Go Out to the Cold

 

"To write so well and then to be forgotten is a terrifying legacy...

This is the mystery of Richard Yates: how did a writer so well-respected–even loved–by his peers, a writer capable of moving his readers so deeply, fall for all intents out of print, and so quickly? How is it possible that an author whose work defined the lostness of the Age of Anxiety as deftly as Fitzgerald’s did that of the Jazz Age, an author who influenced American literary icons like Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus, among others, an author so forthright and plainspoken in his prose and choice of characters, can now be found only by special order or in the dusty, floor-level end of the fiction section in secondhand stores? And how come no one knows this? How come no one does anything about it?"

― Stewart O'Nan, "The Lost World of Richard Yates: Why a great writer of the Age of Anxiety disappeared from print"

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Dear Kate,

I found myself reading Richard Yates' "The Easter Parade" again.

I don't know why, I really don't.  The book was as far from my consciousness as it was deep behind layers of many others I made more accessible for deeming them more worthy of my repeated attention that there must be a reason I would go back into the cold and meet Yates again where he first found me.

(And where were you?)  I don't remember.  Not exactly.  When my kids were young?  (How young?)  I don't remember.  Please, Yates, don't ask.  In this house, I think, when we first moved here?  They were young, my kids, green, like all the pictures we took, all green, always out there, we, a family, in the woods, as the thumbnail folders holding the pictures I took of them from the time would attest, little green rectangles on my screen I saw as I dutifully made copies of them, like all good fathers should, I thought, one external hard drive after another, hundreds of them, all green, my way to say to the world, You can't kill me yet.  As long as I am out there, taking with me my family, far away from the goddamn malls, thoughtless people, tasteless lifestyles, you shall have no domination over us.  The tree gods will protect us.  Thou shall not pass!

I think I am mixing Yates up with Thoreau, but do forgive, it was about the same time they found me, same desolate place I was, to come in from the cold I yearned.

I am warm now.  Old.  Not as angry anymore, more well-adjusted, even my mother-in-law would tell me, yet again this last Sunday, that I used to be scary.  But I am better now they say.  I've learned to--and to become--care-less.  To once know the cold and now forget its coldness is a terrifying legacy.

Yours, Alex