By balking at none of this, Mr. Bailey winds up underscoring the sheer victory of Yates's determination to write, no matter what. Even if 100 perfect words constituted a long day's output, even if he had to run on empty ("This is what keeps your old daddy in business!" he once remarked, downing a handful of antipsychotic pills and chasing them with bourbon), even if "Dick generally expressed bewilderment at finding himself in a particular place and time," his work remained inviolate and essential.
"Many thought he wasn't long for the world, certainly not as a writer," Mr. Bailey notes, with supreme understatement. "But (oddly enough) they were wrong." So wrong, in fact, that his work survives for those who, Yates's daughter Monica said, can appreciate it best: those whose pleasure in great, unflinching art outweighs the discomfort that it causes.
Janet Maslinreview of Blake Bailey's biography of Richard Yates
NYTimes Books June 26, 2003
wherein Ms. Maslin quotes Richard Ford, a self-professed Yates devotee, and himself an author of considerable stature. the Cooperstown segment of Ford's Independence Day contains an image that is the soul of American fatherhood.
