I reread a few of Richard Yates's books several months after enjoying them all for the first time. I loved them just as much the second time.
One book, A Good School, is a coming-of-age story set at a Connecticut prep school in the early 1940s; the teachers and administrators struggle, too, and war looms abroad.
I pulled one excerpt during my first read. Here are two more.
The first comes as the school English master Edgar Stone tells his wife, Myra, that he needs to go see the headmaster, W. Alcott Knoedler. Myra objects, invoking the couple's daughter, Edith.
"Is this a faculty meeting, or what?" Myra Stone inquired of her husband as he prepared to leave the house.
"No," he said, "just something I want to see Knoedler about."
"Can't you even tell me what it is?"
"Well, I think I'd rather not, dear. It's about one of the boys, and you're friendly with a good many of them."
"Oh, Edgar, honestly. You and your secrets. You make me so tired."
"You make me tired, too, Myra, but somehow we get along."
She followed him as far as the front door. "Will you be back by five? Because Edith said she'd call at five. Don't you even care about your daughter?"
"All I care about is myself," he said. "Everybody knows that."
"Think you're so funny, don't you. Well, you're not funny at all. You're remote and you're distant and you're cold. You're cold."
When he'd gone she walked the floor for a long time with one hand at her forehead. She might have cried, except that it almost never occurred to her to cry when she was alone.
That last sentence delivers.
I picked the second excerpt because it is about writing and journalistic style. Fifteen-year-old William Grove, the protagonist, is failing every class except English and ends up writing for and editing the school newspaper. The work allows him to build confidence. In this scene, the paper's editor, Hugh Britt, coaches Grove on a piece about an alum who recently died at war. Grove desires Britt's approval, but slowly gains his acceptance and, later, respect.
"Hey, Grove," Britt said in the office one afternoon, "I don't like this headline of yours, '"Smudge" Parker Dies Hero's Death.'"
"Well, but he did, though," Grove said. "The point is, he could've bailed out, but he stayed in his plane and steered it away from this English village; that's why they gave him the –"
"I know, I know," Britt said impatiently, "but the headline doesn't have any dignity. The story doesn't either, for that matter—all this gee-whiz, boy's-magazine stuff. It's vulgar. It's tawdry. Don't you see? Look. Make it something like this: 'James Parker Killed in England.' Then your lead ought to be: 'James H. Parker, class of '39, was killed after steering his crippled fighter plane away from the English village of Whaddyacallit last month,' period. 'He was posthumously awarded the Distinguish Service Cross,' period.
"New paragraph: 'A first lieutenant with the such-and-such Fighter Command of the something Air Force, Parker had served so-and-so many months overseas,' and so on. Then you can save your 'Smudge' business for the third or fourth paragraph: 'Parker, known affectionately as "Smudge" to his Dorset friends,' and et cetera. See?"
"Oh," Grove said. "I guess so, yeah. Okay, I'll do it over." Britt seemed always to be right in matters where vulgarity and tawdriness were concerned.
Note: A Good School was published in 1978. The book is somewhat autobiographical, and William Grove is Yates’ stand-in. Grove becomes editor-in-chief.
