Richard Yates Tao Lin Epublasopafs

September 2010 Lorian Long fiction Richard Yates by Tao Lin. I finished Tao Lin's Richard Yates five weeks ago and started writing this review five weeks later. Unlike any reading experience I've had, Richard Yates numbed me. Richard Yates By Tao Lin Melville House 171 pp; $17.95 Reviewed by Lyndsie Bourgon For a short novel, Tao Lin’s.

Richard Yates Tao Lin Pdf
Richard Yates Tao Lin

Seems like more people are taking Tao Lin seriously. Or at least paying more attention. Since Hyphen featured him in a Spring 2007 article called “The Art of Depression,” the 27-year old writer has published three more books and continues to gain wider press coverage from the likes of the New York Times. He has been hailed as the “New Lit Boy” by New York Magazine and the “next big thing in urban hipster lit” by salon.com.

Lin’s insane publicity ploys have often been the culprit to his fame. Before his newly released novel Richard Yateswas published, he famously auctioned six shares of his then unfinished novel on eBay for $2,000 each in exchange for 10 percent of the US profits. And people actually bought them. His other attention-getting stunts have included naming his short story characters (some of them hamsters) after magazine editors who rejected his submissions, holding raffles through his blog for various Lin paraphernalia prizes (such as used notebooks, page proofs, Tao Lin T-shirts, and drawings of hamsters), and most recently, linking his Twitter tweets to Autostraddle (an online lesbian magazine).

Richard Yates, the name of an actual novelist and a title which has nothing to do with the book (except for offhand title references to the novelist’s work), has been released to notably bifurcated reviews. Those who love it remark upon Lin’s self-awareness and ability to capture the internet generation’s malaise and loneliness. Those who hate it dismiss the book as juvenile, undergraduate drivel, and Lin as an annoying, shameless self-promoter.

The novel follows the love story of 22-year-old fledgling writer Haley Joel Osment and 16-year-old Dakota Fanning (actual names of child stars just as randomly selected as the title) as it springs from flirtatious Gmail chats, blossoms into disaffected hipster romance, disintegrates into suspicious accusations, circles back to flirtatious Gmail chats, and descends all the way to maniacal depths of bulimia and emotional-psychological manipulation. In between, they commute from New York to New Jersey, hoodwink Dakota Fanning’s hysterical mom, desultorily walk around Price Chopper, shoplift from American Apparel, and have disappointing lemon sex (read the book).

Lin’s sparse writing style narrates one event after another in a flat, detached tone without much authorial description, commentary, or insight. The following passage where Haley Joel Osment greets Dakota Fanning at the train terminal is about as emotional or profound as any passage gets in Richard Yates:

“I can’t comprehend how people can be late or obese,” said Haley Joel Osment.“If you are obese that means you have given up on life. And if you are late that means you like something else, not the person you were late to meet. It doesn’t mean that necessarily, but it means that to the other person, if the other person doesn’t block out that it happened. It’s hard to block out things like that when all I ever talk about is that all humans are assholes.”

Taking into account Lin’s relative versatility as a writer (perhaps best showcased in his hilarious parody of the Time article on Jonathan Franzen), it becomes clear that the novel’s detached writing style was determined by choice rather than by some ingrained quirk. But why Lin chooses to write in this way is perplexing given its tedious outcome. “I think I’ve had a number of styles, and I like each of them,” says Lin in his slow, monotone voice. “[F]or Richard Yates, I didn’t want to have passages where it was like me talking about how I felt about the story, and it had a lot of information to convey that would naturally be conveyed through dialogue and Gmail chat so I didn’t need to use my voice and say what was happening.”

A bit more narratorial involvement, though, would have helped. The few funny bits in the novel, consisting mostly of Haley Joel Osment’s worried thoughts, failed to compensate for the unvarying tone and lack of suspense. The only way I was able to get through most of the novel was by reading in 15-minute spurts (and I still have yet to finish it, in fact). Strangely enough, I still found the book to be a worthwhile read if for no other reason than that I haven’t read anything like it before. Although you won't see me rushing to read the rest of Lin's work listed in this graphic from a Tao Lin T-shirt:

In person, Lin seems to have a lot in common with his apathetic, deadpan characters. Interviewing him was like pulling teeth, or trying to squeeze water from a rock. His answers consisted of many “I don’t knows” and “[T]hat word doesn’t mean anything to me,” as well as “I don’t get excited about anything.” The only time I sensed the faintest trace of animation in his demeanor was when he talked about his current writing project, an article about Coco, the gorilla who does sign language and just turned 40 this year. “There’s one photo of Coco in her website where she just has her mouth open really wide for some reason,” Lin says, almost cracking a smirk.

Remarkable about the flurry of press coverage on Lin is the mostly absent interest in his background as the son of Taiwanese parents. Lin’s cult popularity seems to have crossed over to predominantly white readers of the twenty-something age group. No one has referred to him as an 'Asian American writer,' an uncommon phenomenon in these times of ghettoized literary critique where commentators are too often in a hurry to categorize works by people of color as “ethnic literature.” “I’m glad people don’t call me an Asian American writer,” says Lin. “I wouldn’t hate it if someone called me an Asian American writer, it would just be there. I also don’t like people saying I’m representative of a generation or that I’m writing about a generation. To me, that’s the same thing as saying that I’m writing about Asians or I’m writing about anything except those specific people I’m writing about.”

Being “representative” of a culture is often an unfair burden placed upon writers of color, and certainly, one can’t blame Lin for wanting to avoid this trap. One might even credit him for defying expectations of what “minority literature” should be like, as revealed, for example, in a generalization proffered by the London Review of Books (“Though [Lin] is the son of immigrants, he doesn’t write mutigenerational sagas or dwell on cultural differences”). However, there is still something rather unsettling about Lin’s complete disavowal of race.

For example, in a 2007 interview with Bookslut, Lin made the following statement: “An Asian who is 'proud' of his or her heritage is racist.” His recollection of the statement seemed dim when I brought it up in our interview, but after some prodding, Lin elaborated: “I think every single person is racist if the definition of racist is treating someone differently based on their ethnicity. Because it’s impossible to meet someone and completely ignore the color of their skin or the shape of their face or whatever … everyone is racist to some degree, like, that word doesn’t mean anything to me. I would just prefer not to feel proud of, like, something I have no control over … I would rather feel good about specific things that I’ve done.”

Lin's writing may be innovative (some say gimmicky) and his characters believable, yet I still find it hard to take completely seriously. His work’s entrenchment in today’s popular culture, narrow appeal to a young demographic, and accompanying publicity stunts make it difficult to foresee its staying power. Of course, Lin still has plenty of time to make his mark. But unless he comes up with something more mature, he might just be someone readers will eventually outgrow.

Yates in 1960
Born	February 3, 1926^{[citation needed]} Yonkers, New York
Died	November 7, 1992 (aged 66) Birmingham, Alabama
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer
Literary movement	Realism

Richard Yates (February 3, 1926 – November 7, 1992) was an American fiction writer identified with the mid-century 'Age of Anxiety'. His first novel, Revolutionary Road, was a finalist for the 1962 National Book Award, while his first short story collection, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, brought comparisons to James Joyce. Critical acclaim for his writing, however, was not reflected in commercial success during his lifetime.

Interest in Yates has revived somewhat since his death, partly because of an influential 1999 essay by Stewart O'Nan in the Boston Review, a 2003 biography by Blake Bailey and the 2008 Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winning film Revolutionary Road starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Life[edit]

Born in Yonkers, New York, Yates came from an unstable home; his parents divorced when he was 3 and much of his childhood was spent in many different towns and residences. Yates first became interested in journalism and writing while attending Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut. After leaving Avon, Yates joined the Army, serving in France and Germany during World War II. By the middle of 1946, he was back in New York.^[1]

Upon his return to New York City, he worked as a journalist, freelance ghost writer (briefly writing speeches for Attorney generalRobert F. Kennedy) and publicity writer for Remington Rand Corporation.^[2] His career as a novelist began in 1961 with the publication of the widely heralded Revolutionary Road.^{[citation needed]} In 1962, he wrote the screenplay for a film adaptation of William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness. He subsequently taught writing at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research,^[1]Boston University (where his papers are archived),^[3] at the University of IowaWriter's Workshop, at Wichita State University, the University of Southern CaliforniaMaster of Professional Writing Program, and at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.^[4]

In 1948, he married Sheila Bryant, the daughter of Marjorie Gilhooley Bryant and British actor Charles Bryant, who lived with Broadway actress and silent-film star Alla Nazimova from 1912 to 1925 during the height of her wealth and fame. Richard and Sheila Yates had two daughters, Sharon and Monica, before divorcing in 1959. Richard remarried Martha Speer in 1968 and they had a daughter, Gina.^[5] In 1992, he died of emphysema and complications from minor surgery in Birmingham, Alabama.^[6]

Novels[edit]

Yates's fiction was autobiographical in nature and his fiction included much of his own life. Yates was born in 1926, making him 16 in 1942, the same age as Phil Drake in Cold Spring Harbor; he was 17 in 1943, the same age as William Grove in A Good School; he was 18 in 1944, the same age as Robert Prentice in A Special Providence; he was 29 in 1955, the same age as Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road; and he was 36 in 1962, one year younger than Emily Grimes in The Easter Parade.^[7]

Yates's first novel, Revolutionary Road, was a finalist for the National Book Award that year (alongside Joseph Heller's Catch-22, J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, and the winning novel, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer). Yates was championed by writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, William Styron, Tennessee Williams and John Cheever. Yates's brand of realism was a direct influence on writers such as Andre Dubus, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford.^[1]

For much of his life, Yates's work met almost universal critical acclaim, yet not one of his books sold over 12,000 copies in hardcover first edition.^[8] All of his novels were out of print in the years after his death, though his reputation has substantially increased posthumously and many of his novels have since been reissued in new editions. This current success can be largely traced to the influence of Stewart O'Nan's 1999 essay in the Boston Review, 'The Lost World of Richard Yates: How the great writer of the Age of Anxiety disappeared from print'.^[9]

With the revival of interest in Yates's life and work after his death, Blake Bailey published the first in-depth biography of Yates, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (2003). Film director Sam Mendes directed Revolutionary Road, a 2008 film based on the 1961 novel of the same name. The film was nominated for BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Academy Awards, and others. Kate Winslet thanked Richard Yates for writing such a powerful novel and providing such a strong role for a woman while accepting a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her role in the film.^[10]

Short fiction[edit]

Yates was also an acclaimed author of short stories. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Yates' first collection, followed the publication of his first novel, Revolutionary Road, by a single year. It was compared favorably to Joyce's Dubliners (all but one of its stories take place in and around the boroughs of New York City rather than Joyce's Dublin) and eventually achieved a kind of cult status among fiction writers despite its relative obscurity. One later New York Times essay by Robert Towers praised Yates' 'exposure of the small fiercely defended dignities and much vaster humiliations of characters who might have been picked almost at random from the fat telephone book of the Borough of Queens.'^[11]

Yates' second collection, Liars in Love, appeared nearly 20 years later, in 1981, and was again met with a positive critical reception. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing for the Times, called the stories 'wonderfully crafted', and concluded that 'every detail of this collection stays alive and fresh in one's memory.'^[12]

Despite this, only one of Yates' short stories ever appeared in The New Yorker (after repeated rejections), and this was done posthumously. 'The Canal' was published in the magazine nine years after the author's death, to celebrate the 2001 release of The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, a collection that was again met with great critical fanfare.

In popular culture[edit]

Richard Yates was godfather to actor John Lacy.

Films

In the movie Lonesome Jim (2005), the protagonist cites Yates as one of his favorite authors, adding that all Yates' books were out-of-print by the time the author died.
In Woody Allen's film Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Lee (Barbara Hershey) thanks Elliott (Michael Caine) for lending her The Easter Parade, which she says was great.

Novels

Nick Hornby's 2005 novel A Long Way Down features several suicidal characters; one of them carries a copy of Revolutionary Road so that it may be discovered on his corpse.^[13]
Tao Lin's 2010 novel is titled Richard Yates.
Adelle Waldman's 2013 novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. was influenced by Revolutionary Road.^[14]

Other

Singer Tanita Tikaram's 1992 album title Eleven Kinds of Loneliness was borrowed from Yates's 1962 collection of short stories.
The character of Elaine Benes on Seinfeld was loosely based on his daughter Monica, who had been the girlfriend and later friend of co-creator Larry David. David's first meeting with the writer was the basis for 'The Jacket' episode of Seinfeld's second season, in which Jerry Seinfeld and George meet Elaine's curmudgeonly novelist father, portrayed by Lawrence Tierney.^[15]^[16] The suede jacket incident depicted in that episode really did happen.^[16]

Bibliography[edit]

Revolutionary Road (1961)
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962) (stories)
A Special Providence (1969)
Disturbing the Peace (1975)
The Easter Parade (1976)
A Good School (1978)
Liars in Love (1981) (stories)
Young Hearts Crying (1984)
Cold Spring Harbor (1986)
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (2004)

Filmography[edit]

The Bridge at Remagen (screenplay) (1969)
Lie Down in Darkness (unproduced screenplay) (1985)
Revolutionary Road (2008)

References[edit]

Richard Yates Tao Lin Pdf

^ ^a^b^cA Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates. 2003.Missing or empty |title= (help)
^Ford, Richard (April 9, 2000). 'Essay; American Beauty (Circa 1955)'. The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
^'Drinking With Dick Yates'. The North American Review: 75. May–August 2001.
^Bradfield, Scott. 'Follow the long and revolutionary road'. Archived from the original on February 14, 2009.
^Naparsteck, Martin, Richard Yates Up Close: The Writer and His Works, McFarland, December 22, 2011
^Pace, Eric (November 9, 1992). 'Richard Yates, novelist, 66, Dies; Chronicler of Disappointed Lives'. The New York Times. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
^Naparsteck, Martin (2012). Richard Yates Up Close. NC, uSA: McFarland. p. 15. ISBN978-0-7864-6059-5.
^'A Fresh Twist in the Road For Novelist Richard Yates, a Specialist in Grim Irony, Late Fame's a Wicked Return'. Los Angeles Times. July 9, 1989.
^O'Nan, Stewart. 'The Lost World of Richard Yates'. Boston Review. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
^'Revolutionary Road'. IMDb.
^Tower, Robert (November 1, 1981). 'Richard Yates and His Unhappy People'. The New York Times.
^Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (October 15, 1981). 'Books of the Times'. The New York Times.
^Film Review: Revolutionary Road, Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 2009 Jan 30
^Williams, John (July 17, 2013). 'Slippery Nate: Adelle Waldman Talks About 'The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.''. The New York Times.
^Bailey, Blake. A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates. Picador, 2003.
^ ^a^b(December 1, 2011). 'Larry David's Rough Night Out With The Aging Literary Lion'. The Awl. Retrieved May 21, 2014

External links[edit]

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