A Tragic Honesty (106 page)

*
 E.g., in the first paragraph of the story, Sheila changed “(‘pretty good') or (‘too stiff')”—etc.—into one parenthetical statement and capitalized each separate remark, thus: “(‘Pretty good,' or ‘Too stiff,' or ‘It didn't look natural').” A small point, perhaps, but Yates was a stickler for such points and clearly valued her input.

*
 In the same letter, Yates wrote of “screw[ing] up all his tact and courage” to tell his mother what it was about—and this for a story that didn't even directly concern her! As for his decision not to collect “Tenor” in book form, he almost surely considered it too sentimental, no matter how well it played as competent commercial fiction. And finally it's possible, too, that even then he was planning to put the same material—a crucial episode in his life, after all—to better use later, post-Dookie, as of course he did.

*
 Though the opposite of a materialist (particularly later in life), Yates would always have a weakness for “smart attire,” as Mrs. Riddle would have it: “Just buy clothes,” he'd say, when asked what he'd do with a lot of money.

*
 “Pretty” was Yates's primary term of endearment for Sheila.

*
 An episode that provided the McGuffin for Yates's 1989 film treatment,
The World on Fire
. Yates's version of the event was historically inaccurate, to put it mildly, for reasons I look forward to exploring later.

*
 Nobody seems to remember much about that Halloween party on Perry Street, except that at some point the Yateses presented a sleepy but well-groomed Mussy to their guests. As for Bob Riche's then-girlfriend Pamela Vevers, she vaguely remembers seeing the Yateses on that occasion and perhaps two or three others. Thirty years later she was bemused, to say the least, when it was called to her attention that she'd appeared in
Young Hearts Crying
as Diana Maitland, Michael Davenport's ideal love object. As Pamela Vevers will assure anyone who asks, there was no flirtation (imagined or otherwise) between her and Yates or any other Davenport-like person; that said, she does concede a superficial resemblance on her part to Diana Maitland, and thinks certain other real-life people (e.g., Bob Riche) were very accurately portrayed.

*
 Let it not pass without comment that such Dookie partisans tend to have axes to grind against Yates: e.g., Riche and Vevers because of
Young Hearts Crying,
and Louise Rodgers because of
The Easter Parade
(wherein the house designed by her beloved father appears as the hideous mildewy wreck “Great Hedges”).

*
 Yates excused himself from this incestuous arrangement, though he was happy to offer input when solicited.

*
 Whom she married and eventually divorced. Sherin's second wife was the actress Jane Alexander, and he went on to a very successful career in television, as producer of such hits as
Law and Order
. He served as the model for Ralph Morin in
Young Hearts Crying
.

*
 One will recall the “favorite subject” of the widowed Frank Wheeler: “‘my analyst this'; ‘my analyst that.'” In his notes to
Revolutionary Road,
Yates described this composite character as being like “Bob [Riche] without humor and me without talent.”

*
 Namely, Shepherd “Shep” Campbell in
Revolutionary Road
. As noted, Blanchard “Jerry” Cain was perhaps the main model for this composite.

*
 The quote is taken from the 1972
Ploughshares
interview. Yates was explaining how his brother-in-law's personality was similar to that of John Givings in
Revolutionary Road
.

*
 “He kissed her, and this, though one of the best parts of the story, was always a little uncertain. He wasn't sure how they would keep their noses from colliding.” I'd wager this bit was inspired by the five-year-old boy's question to Sergeant X in Salinger's “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor”: “‘Why do people in films kiss sideways?'” A bad sign that Yates seemed to be falling back on an old influence in so obvious a fashion.

†
 In the Winter 1962 issue of
Transatlantic Review
.

*
 Yates has been called a “naturalistic” (or “neonaturalistic”) writer, though he had little affinity for (or familiarity with) naturalism as a literary tradition. “Are you aware—you must be—that [
Revolutionary Road
] is just what Zola felt the naturalistic novel ought to be?” a reader wrote Yates, who replied in part: “I was very flattered by your comparison of my book to Zola's work, but must confess my ignorance of what he said the ‘naturalistic novel ought to be'—or, for that matter, of the idea that my book was ‘naturalistic' at all.”

*
 “Donarann” in
Young Hearts Crying,
wherein the estate and its various tenants are depicted with almost absolute fidelity. Mahopac is called “Tonapac” in the novel.

*
 Geer was the model for Ben Duane in
Young Hearts Crying
. Michael Davenport's views on Duane's sexual orientation are pretty much those of his creator, a matter worthy of later discussion.

*
 Just like Tom Nelson in
Young Hearts Crying
. Parker would later have much to say about this novel and his part in it, as we shall see.

*
 Also the title of Chester Pratt's first novel in
Disturbing the Peace
—which suggests that, fifteen years later, Yates continued to reflect fondly on his Conrad Jones correspondence.

*
 Yates retroactively incorporated these disputes into
Revolutionary Road,
as witnessed by Sheila's remark in a 1962 letter comparing the published novel with an earlier draft: “It seems to me now that both Frank's idea that [April] should be psychoanalyzed and her recognition of lack of love for him are new to the book, am I right?” Curiously enough Sheila later insisted that she'd never read
Revolutionary Road
in its entirety: “Our relations were such that last year he was working on it that I didn't
want
to read it. It was too uncomfortable.… I couldn't take the constant agonizing over every word of it. I had other interests by then.” She also claims she had no idea the novel was dedicated to her until very recently, when her daughter Monica showed her the 2000 Vintage edition (“It came as a complete surprise,” said Sheila, “though it makes sense”). But of course she
did
read the novel. According to the letter quoted above, she found it “a great creation, and the writing extraordinarily fine,” and went on to make a number of more specific observations. For what it's worth, I myself am convinced that Sheila—whose memory is clear as a bell in most respects—has sincerely persuaded herself over the past forty years that she never read the published novel. Yates once mentioned to his psychiatrist that Sheila, a few years after the divorce, told him the book had hurt her feelings and that she'd never read his work since. Yates was crushed.

*
 Rollin went on to become a celebrity of sorts as a writer and NBC news correspondent. She's perhaps best known for the book
First You Cry,
about her mastectomy.

*
 “A Clef” was accepted by
Grand Street
in 1985 but never published, perhaps out of consideration for Yates's feelings or (more likely) because of concerns that it was libelous. Parker's version of the Montreal story is mostly true, no doubt, but subjective: In fact the young actress was impressed enough by Yates to write him a few letters afterward, in the first of which she apologized for the awful CBC adaptation of his story: “I felt we deserved all the indifference, contempt, and, what was worse, your tired acceptance, as if one could expect no more from provincial actors.” One will return to such matters as this actress and Parker's “A Clef” by and by.

*
 Suzanne Schwertley's place in literary history must be reduced to a footnote—that is, as the woman who typed the final draft of
Revolutionary Road
. According to Bob Riche, she was also romantically involved with Yates, who “dropped her like a hotcake” as soon as she finished the typing job. Riche described her as a “nice but rather sad woman” in her late thirties whom Yates “kept under wraps.” After the couple parted, Riche distinctly remembers her describing Yates as “a thug.” Whether Yates's cavalier thuggishness was the bitter exaggeration of a woman scorned, or perhaps a passing effect of Broyard's Svengalian influence, or pure invention, will have to remain a mystery, as Schwertley could not be traced for an interview.

*
 Such titles included
A Cry of Prisoners, Losers, Nectar in a Sieve, The Fiasco, The Big Nothing, Oak Hill, A House in the Country, A Rampage in Cellophane, The Acid Soil,
and (Yates's “working title” according to a friend)
The Bullshit Artist
.

*
 Williams appears as Arnold Clark in
Uncertain Times
: “Grove had met Arnold Clark at a summer writers' conference where a cheerful kind of touch football had been played on idle afternoons; and Clark, playing quarterback, had helped him briefly to overcome a chronic aversion to sports by saying ‘Sure you can' when Grove said he didn't think he could go out and catch a long forward pass. Grove went out, the pass came high and fast, and he not only picked it out of the air like a real player but carried it thirty dizzy yards for a touchdown, to the beer-bloated cheers of at least a hundred people.”

*
 An NIMH study found that almost half (46 percent) of those diagnosed with bipolar, or manic-depressive, disorder are also dependent on alcohol or drugs. As Kay Jamison points out, “Alcohol and drug abuse often worsens the overall course of manic-depressive illness, occasionally precipitates the disease in vulnerable individuals, and frequently undermines the effects of treatment.” This was preeminently so in Yates's case.

†
 Onset of the illness usually occurs in late adolescence, though Yates's experience is not uncommon. Initial episodes tend to be triggered by unusual stress or personal losses; later episodes occur more or less spontaneously.

*
 According to Yates's daughter Monica, the novel's entire opening sequence (St. Vincent's, Bellevue, etc.) is a “totally true” rendering of the episode. It always amazed her—and anybody else who ever saw Yates in the midst of a breakdown—that he could remember any part of it later, much less in such lucid detail.

*
 This story was a staple of Broyard's repertoire, and appears in his posthumous memoir
Kafka Was All the Rage,
wherein the woman's expandable ass is described with a slightly different simile than Beury remembers.

*
 John Updike wrote of
Revolutionary Road
: “I was fascinated and, in the end, deeply distressed by Mr. Yates's compassionate, well-wrought, and claustrophobic book.” Of Updike, Yates later told
Ploughshares
: “I think [he's] very talented, though none of his novels have been wholly successful for me so far.” In private he was more caustic: “Is John Updike
still
only twenty-nine years old?” he'd say on hearing some fresh acclaim for the writer.

*
 The importance of mirrors and windows, as devices of exposure and reflection, is suggested by the novel's French title,
La Fenêtre Panoramique
.

*
 The name “Mrs. Givings” was one of Yates's favorite details. According to his friend Robin Metz, Yates had a habit of checking phonebooks in various cities for a listing of “Givings,” but never found one. This delighted him: “Doesn't it sound like a real name?” he'd say. “It doesn't exist! Isn't that fucking fantastic?” The reader should consult Ford's introduction to the novel for a nice analysis of Yates's use of “extraliteral” names such as Givings, Wheeler, Prentice, Wilder, Grimes, etc.

*
 Imagination is particularly required since Yates didn't preserve her letters.

†
 A satirical work by Alexander King (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960).

*
 Subsequent accounting by Little, Brown adjusted the total hardcover sales to around 8,900.

*
 This, said Yates, was the biggest problem with student writing: “It takes many amateur writers … a long time to realize that they are addressing strangers with their work. Writing any kind of fiction is a public performance.”

*
 From “A Natural Girl”: “‘Oh, don't go away.…' That was the cry, or the plea, that had broken from David Clark's mouth as if wholly beyond his control with almost all the women he'd known since his divorce. Several girls had seemed to find it endearing, others had been baffled by it, and one sharp-tongued woman had called it ‘an unmanly thing to say.'”

*
 Five years later Riche was puzzled but touched when Yates called, out of the blue, to congratulate him on the premiere of his play about Malcolm X,
Message from the Grass Roots
. Riche was less than touched eighteen years later, when he read
Young Hearts Crying
and came to the part where Bill Brock discusses his play
Negroes
: “‘Well, sure, it's kind of a stark little title, but that very quality of starkness is what I was after'—and he felt that his gift for dialogue had served him well in exploring the artistic possibilities of American Negro speech. ‘For example,' [Brock] said, ‘all through the play the characters keep saying “muh-fuh”; “muh-fuh”—and I've spelled it just that way.'”

*
 Neither Yates's children nor Ruth's have any idea what became of Dookie's sculpture. All attempts to trace her work through museums, Pen and Brush, the National Association of Women Artists, etc., were unsuccessful. Except perhaps for some fugitive pieces in private collections, her work seems to have totally disappeared.