American novelist and short story writer, Richard Yates (1926-1992), made a name for himself with his debut novel Revolutionary Road (1961.) Like all of his work published during his lifetime, it met with critical acclaim. The fine artistry of his work, however, did not translate into commercial success. Not one of his books upon first hardcover release would sell more than 12,000 copies. By the time of his death in 1992 all of his novels were out of print.
The first in-depth biography of Yates A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, by Blake Bailey, was published in 2003. A feature film of Revolutionary Road, directed by Sam Mendes, was released in 2008.
Liars in Love - Seven Short Stories
Liars in Love was the last collection of short stories that Yates published in his lifetime, in 1981. The first was the plaintively titled Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962), which was the immediate follow up to Revolutionary Road.
The stories in Liars in Love are all highly autobiographical and written in Yates's trademark realism. Their truth and honesty immediately hook the reader in. While the stories may be located in the cultural milieu of America between the 1940s and 1970s, the psychological interiors Yates delineates are so intense and real that the reader almost feels like they are reading their own autobiography, irrespective and time and place. Awkward and awful situations that everyone has grappled with are laid bare.
There are the horrible encounters with people who are either vain, tragic, self-loathing or pathetic. Uncomfortable confrontations with lovers and their domestic blow-ups are described in full details. Yates is brilliant at describing the deep emotions people helplessly betray through the involuntary body language they can barely suppress: the slightest wince of the face or tremor of the shoulders betray all.
Isolation is a major theme, and in many of the stories characters find themselves in the ironic situation of feeling like strangers amongst their own immediate family. It's all embarrassingly human.
Thin Veil Between Fiction and Real Life
Most of the stories are very thinly veiled autobiographies. Yates throughout his life worked as a speech writer for Attorney General Robert Kennedy and a publicity writer for Remington Rand Corporation. He also worked briefly in Hollywood as a screenwriter, writing an adaptation of the William Styron novel, Lie Down in Darkness. Yates also served during the Second World War.
All of these occupations are assigned to the characters in Liars in Love. It seemed Yates by this time in his career kept only the thinnest veil between his real life and fiction. And the writer makes plain he obviously felt himself to be a big loser and failure. So many times there are ambitions his characters entertain that light optimistically, only to quickly fizzle out when reality starves them of oxygen. Real life here is cruel to the weak, or those who simply can't cope.
Richard Yates's fiction puts the grim flipside of cheerful American optimism on show. In a culture that prizes success - sexual and financial - so highly, it seems inevitable that a large part of the population will not be able to live up to these ideas. The result is a wasteland of human emotional wreckage.
Liars in Love, published by Vintage Classics (2008.) Originally published 1981. ISBN-13: 978-0099518594
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