Teresa's Reviews > Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

As I read these eleven stories, I forgot about the title of the collection. Yes, loneliness is a theme, especially obvious, and aching, in the first story of an outsider schoolboy and continuing on with the second story of a young woman on the eve of her wedding day. But the theme that rose to the top for me is a theme present in Revolutionary Road: the lies we tell ourselves to live with ourselves. In fact one story took me straight back to the novel, not in terms of plot, but in its atmosphere, how its biting characterization led to an indictment of American society.

In that second story, the dialogue is hilarious (for the reader). I felt as if I was watching a movie from the time period and that it confirmed stereotypes I've found in those films. Parts of the story, and the ending, are both funny and sad, as the best of humor is, and as Yates does well. I was also impressed with the story of a boot camp and its perfect use of first-person-plural narration. Another story could’ve been inspired by a newspaper article, the author perhaps wanting to flesh out a “felon’s” backstory. If the now-historical details were changed, it could be of today: an angry not-so-young man (29) acting out his fragile frustrations, fueled by sex, drugs (alcohol), and ... jazz.

Stylistically, the last story is different, leading with a paragraph about the writer writing of a writer. I thought I’d like it more than I did, but the overlapping stories of two types of characters I find annoying became tedious. But even if a few stories are slighter than others, that’s not a deal breaker in a collection. Yates’s prose is a pleasure to read, coming across as effortless, and his insights into American culture are timeless.

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(I read these stories in The Collected Stories of Richard Yates.