The Collected Stories of Richard Yates

"Unflinching and uncompromising, complex at the same time they seem to unfold naturally and simply . . . Miraculous."—San Francisco Chronicle

"A masterly job of delineating the gathering disorder in these characters' lives, achieving a delicate balance between sympathy and ironic detachment, compassion and hardheaded realism."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A superb collection . . . [Yates is] a laureate of romantic loneliness."—Anthony Quinn, The New York Times Book Review

"One soars on the updrafts of his brilliance to a special kind of literary high."—San Diego Union-Tribune

"Soft-spoken in his prose and terrifyingly accurate in his dialogue, Yates renders his characters with such authenticity that you hardly realize what he's done."—Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe

"What's exhilarating about Yates is not his grasp of The Truth, but the purity of his vision and the perfection of his craft."—Newsday

"A remarkably coherent body of short fiction and a concentrated look at a time of great hope and disillusionment."—The Wall Street Journal

"Was there ever a writer who saw so clearly and depicted so faithfully the cracks in this broken world? Reading through the stories again, I was left as devastated as ever . . . I hope that this long-overdue collection will do for Richard Yates what that big red book did for Cheever twenty years ago—surprise us with the irrefutable proof of his genius and leave us feeling a little ashamed, perhaps, of being so taken by surprise."—Michael Chabon

"One of America's best-kept secrets . . . These stories are so powerful , emotionally honest and crisp . . . Keenly insightful, brutally honest . . . delivering a swift kick to the heart."—The Denver Post

"Like Chekhov or William Maxwell, Richard Yates sees deep into the knotty hearts of his people, a rare talent that keeps his work fresh and essential . . . By uniting his award-winning stories with fine unpublished ones . . . The Collected Stories reminds us how dangerous a writer Richard Yates is. No one should know this much about us."—Stewart O'Nan

"Yates is a virtuoso craftsman, and his mature style is enviable . . . [He] knew how to rivet the reader's attention on the quiet desperation of unacknowledged lives."—Lee Siegel, Harpers

"Whereas O'Hara's fulminations against status-seeking and Kerouac's rogue posturing are showing their age, Yates's writing retains the power to disturb us. There is a timeless honesty to his work . . . Richard Yates remains a dangerous and devastating writer."—Stephen Amidon, The Atlantic Monthly

"Legendary . . . Yates writes . . . better than any other American about the decade that followed World War II."—Bart Schneider, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"To me and many other writers of my generation, the work of Richard Yates came as a liberating force. With its clarity and immediacy, it seemed to set contemporary fiction free from self-consciousness and solipsism . . . He was one of the most important and influential writers of the second half of the century."—Robert Stone