{"id":3347,"date":"2026-09-09T21:06:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=3347"},"modified":"2026-09-09T21:06:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:06:54","slug":"realism-richard-yates-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2026\/09\/09\/realism-richard-yates-genius\/","title":{"rendered":"Realism & Richard Yates’ Genius"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So I\u2019ve just finished reading my third Richard Yates novel\u2014in this case, A Good School<\/em> (1978), about a dying prep school in Connecticut, in the 1940s. It\u2019s touching, raunchy, and slightly weird in its gritty depiction of an all-boys school during WWII. Cut to 2026: In this bizarro-world era in which we live most fiction\/film concerns the fantastic, unlikely, or impossible. Witness the many stupid-hero movies and books featuring ghosts, demons, vampires, and wizards. To some extent, that\u2019s fine. People like fantasy. I\u2019m all for imagination. But at times it seems to seep into the culture at large. People believe in lies and liars and factual accuracy doesn\u2019t seem to matter anymore. It\u2019s a symptom of the death of Realism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hardcover book jacket<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure there are some excellent realistic fiction writers out there in the world writing at this point in time, but generally no one seems to be paying much attention to them. For instance, a writer I greatly admire, George Saunders, has a new novel out: Vigil<\/em>. Some of its main characters are angels. Funny angels, kind of. Slapstick, even. It\u2019s satire\/fantasy. But if we go back in time a few decades, we come upon a neglected writer who is a master of Realism, Richard Yates. He\u2019s like J.D. Salinger who has grown a pair. Or the flip side of John Cheever. All three are among the finest writers of the post WWII era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s all about time and place<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Revolutionary Road<\/em>\u00a0(1961) is a good place to start, as it was Yates\u2019 first novel and a Finalist for the National Book Award in 1962. For whatever reason, Yates was a writer greatly admired by other writers and critics, but who never achieved popular success and readership (join the club). Supposedly no book of his ever sold more than 12,000 copies\u2014which is meager, for a major writer at least. His reputation was revived in the late 1990s and throughout the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century. As an example, in 2008\u00a0Revolutionary Road<\/em>\u00a0was made into movie starring Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. That was actually my first taste of a Richard Yates story. It\u2019s bleak. But both DiCaprio and Winslet do a great job and make it heartbreaking, and with an early-career performance by David Harbour as a smitten neighbor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That image looks anachronistic for the 1950s-60s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My favorite so far is\u00a0The Easter Parade<\/em>\u00a0(1976), which is a kind of novel that we don\u2019t seem to produce anymore: Emily Grimes, the main character, stands for something, exemplifies a certain kind of person in a particular time and place. (Sure, many novels feature characters like that to some extent, but here Yates nails it.) So does the actual parade in the novel, a lost era, time gone by. Emily is a career-minded young woman, something of a sexual free-spirit, and all her hard work in Manhattan and love affairs dry up as she approaches middle-age, when she feels washed-up and spent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yates is considered a master of The Age of Anxiety. Perhaps he was never quite popular because he portrays life with a healthy dose of failure and disappointment.\u00a0Consider the Tolstoyan tone to this opening to The Easter Parade<\/em>: “Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents\u2019 divorce” (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know why he didn’t achieve popular acclaim. It\u2019s the real world. I love it. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m some purist, above-it-all kind of writer. I\u2019ve often imagined the fantastic in my fiction: In my story \u201cMy Wife, the Unicorn\u201d I described a world in which the U.S. is in a low-level Civil War and people are transforming into animals. His wife morphs into a unicorn for comic effect. It echoes Carol Emshwiller\u2019s great little novel,\u00a0Carmen Dog<\/em>\u00a0(1990) or William Kotzwinkle\u2019s\u00a0Dr. Rat<\/em>\u00a0(1976). My recent story \u201cCamp America\u201d features an A.I.-assisted law enforcement division. So, sure, dream away. Imagine away. But sometimes we need a depiction of the real world that hits home, that makes us sit up and take notice. Richard Yates is a master at that. If you haven\u2019t read him, you should.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A master of Realism, Richard Yates is like a J.D. Salinger who has grown a pair. Or the flip side of John Cheever. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[538,537,535,536,534],"tags":[55,85,86,95,540,539,541],"class_list":["post-3347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-j-d-salinger","category-john-cheever","category-revolutionary-road-film","category-revolutionary-road-novel","category-richard-yates-fiction","tag-book-reviewing","tag-fiction-writing","tag-film","tag-good-fiction","tag-richard-yates-a-good-school","tag-richard-yates-revolutionary-road","tag-richard-yates-the-easter-parade"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t