Richard Yates and Charles Jackson

Richard Yates and Charles Jackson can't possibly be to blame for whatever Philip Roth and Blake Bailey said, thought, or did, and Bailey certainly did the literary world a great service by getting Yates's Revolutionary Road and Jackson's The Lost Weekend back in print or in public view. Both writers knew significant adversity well after their acclaimed debut novels were published. Indeed, the writing life rarely gets easier for any of us. When the accusations against Bailey went public, I was past page 100 of his Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson. I'm at peace with my decision to continue reading the Jackson biography; more or less, I'm too overwhelmed with day-to-day stressors during a pandemic to quit an engrossing book. 

Not Only On Moral Fiction

As has been reported here, reading John Gardner's Mickelsson's Ghosts led to my return to writing novels and from there, through effort and luck I was able to publish one, and then two, but Gardner was never my favorite writer. Based upon my reading of that one long acclaimed novel, he was fundamentally sound and usually interesting, but the book was not on the same level as Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, or John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. I once read an interview where Gardner placed himself in a big three, which possibly included Pynchon and Norman Mailer, I can't remember exactly, but this wasn't evident to me from reading Mickelsson's Ghosts. The novel trended toward realism, but for American realism, I prefer Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, John Updike's Rabbit is Rich, Fred Exley's A Fan's Notes (I think of it as such), and several others. Gardner did have wider range than all of these writers though, working as a scholar and teacher even as he produced in many different genres although to the best of my knowledge none were what we would call "genre fiction."

Everyone knows that Gardner was the first to mentor Raymond Carver, but before reading this new piece in The Paris Review, I was unaware that he also taught greats like Charles Johnson and Toni Morrison. And the final motorcycle ride off the road makes it seem as if he was a far badder dude than writers like Bellow and Morrison who aged gracefully in the comfort and security that we imagine prestigious tenure lines ensure. I suppose that would have been Gardner's destiny too if he had lived. But he died at 49, only a year older than I am now. The Paris Review article mentions that he has remained "on the syllabus," although I've only read On Moral Fiction for a class. In twenty years of teaching literature classes, the majority of which were for Gardner's period (American, after 1945), I've never assigned any of his fiction, and I think I've only seen Grendel and On Moral Fiction assigned by others. (It's possible that Bellow, Barth, John Updike, and a few others have done even more of a disappearing act. I'm not sure.) The only time I've ever discussed Gardner, I'm almost certain, was in the context of his lending a hand to a young Raymond Carver, janitor, who needed quiet office space. Gardner was there for many other writers.

Interview in Inside Higher Ed

At Inside Higher Ed, Joseph Fruscione included in his adjunct interview series Gordon Haber, of Adjunctivitis and False Economies, and I exchanging e-mails on writing while teaching as adjuncts.

In one of my questions, I slipped in a Richard Yates reference to the fact that he did very little writing while teaching at Iowa. For me, this relates to his almost famous assessment that writing and teaching are thoroughly incompatible as they require the same emotions. At least, Yates saying that is famous to me.

From the interview:

AK: Richard Yates, in an interview, said he hardly wrote any fiction when he was teaching at Iowa for six years. He described teaching as demanding the same emotions as writing, and so he was too drained from teaching to leave anything on the page. How has it been for you?

GH: Teaching was draining, but I wanted to do it. I have a really hard time with day jobs that don’t interest me. Of course it was extraordinarily difficult to balance marriage, fatherhood, teaching, freelance journalism and fiction writing. And yet the last few years have been a fertile period. I wrote a story collection, the third draft of a novel, a bunch of features and book reviews. I really don’t know how it happened. Maybe because for me writing is like exercise — you’ve got to do it regularly, even just a little bit, so you don’t feel like crap. So even though teaching can be emotionally taxing, I still managed to write, except during finals week when there was 100 essays to get through.

Read more at Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2014/05/07/two-novelists-discuss-their-experiences-adjuncts#ixzz315BAkkCh

biographies of Exley and Yates

A PS that can stand alone as its own post:

If you're in the market for literary biography, I'd recommend books about Fred Exley and Richard Yates although Yates's biographer was able to comb the world for a lot more material and produce a much more comprehensive book. In fact, Blake Bailey's A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates is rather excellent and satisfying. I loved learning from this book that the Elaine character from Seinfeld is based upon Richard Yates's daughter, and so the suede-leather clown-jacket episode, where Jerry and George drink with Elaine's father in a hotel lobby, is a sensational look at the author himself (although quite exaggerated and fattened up for television). Jonathan Yardley's Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley is still worth a read though; I can see why some reviewers on amazon were disappointed, but I'd say its average of three stars is about right.

Exley and Richard Yates

In honor of Brock Clarke's Exley and Tao Lin's Richard Yates, I'm changing the title of Fight for Your Long Day to Anais Nin.

Duffy can dream, no?

To me, the Exley is forgiveable because we aren't coming off a blockbuster movie version of A Fan's Notes. Also, Clarke has paid all kinds of dues--advanced grad work, multiple books, and more--and more than anything, based upon a review, at least the father-son relationship that dominates Clarke's outer frame can be directly related to a significant tension in Exley's novel. And Exley is the man (although, yes, from a technical perspective, Yates was the superior novelist), so Clarke should get props for recognizing that fact. The only customer to review it so far (arrives October 5, 2010) gives Exley three stars but insists we read the original first. But, yes, if you're reading this, then it is likely you've done that. Like amazon customer reviewer Mark Levine of Jersey City, New Jersey (aye, my father's hood of origin), I've reread and recommended A Fan's Notes many times. I'm guessing that Clarke has too. Does that make us any less alone in this world?

So back to Richard Yates. Tao, isn't it tacky to name your novel after a brilliant writer who lived largely among basement cockroaches for most of his life? And particularly when the relationship to Yates is tangential to your book?

Of course, if it sells I might change the title of Fight for Your Long Day to the Tao of Lin.

No escape!