Yates's superb short-story collection
Liars in Love hits many of his best themes: fragile
and fraught relationships, co-dependence and emotional distance, dignity and humiliation.
My favorite story in this collection is
probably "Trying Out for The Race," in which two single mothers and
their two children share a house in the suburbs. Elizabeth's daughter Nancy
is close in age to Lucy's son, Russell. In one scene, Nancy
kids Russel after he throws a tantrum about his mom going out for the evening. Russell, embarrassed, silently compares himself to the boy next door, Harry:
School as yet had produced no real friends for Russell, and he worried about that, but Harry Snyder was the boy next door, and so a casual, loafing kind of friendship had been easy to achieve with him. One day they were intently hunkered down over many tin soldiers in the basement of Harry's house when Mrs. Snyder came to the stairs and called down "Russell, you'll have to go home now. Harry has to come up and get ready because we're all going for a drive to Mount Vernon.""Aw, Mom, now? You mean now?""Certainly, I meant 'now.' Your father wanted to get started an hour ago."And that was when Harry went into action. In three swift, merciless kicks he sent soldiers flying in all directions, ruining formations that had been all afternoon in the making and he howled and flailed and cried like someone half his age, while Russell looked away in a wincing smile of embarrassment."Harry!" Mrs. Snyder called. "Harry, I want you to stop this right now. Do you hear me?"But he didn't stop until long after she'd come down and led him tragically upstairs; when Russell crept out for home he could still hear the terrible sound of it ringing across the yellow grass.Even so, there was an important difference. Harry had cried because he wanted his mother to leave him alone; Russell had cried because he didn't—and therein lay the very definition of a mother's boy.
That is so good. I found more perfect prose in "Saying Goodbye to Sally" when Jack, the would-be protagonist, gets sloppy drunk at a party:
Jack did his best to leave the room quickly but kept veering sideways against the near wall; then he decided it might be helpful to use the wall for support and guidance, letting one shoulder slide heavily along it while he gave his whole attention to lifting and placing his feet in the deep champagne-colored carpet. He knew dimly that Ralph had finished at the fireplace, had lurched past him muttering "Come on" and gone away into the hall, leaving him alone in this treacherously unstable but mercifully open room; he could see too that the bright doorway was very near now—only a few more steps—but his knees had begun to soften and buckle. He thought he could feel his shoulder sliding down the wall, rather than along it; then the tilting yellow carpet came slowly closer until it offered itself up as a logical, necessary surface for his hands, and for the side of his face.
These short stories exhibit all of the American master's gifts.
I went on a
Yates binge, working my way through his bibliography after years ago having
read his masterpiece, Revolutionary Road, as well as The Easter Parade and the
posthumous collection, The
Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates. I also previously posted about Disturbing the Peace, A Special Providence, and Cold Spring Harbor.
Note: Liars in Love was published in 1981; Yates
died in 1992.
