Nell’ultimo racconto ( ”I costruttori”) si parla proprio dello scrivere e l’immagine di una casa in costruzione rende bene l’idea di come si debba realizzare un racconto fortificando le sue fondamenta ma occupandosi anche dei punti luce… What Wilson doesn’t understand is that the reason it is impossible to dismiss Yates’s characters–the reason they bother and touch us so much–is his refusal to present them as typically sympathetic and strong. Like us, they’re unheroic, rightfully ashamed of their worst selves and hoping to do better. Their failures are tragic because they’re not unexpected. Like Chekhov, Yates has evenmoreaffection for his characters because of their faults, and like Chekhov, he’s willing to admit that life rarely works out the way we planned. Undicesimo racconto: Un tassista paga uno scrittore squattrinato affinchè dia forma alle sue tracce autobiografiche. Pag. 239 è fantastica (nella connotazione armuzziana del termine)

Eleven Kinds? Loneliness and Reading for Type with Richard

Decimo racconto: I festeggiamenti delle feste natalizie in un sanatorio. Che tu prenda venti individui e tu li metta in una caserma, in un convento, in un ospedale o nella casa del grande fratello, assisterai sempre a comportamenti simili. Settimo racconto: Il confronto impietoso fra due maestre della stessa scuola, raccontato dagli alunni. La passione contro la disciplina, l’entusiasmo contro il ritegno. Quando impariamo una parola nuova, è come se ci facessimo un amico In 1962 Eleven Kinds of Loneliness was published, his first collection of short stories. It too had praise heaped upon it. Kurt Vonnegut said it was "the best short-story collection ever written by an American." If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lays their tragedy.” – Richard Yates, interviewPredictably, the critics were not as kind to A Special Providenceas they had been to the earlier books, and it hardly sold at all, partly, perhaps, because in the political climate of 1969 readers didn’t know what to make of Bob Prentice, whose values as a young soldier seemed old-fashioned, completely out of step with the times. The setting of World War II itself was not a problem, but unlike Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Fiveor Heller’s Catch-22(then enjoying a resurgence), A Special Providencedidn’t speak to current issues. Joyce Carol Oates in theNationpraised the book–and all of Yates’s work–calling his characters “invisible people, not quite there, unable to assert themselves or to guide their own destinies”: Terzo racconto: La vita militare e il diverso approccio di due sergenti istruttori con il loro plotone e con gli ufficiali in comando. Ma se la perfezione è facile da ammirare è difficile da amare

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness - Macmillan

Not to worry. The same could have been said of Fitzgerald before his resurrection or Faulkner when his greatest work was out of print. Like them, Yates is not only a fine writer, but his fiction represents an important aspect of the American experience: the confusion of the post-war boom. No one portrays the Age of Anxiety as well or as deeply as Yates, or the logical fallout of American individualism, the impossibly high hopes of the ’40s and ’50s curdling, turning bitter. And like his idols Hemingway and Fitzgerald–especially Fitzgerald–Yates lived a life that provides a mirror for the work, an easy handle for a public that likes personalities more than books.Now that the dust has been wiped away, and I'm reading, I've discovered that these stories are breathtaking - and I'm using that cliché here as there isn't a better substitute. Every story made me pause to reflect on life, love and relationships. In this masterful collection, Yates exhibits a keen eye on adding weight and significance to what some writers may think unimportant or irrelevant minutiae.

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (album) - Wikipedia Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (album) - Wikipedia

Each story in this collection, despite some of their datedness (a few take place in TB wards, for example), draws you in with lovely spare writing, and sensitively drawn characters who intrigue, even if they aren't particularly likeable. Each story also features a clever title. No Pain Whatsoever The TB Hospital Ward is used as a setting to explore dysfunctional relationships and human desire. A dark but very effective story about the human condition. The Disbelief – Walter tells Mary, his secretary, and colleagues Joe Collins and Fred Holmes he’s leaving since he got the ax. Right on cue, as if a mini Greek chorus, all three raise their eyebrows, shake their heads and fume at the injustice. “How can they?” “What the hell’s the matter with these people?” Too bad Hollywood people are not present - they could give out Emmy awards. The reader recoils even before these scenes begin, like horror movie viewers realizing the victim is going to open the wrong door. In fact, part of the drama–as in Dostoevsky–is anticipating just how terrible the humiliation will be, and how (or if) the characters will survive it. doing her best to conceal her fear, never guessing, or at least never showing, that she was dealing with a chronic, compulsive failure, a strange little boy in love with the attitudes of collapse.”

About this book

Fun With a Stranger is a return to the classroom, but this time for a look at Miss Snell, a teacher who seems unable to relate to children and to relax in their company, preferring instead to rely on the rigid authority of her position. For me she is another delusional person who has either forgotten what she was like as a child or who was rejected early in life by everybody, like the boy from the opening story.