A Tragic Honesty (98 page)

“When Emma dies, I die”: Int. Grace Schulman.

“It takes many amateur writers”:
Contemporary Authors,
1981.

“
Don't worry
if it comes slowly”: RY to the Schulmans, April 16, 1962.

“[I] still feel like a turd”: RY to the Schulmans, April 2. 1962.

“PAY NO ATTENTION”: RY to Grace Schulman, April 28, 1966.

“I always thought Dick was incorruptible”:
RYAW,
48.

“Best regards to Cyrilly”: RY to the Schulmans, April 16, 1962.

“I got turned down for that job”: RY to Beury, May 4, 1961.

“knowing you both”: RY to the Schulmans, November 23, 1971.

“It was the nicest thing”: Int. Natalie Bowen.

“Before the meal was over”: Dan Wakefield to RY, July 2, 1976.

“You make … uncomfortable”: Susan Grossman to RY, March 17, 1961.

“You'd be bored”: Quoted in Grossman to RY, late March 1961.

“incurable keeps-player”: RY to Beury, September 9, 1960.

“How dare that crook”
: Int. Natalie Bowen.

“Forgot to tell you that my mother”: RY to Beury, May 4, 1961.

“I guess I was a bit of a bastard”: RY to Beury, mid-February, 1961.

“Even if you end up marrying”: RY to Beury, June 26, 1961.

“This confident, good-looking”:
RYAW,
39.

“soulmate drinker”: Int. Franklin Russell.

“Outrageous!” he shouted: Ibid.

“Beverly
who
?”: E-mail to author from Robert Riche.

Yates felt certain that his “effeminate”: Int. Natalie Bowen.

“experimental warm-up”:
Ploughshares,
70.

“[about] a ‘colorful' character”: Rust Hills to McCall, May 24, 1961.

“Jerome Weidman writes three”:
Saturday Review of Literature,
July 1, 1961, 14.

“No culture has placed”: Yates's course description in the New School Bulletin, Spring 1961.

“Had a dreary class”: RY to Beury, April 26, 1961.

“a considerable amount of dough”: RY to Beury, June 26, 1961.

“[They] are talking … ‘wait and see'”: RY to Beury, July 23, 1961.

“physically stronger but mentally”: RY to Beury, November 26, 1961.

“I am not, as you so neatly”: Ruth Rodgers to RY, c. October 1961.

“It was Bob Jones”: Ruth Rodgers to RY, c. September 1961.

painted lipstick on her reflection: For the real-life basis of this memorable scene in
The Easter Parade,
see
RYAW,
22.

“The deaths of parents”: Quoted in
American Voices,
ed. Sally Arteseros (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1.

“I sweated blood”:
Ploughshares
, 67.

“[W]e don't mark our bottles”: Rella Lossy to RY, September 9, 1961.

“He had … spoiled child”: Int. Julia Child.

“Dick never praised simply”: Int. Miller Williams.

“I can't tell you how impressed”: Lawrence to RY, September 8, 1961.

Broyard … avoided Yates as … drunk: Int. Alexandra Broyard.

“lively if somewhat confused”: RY to Miller Williams, January 20, 1962.

“endless sophomoric discussions”: RY to Beury, November 26, 1961.

“Christ, Dick, you're no cad”: Beury to RY, January 23, 1962.

“a perfect gentleman”: Int. Sandra Walcott Eckhardt.

“On the first day of class”: Int. Lee Jacobus.

“hole-in-corner deal”: Sheila Yates to RY, c. January 1962.

“I have learned what it is”: Sheila Yates to RY, January 17, 1962.

“a hell of a lot of trouble”: Sheila Yates to RY, April 14, 1962.

“rather exaggerated emptiness”: RY to Beury, November 26, 1961.

“the two terrible traps”:
Ploughshares,
70.

“special type of writer”: Int. John Frankenheimer.

“The Movie Deal that seemed”: RY to Beury, November 26, 1961.

“no whiff of a contract”: RY to Miller Williams, January 20, 1961.

“Mr. Yates, how can I make sure”: Charles Leap to RY, January 2, 1961.

“the book was a shattering”: Lawrence to RY, January 30, 1962.

Yates … Wallant … commiserate: Int. Lee Jacobus.

Background of the 1962 NBA controversy: Gay Talese, “Critics Hear Tale of Novel's Prize,”
New York Times,
March 15, 1962.

“a beautiful writer”:
Ploughshares,
77.

“a pathetic lush”: Letter to author from Carolyn Gaiser.

“Want it?
Want
it?”: Clark, “The Best I Can Wish You,” 36.

“Just to save you anxiety”: Int. Grace Schulman.

“I spent the first week”: RY to the Schulmans, April 2, 1962.

“Do you think Hollywood”: Sheila Yates to RY, c. March 1962.

“Baby, this is Crazyville”: RY to Kessler, April 23, 1962.

“the drug I've been needling”: Jerry Schulman to RY, April 5, 1962.

“He's probably some semi-literate”: RY to Schulmans, April 16, 1962.

Reviews of
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
: Peter Buitenhuis,
New York Times Book Review,
March 25, 1962; Richard Sullivan,
Chicago Tribune,
April 1, 1962; Hollis Alpert,
Saturday Review of Literature,
April 21, 1962; J.C. Pine,
Library Journal,
April 15, 1962.

A translated version of Cabau's review of
EKL
in the French weekly
Express
was mailed to RY on October 24, 1963, by Monica McCall: “You are now a pet of the French critics,” she wrote.

“stands at the pinnacle”: Jonathan Penner,
New Republic,
November 4, 1978.

“the mere mention of its title”: Robert Towers,
New York Times Book Review,
November 1, 1981, 3.

“he believes this light to be a lie”:
CSRY,
XX.

“economics of publishing”: Lawrence to McCall, April 16, 1962.

“They're there, and now all”: Lawrence to RY, April 24, 1962.

“a kind of literary snow-blindness”:
Stories for the Sixties,
ed. RY (New York: Bantam, 1963), vii.

“quite impressed”: Rust Hills to RY, April 17, 1962.

“Maybe the little bastard”: RY to the Schulmans, May 18, 1962.

“It was almost as if he knew”:
Ploughshares,
75.

“At the rate Yates is going”: Malcolm Stuart to McCall, May 25, 1962, BU-MM.

“discovering endless problems”: RY to the Schulmans, May 18, 1962.

“Don't think I'm neglecting”: RY to Robert Parker, May 13, 1962.

The birthplace and maiden name of Catherine Downing are found on her Social Security SS-5 form; other details about Downing were cobbled together from epistolary evidence in RY's papers as well as interviews with Frances Doel and others.

“You didn't leave anything”: Int. Monica Yates Shapiro.

“a whole new avalanche”:
UT
.

“Good novels—let's say great novels”:
Ploughshares,
72.

“delivering great globs”:
William Styron's “Lie Down in Darkness”: A Screenplay
(Watertown, Mass: Ploughshares, 1985).

“At a distance in time”: Sheila Yates to RY, April 14, 1962.

“old, reliable tranquility”: Sheila Yates to RY, c. March 1962.

“I will never—and I mean”: Sheila Yates to RY, April 14, 1962.

“I should, damn it, have known”: John Ciardi to RY, September 10, 1962.

“ugly fucking battle-ax”: Int. Grace Schulman.

“You can take my word”: Ciardi to RY, September 13, 1962.

“After it's over I wince”: Quoted in Jamison,
Touched with Fire,
32.

predicted he'd kill himself: Marilyn Renzelman to RY, February 20, 1963.

“Any hope that we can work”: Sheila Yates to RY, June 10, 1963.

Chapter Nine
Uncertain Times: 1962–1964

“revolutionized the treatment”:
New York Times,
February 14, 1983, D10.

“This is what keeps your old daddy”: Int. Geoffrey Clark.

Frankenheimer had assured: Frankenheimer to RY, October 2, 1962.

“ninety-eight per cent sure”: Cassill to RY, October 9, 1962.

“Miss Wood's agent decided”: RY to Miller Williams, March 14, 1964.

“Frankenheimer's mills”: Styron to RY, March 14, 1963.

“I'm working hard as hell”: RY to Cassill, February 7, 1963.

“spasm of writing”:
UT
.

Background on Ruth's marriage: Int. Fred and Peter Rodgers, Ruth Rodgers Ward, Sheila Yates.

“mentally ill, incompetent”: Cassill to RY, April 3, 1963.

The meeting was a fiasco: “Kennedy and Baldwin: The Gulf,”
Newsweek,
June 3, 1963, 19.

“turn them into words with a snap”:
RYAW,
43.

Prettyman called … Styron: Int. E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., Styron.

“I don't even know if I
like
”:
UT
.

“short, clipped sentences”: Ibid.

“We're living in very uncertain”: Venant, “A Fresh Twist in the Road,” sec. 6, p. 8.

“School is out, girls”:
UT
.

“more of an honorarium kind of thing”:
UT
.

“I couldn't resist”: RY to Miller Williams, March 14, 1964.

“Dick composed the most memorable”:
RYAW,
43.

“He used RFK as a ventriloquist's”: Int. Kurt Vonnegut.

“Dick was respectful”: Int. Jack Rosenthal.

“Sorry I've been so elusive”:
UT
; Int. Wendy Sears Grassi.

“The FBI wheels”: Sheila Yates to RY, June 10, 1963.

“a fine-looking young man”:
UT
.

“hunched and impassioned”: Ibid.

“Dick, I recall feeling”: John A. Williams to RY, November 5, 1970.

“If my questioning you”: RY to Williams, c. early 1971.

“There! I wrote that!”: Int. Janis Knorr.

“White people of whatever kind”:
Robert F. Kennedy: Collected Speeches,
ed. Edwin O. Guthman and C. Richard Allen (New York: Viking Penguin, 1993), 98–100.

“a little heavy in the leg.”: The phrase was used to describe Sears's fictional alter ego Holly Parsons in
UT
.

“it hurt to listen”: Int. Joseph Mohbat.

as a matter of principle it rankled: Int. Noreen McGuire.

“When I'm writing, I'm
writing
”: Int. Jack Rosenthal.

a stock anecdote in Yates's repertoire: Int. E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., Carolyn Gaiser.

“After searching for months”: “Periscope,”
Newsweek,
September 16, 1963, 16.

Was this Richard Yates the
writer
: Int. Dan Wakefield.

“suave, expensive and quiet restaurant”: RY to DeWitt Henry, November 21, 1972.

Yates shook hands … ran out of cigarettes: Int. Wendy Sears Grassi, Joseph Mohbat.

“and just about that time the president”: RY to Miller Williams, March 14, 1964.

“Richard Yates, the novelist … did not like”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
(Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1978), 876.

“Never look for political ideas”:
UT
notes.

“glad it happened”: Wendy Sears recounts this exchange in her letter to RY, c. June 1964.

“this makes [my husband]”: Ruth Rodgers to RY, August 14, 1964.

“There are of course a number of elements”: McCall to RY, January 30, 1964.

“I'm working like a bastard”: RY to Miller Williams, March 14, 1964.

A representative artifact: “QWERTYUIOP
,”
Esquire,
October 1966, 98.

during a boozy night with Styron: Styron to RY, January 12, 1965.

“you work all day and carouse”: Lawrence to RY, March 3, 1964.

“Yates was pleasant enough”: Int. Richard Frede.

Charlie was now working: Sheila Yates to RY, July 15, 1964.

“I'll put a dime”: Grace Schulman to RY, July 15, 1964.

“rich, waspy”: Int. Monica Yates Shapiro.

“The damn place [MacDowell]”: RY to the Schulmans, August 8, 1964.

“Brendan Behan drank”: Wendy Sears to RY, August 18, 1964.

“There's a good writer who goes”: Int. Sharon Yates Levine.

Chapter Ten
A New Yorker Discovers the Middle West: 1964–1966

Background on the Iowa Writers Workshop:
Seems Like Old Times: Iowa Writers Workshop Golden Jubilee,
ed. Ed Dinger (Iowa City: 1986), hereafter cited as
SLOT
;
The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers Workshop,
ed. Tom Grimes (New York: Hyperion, 1999), hereafter cited as
Workshop
; John Hess, “Where Have All the Writers Gone? To Iowa City, That's Where,”
Holiday
(June 1970), 60–68.