How to Read the Works of Richard Yates

Many authors are readily accessible, while others take some time to fully appreciate. Richard Yates is often overlooked among his contemporaries of the past 50 years.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Purchase "Revolutionary Road." This is the best known of all of Yates' works. An alternative is "The Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates." The short stories will also allow you to read through much smaller chunks of Yates at a time.

2. Be prepared to feel uncomfortable. Yates is a master of getting inside the head of all of his characters, revealing what makes them tick. Sometimes this is unpleasant, especially since most of his stories involve a struggle of the characters in some form.

3. Don't expect wizards, sorcerers or dragons. Yates has a tremendous talent for describing the inner workings of an average situation, such as life in the suburbs, the daily bickering of a married couple or the apprehension a young boy feels in uncomfortable situations such as a new school.

4. Don't feel sorry for the characters... well, try not to. Although Yates often presents his characters as vulnerable and failing to ever really fit in, he never does so for sentiment. Yates was well known to abhor sentimentality, he wrote it as he saw it. Simply that.

5. Don't be afraid to re-read pages several times. Yates was a master at his craft, most often described as a writer's writer. To gain the most appreciation for how he did what he did, read through the material more than once.

Tips & Warnings

• Start with the short stories if you don't like novels by authors that are foreign to you.
• Re-read anything you even suspect you might have missed, there's a lot to keep up with as far as how Yates writes.
• Be prepared not to venture to a happy place.
• Sometimes it can be depressing, but always truthful.