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size should not deter. Anyone who is familiar with Yates' work will not only be given background and a mental timeline as to when those works were written, they will also be given Yates' personal and situational state of mind at the time of those works. After Revolutionary Road, it took Yates eight years to finish his second published novel, A Special Providence, which is actually a book Yates detested. Some of the rejections he received from popular magazines can be either painful or encouraging, depending on one's outlook, and the namedropping of popular writers from the 50s and 60s that no one remembers now and are all out of print are amusing, considering Yates spent so much of his time pissing and moaning about not being famous enough.

A Tragic Honesty is a really good bio to read not only for any Yates admirer, but for any struggling writer out there who gets depressed seeing the names of mediocre talents filling the shelves, while more deserving ones (like Yates, Irwin Shaw, and Loren Eiseley) are cast aside. The life and work of Richard Yates should be proof that quality always rises in the end and that hype and marketing are just shallow things. Anyone can be "one of the strongest voices writing today" if some dingbat PR person claims it is so.

Though I say to all those uncreative hangers on: just give it time, and see where the work will land. Richard Yates is proof yet again that time (not man) is the leveler of all things, and that he was just as much a great writer when he was alive and hacking a cough in his roach infested squalor as he is now, in midst of his due. It wasn't Richard Ford's praising of Revolutionary Road that made it a great book, anymore than it was Emerson praising Whitman's Leaves of Grass that made him a great poet. The work is great regardless if anyone chooses to pay attention to it or not.

Having said all that, it is too bad that Yates let the ephemera of awards and shallow recognition hinder his moods, forcing him to drink more, and allowing it to provoke his mental anguish and instability. It is too bad too that he allowed alcoholism to destroy his relationships, his marriages, and even to some degree (though I can only speculate on this) his creative work. Months before his death, his body took a turn for the worse and he could barely breathe, and ultimately could not finish his final novel. Though the man left behind a body of work that needs to be revisited by readers for years to come. And something tells me that time is on his side. Good work, Richard. Troubled you were, but certainly not tragic. You did your job and yes, time is most definitely on your side.

Learn more about this author, Jessica Schneider.
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