I haven't read the entire book yet, but I purchased this because of the extraordinary story "Oh Joseph I'm so tired," originally published in The Atlantic. It's about a boy and his mother living in Greenwich Village near Christmas time, and it's exquisite.

Yates short stories are the only length of Yates Depression™ that I can take nowadays. After actually reading a couple of his novels cover to cover, I found that I just couldn't take his melancholic macho angst anymore. So it was with some trepidation that I picked up this collection of his short stories.

The usual common themes continue here, false machismo fronts, that post-war, supposed-to-be-flourishing, middle-American façade hiding all the trauma and scars, the wish to appear shiny and full of swagger.

Each story was simultaneously a pleasure to read and a relief to have finished. ( )

The late American writer Richard Yates is virtually unknown to the reading public, and never received the public or professional recognition that some of his contemporaries considered to be his due. Readers who have heard of him may recall him as author of the 1962 "Revolutionary Road", and that because of its having been made into a popular movie in 2008. The lack of recognition is most unfortunate, as it has cheated readers of a powerful and significant portrayal of life in the US in the 1950s through the early 1980s. Richard Yates' work has long been out of print. As a result of this collection's publication, generations of readers may have encountered Yates' writing for the very first time.

The present collection brings together stories first published in Yates' 1962 "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" and his 1981 "Liars in Love", along with 9 largely - unpublished stories. Thus, it offers a strongly representative sample of his literary output, one that spans his entire writing career. Readers interested in the man and his works can find a useful overview on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Yates_(novelist)

This major, 470 page collection contains the 27 short stories listed below. Richard Russo introduces it with a ten-page essay that captures the tone, significance, and history of the stories. I consider the works that had been published in the two original collections to be especially notable, along with 4 of the 7 "previously uncollected" stories. Included below are my personal ratings of each of the stories, a practice I engage in for my own benefit. Stories that especially stood out, in my estimation, are "Doctor Jack-o'-lantern", The Best of Everything," "A Really Good Jazz Piano", "Builders", and "Saying Goodbye to Sally". In the description of another LT reviewer, these are "stories that betray your sense of hope, characters who will break your heart." I found that some of these stories ("A Really Good Jazz Piano", and "The Best of Everything") haunted me long after reading them (for which reason I felt compelled to increase my ratings of them).

From “11 Kinds of Loneliness”
Doctor Jack-o'-lantern – 4*
The Best of Everything – 4*
Jody Rolled The Bones – 3.5*
No Pain Whatsoever – 3.5*
A Glutton for Punishment – 3*
A Wrestler with Sharks – 3*
Fun with a Stranger – 3*
The B.A.R. Man – 3.5*
A Really Good Jazz Piano – 4*
Out with the Old – 3.5*
Builders – 4*

From “Liars in Love”
Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired – 3*
A Natural Girl – 3*
Trying Out for The Race – 3*
Liars in Love – 3*
A Compassionate Leave – 3*
Regards at Home – 3*
Saying Goodbye to Sally – 5*

"Previously uncollected stories"
The Canal – 3*
A Classical Romance– 3*
Bells in the Morning– 3*
Evening on the Cote d’Azur [published in 1974] – 3.5*
Thieves [published in 1976] – 2*
A Private Possession – 1.5*
The Comptroller and the Wild Wind – 1.5*
A Last Fling, Like – 1.5*
A Convalescent Ego – 1.5* ( )

Story: This book brings together stories that were published in Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love, as well as several previously unpublished stories. Almost without an exception, each of these stories features one of the following: struggling writers, tuberculosis, the army, siblings, and cheating husbands and wives.

Opinion: I find it hard to say anything meaningful about Yates, because anything I do say will never live up to what this man has written. If you’ve read Revolutionary Road (and if you haven’t, you should be right now) you know what’s in store for you: sadness, stories that betray your sense of hope, characters who will break your heart.

From my plot description you probably get the impression that the settings and characters are repetitive, but that’s where the magic lies. Even though several stories take place in a TB ward full of sick men, they all paint a different picture. The only thing they have in common is how incredibly depressing they are, and when a book can evoke that much emotion, it’s golden. ( )

This collection of stories illustrates the vibrant and vivid writings of Yates perfectly. One story in particular, "Doctor Jack-o'-Lantern," had me weeping for both the nostalgia of childhood, and the pain of remembering those tough school-yard days of loneliness and solitude (which I believe is the actual meaning of the word nostalgia; a remembrance of pain). The story mentioned above is about a child who is transplanted from his Brooklyn home into a middle-to-upper class suburb wherein his accent and his background separate him from the other students. As a method of coping with the change, the child adopts a few survival mechanisms in order to make himself seem interesting and tough. As a child who was moved around the country quite a bit, one relates to the fear of recess and lunch hour, and trying to find small spaces in which to hide and be alone. One also relates to the urge to create an image of toughness and otherness in order to impress the locals.

Yates so clearly shapes his characters that it is almost impossible not to feel their emotions. There is such reality in his writing that he not only paints a picture, he recreates a picture from within your own mind.

I suppose that his writing is not for everybody. It can be dry at points, and some of the stories can go on a bit. I have also read that people from outside the US have difficulty understanding many of his references, and the experiences he describes. To my mind, he writes like a period piece, these stories are a snapshot of mid-century America, warts and all. ( )