So what is going on here?
Time for an update I think.
I am now working on a book on Richard Yates. What a surprise! There’s a mountain of work to do and I want to get it right but this is all new territory for me. Some people seem to snap out books with apparent ease. Blake Bailey for one. Two masterful biographies and not a big gap between them. Anyway, I will do my best and hope that I can produce something enjoyable as well as informative. Cutting out academic jargon should be easy enough since I don’t go in for it in a big way, but cutting out references is harder; I don’t want to lose the ‘meat of the thing’, if you see what I mean.
Also, what to call it? Now there’s a question…..My external examiner commented that I wasn’t much good at titles and there was I thinking I was brilliant. Any thoughts would be helpful, oh silent readers. Obviously you don’t know the work, but let’s just say it’s an extended critical look at all Yates’s work, or rather, it will be.
October 29, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Of course, you are going forward with a book–my thought from reading your dissertation (which I am eager to finish before I start teaching Yates again in three weeks). What fitter title than FUN WITH A STRANGER?
November 20, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Great idea DeWitt…..I’m still musing on a title but that would be good! The book manuscript will look quite different to the thesis, or rather, I’ve found much to change in a slower re-reading and without the pressure of a doctorate hanging over me. That sounds odd but I suppose that I have a greater confidence now and I can see holes and repetitions and weaknesses that eluded me before. I’ve added quite a bit to it and deleted a lot. No definite contract so we’ll see………
January 14, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Kate,
Thought you might be interested to know that my book about Richard Yates (Richard Yates Up Cose: The Writer and His Work) is scheduled to be published August 15 by McFarland.
Marty Naparsteck
January 16, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Congratulations Marty! Just have to hope there’s room for another one…..
January 17, 2011 at 12:42 am
Kate,
I too hope there’s room for another Yates book, namely yours. I suspect that there is. Dick Yates has come closer to getting the attention he deserves during the last few years than he ever did while he was alive.
Marty