Cold Spring Harbor

There are authors, the critics will tell you, that do their best to try to portray the life American. They reach in, they say, and pull out what it feels like to be an everyday Joe, living, breathing, working, making love, and dying. Readers flock to these types of authors because humans are, it seems, naturally disposed to enjoy watching the descent of those around us, especially those with whom we can relate. These authors are experts in showing us what it's like to be human. These authors are the experts in telling the stories of those around us.

Richard Yates is not one of those authors. For one, readers somehow never flocked to him. And more importantly, Richard Yates does far more than simply tell the stories of those around us. He tells us the story of ourselves. It's through this looking glass that we see not what life could be or should be. What Richard Yates gives us is a picture of what life is.

There are no happy endings. There are no great periods of redemption and reclamation. The boy doesn't always get the girl and the good side doesn't always win.

This is life. It is often sad. It is often brutal. And it is always, when you strip away the color, honest. So too is the writing of Richard Yates. And Cold Spring Harbor is no exception.

Admittedly, the writing itself can be garbled, and the storyline is not as tight as his other works (Revolutionary Road is brilliant). But the message is clear; our lives are more filled with hopelessness than with hope. With regret rather than triumph. And with sadness more than joy. This book, like his others is brutal, honest and true.

Four Stars.

I read Revolutionary Road a few weeks ago (maybe 2 weeks ago) and immediately ordered a few more by Yates. I'm a big dummy for not knowing this guy sooner. He's a great writer and this particular novel doesn't skip a beat in comparison to Revolutionary Road (also brilliant). No plot reviews here (except to say when the car breaks down, some worlds change) ... buy the thing ... support the craft that is way too quickly dying from brain damaging electronics ...

Make believe I'm Obama and trust me on this book ... then order (or go to a library) and read it.

Yates has a way of recycling the same characters, the alcoholic mom who moves around a lot, the son searching for his own identity, but he's such an engaging writer! All his books but one are worthwhile. For an in-depth critique, google "Stewart O'Nan Richard Yates."

This belongs in any short list of novels about alienation.

The reviews emphasize that this is a novel about a group of lost people, struggling through problems that are largely of their own doing. Fair enough. Evan Shepherd seems to never make the right choice. The Shepherd ability to judge character poorly seems to pass along from generation to generation. The only difference is their response. Whereas Charles hangs on to his alcoholic wife, Evan escapes.

I was still searching for a sense of a meaning about this book all the way to the last sentence. That sentence, spoken by Rachel to her newborn son, seems to add one more layer of dark wit. Rachel, the wife of Evan, is nursing her son the morning after a fight with Evan. Evan has left, and unknown to Rachel, intends to start up again with his first wife. Rachel's words seem to indict both Evan and all men in general. "You're a miracle," she says, "because do you know what you are going to be? You are going to be a man."

To me, that is especially dark, because it would seem to mean that she is consigning her future expectations of Evan, Jr., to the same path worn by his father.

In the end, I don't know of this book has one main idea. Instead, it seems content to show the reader a contrary vision of life after World War II. This is not a book about plenty, about men coming home with pride, about love of family and institutions. These are not the people that Studs Terkel wrote about in the Good War.

This could hardly be more different. The war has touched the lives of these men. Charles Shepard must go to great lengths to explain that he was not a war hero. Flash Ferris dreams of joining the marines, but it is only a dream. Evan himself is rejected for physical deficiencies.

This could be one of those novels that successfully undermines the notion of white Protestant virtue. Both Evan and his friend, Flash, attend elite private schools. Even Phil, cast as unfortunate because he has no money for a bike and needs to get a summer job, is still going off to board in the fall. In spite of their class status, most of these characters are not weighed down by any kind of noblesse oblige. With the exception of Phil, who stands up for the right thing, these people are ready to turn on each other at a whim or convenience. They drink badly. They don't serve their country.

I love Richard Yates' style with words. It reminds of his contemporay, Evan S. Connell (Mrs. Bridge, and later, Mr. Bridge), for its deliberate realism. Many of the pages career back and forth along the wayward doubts that fill the heads of Evan, Phil, and Rachel. This is a rare kind of writing that seems to have disappeared in the last few years.

the contents of cold spring harbor, a very short novel, are suffocated by yates' use of judgment-loaded adjectives and adverbs. hemingway said it all when he advised writers to send a telegram if they wanted to send a message.