance.
The room was dark as Hood reached to her belt for a flashlight. She quickly took a pistol from her thigh as well. The room resembled a basic meeting room, with a long table in the center and several chairs surrounding.
“Shit! Wrong room,” Hood said into her headset.
“You are directly three floors below the target. You need to locate the stairwell, and find the CEO office,” said the man on the other end of Hood’s call.
“Understood,”
Catherine told me during my conference yesterday that I’d like Richard Yates, and she was right. His stories resonated with me, though I’m not one hundred percent sure why. I think it’s because they all felt real to me. The characters spoke in realistic dialogue, something I’d expect to hear on the street. The voices are distinct, particularly in “The Best of Everything.” Yates writes in a dialect when Ralph and his friend Eddie speak. This is something I haven’t experienced much of in my own reading, at least to the extent it is used in this story (with the exception of Hagrid from Harry Potter, of course). I’ve never tried to show an accent or specific way of talking in my writing like that, mostly because I don’t think I know any dialect well enough to master it and translate it onto paper.
ReplyDeleteThese characters are put in everyday situations: fading relationships, absent family members, longing for something more. There are thousands of Graces and Ralphs in the world, and yet Yates makes me feel for these two people. Ralph dreads losing the best days of his life—the time he spends with his friends—when he marries Grace, and I felt Grace’s disappointment when Ralph barely notices her when he drops by with his new suitcase. I love the reality of the stories, especially in their endings.
I’ve always struggled with endings, thinking I need some life-changing epiphany or grandiose lesson, but lately I’ve learned otherwise. The best endings are the real ones, the ones that don’t tie everything up in a nice bow. I like leaving things open for interpretation, leaving room for the reader to wonder what happens next. I can ask that question with all three of Yates’s stories. Will Grace and Ralph get married, and will their unhappiness continue? Will Myra continue cheating on her husband, justifying it by believing she’s sort of a widow, anyway? Will Billy and Edith’s mother ever feel like a success? I view short stories as glimpses into characters’ lives through those pay-as-you-go binoculars on top of the Empire State Building: their lives continue after your time watching them runs out.
I definitely liked reading all three of Richard Yates’ stories. I normally like happy endings or at least bittersweet endings – sad with a touch of happiness but these didn’t quite have bittersweet endings – they were real, these things happen all the time (or they did and they still could only in ‘modern’ context). I just curled up in a library armchair and read all three straight through.
ReplyDeleteI could believe in all the characters and I liked the fact that Yates’ allows their lives to continue onward even after the story on the page is over.
The thing I noticed about Yates’ stories is the fact that relationship – specifically married relationships – seems to be a theme (at least in these three stories). In the first story with Grace and Ralph we see the beginning of marriage that may be doomed to fail. The second story shows us a marriage that has continued but due to the continued illness of the husband, Myra has struggled to stave off the advances of a ‘friend’ – Jack and finally succumbed. A marriage in jeopardy. And for Billy’s mother we see her failed marriage, her lying lover and her attempts at success after marriage. The beginning, middle and end of marriage – unhappy marriages.
I wouldn’t mind reading more about these characters – how they move on or they don’t, how they succeed or don’t. I just find them all strangely fascinating and much to my surprise, I wasn’t bored by them.
I was also fascinated by the other characters in “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” especially Bart and the destroyed relationship between him and the mother (as tutor of her children) at the end. More common human failings and no one comes off as evil (to paraphrase James.) No one is evil or the bad guy - everyone's on an equal footing in these stories. They're not fighting each other as so much they are fighting their own inner selves and self-doubts and I love it. A breath of fresh air from the usual black/white, good & evil in today's media. (especially in children's stories. Children's writers need to write like this.)
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