The great, underestimated Richard Yates
When the novelist Richard Yates, who was born in February 1926, was interviewed by the magazine Ploughshares in 1972, the conversation turned to the neglected writers of his generation. Yates, a man of remarkable acuity and taste, was typically incisive about the likes of Evan S. Connell, Brian Moore and Edward Lewis Wallant – and, just to show that he was no misogynist, he saluted Gina Berriault, saying that she was “an absolutely first-class talent who has somehow been left almost entirely out of the mainstream. She hasn’t quit writing yet, either, and I hope she never will.” If these words struck something of a cautionary note, then Yates’s conclusion was even more concerning.
