Richard Yates

Stories explore the experiences and troubled relationships of middle class inhabitants of New York City, who struggle with their loneliness

Short Stories

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

Bob Simone

(This is for both Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love, which I read as a single volume.)

The first couple stories are fantastic, but then themes and characters and events start repeating. Not as part of some connected whole, but like he is recycling things that he used in other stories. I'm not opposed in principle, but it really takes me out of the moment when I see a characters that bears strong similarities to one from another story (or another book of his) that is doing the same thing the first character did. Not only that, but it makes it hard to distinguish the stories, especially when they aren't read immediately back to back. ("Was this the writer who wrote behind a screen for himself, or for the other guy? And I know he doesn't like his wife, but which wife is she?") Part of this problem may have stemmed from the fact that I read both Liars in Love and 11 Kinds of Loneliness back-to-back, because they were bound in the same volume.

Not sure if this is indicative of a feeling towards short stories, or just just this collection of short stories. I don't really like procedurals though, so I bet it's the medium.

Steve Metcalf from the Slate Culture Gabfest (highly, highly recommended) recommended Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, Liars in Love, and 11 Kinds of Loneliness. I recommend Revolutionary Road and the Easter Parade.

Trevor Berrett

For my complete review, go here:

http://mookse.wordpress.com/2008/10/2...

Maurice FitzGerald

Catherine

First published in 1962, a year after Revolutionary Road, this sublime collection of stories seems even more powerful today. Out of the lives of Manhattan office workers, a cab driver seeking immortality, frustrated would-be novelists, suburban men and their yearning, neglected women, Richard Yates creates a haunting mosaic of the 1950s, the era when the American dream was finally coming true - and just beginning to ring a little hollow.

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness Short Stories

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