{"id":174841,"date":"2026-09-02T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=174841"},"modified":"2026-09-01T16:19:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:19:02","slug":"laugh-i-thought-id-die-richard-yatess-unpublished-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/09\/02\/laugh-i-thought-id-die-richard-yatess-unpublished-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLaugh? I Thought I\u2019d Die!!\u201d: Richard Yates\u2019s Unpublished Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Yates has a reputation for bleakness. But while the works for which he is best known\u2014the novels <\/span>Revolutionary Road <\/span><\/i>(1961) and<\/span> The Easter Parade <\/span><\/i>(1976)<\/span>,<\/span><\/i> as well as the story collection <\/span>Eleven Kinds of Loneliness <\/span><\/i>(1962)\u2014do feature a cast of unhappy souls, they are also often funny. So are his letters, which have never before been published.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Yates\u2019<\/span>s papers, maintained by his three daughters, include decades of correspondence; this selection of just fifteen letters spans more than fifty years. The first was written two years after his mother enrolled him in Scarborough Country Day, in Briarcliff Manor, New York. There, most of Yates\u2019s classmates came from wealthy or middle-class families. The Yateses rented their house from the school\u2019s founders, the Vanderlips, who, in the spring of 1939, took legal action to evict the family and recover many months of unpaid rent.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Having moved to a school in Lower Manhattan, Yates, then thirteen, wrote to his old friend Stephen Benedict, whom he called T-bon. They\u2019d formed the Scarborough Jitterbugs, a two-man band that sang popular standards like the Andrews Sisters\u2019 \u201cBei Mir Bist Du Sch\u00f6n\u201d and \u201cOh, Johnny, Oh!\u201d<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

January 12, 1939<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Steve,<\/span><\/p>\n

I really wrote you the verra nite what I gotcher letter. But the giggleiest thing happened! You see mine honorable sister took an excuse to her verra strict princepal, and (oh-ho-ho-haw) she (this\u2019ll kill you) was about to depart from the principle\u2019s desk, and (haw-<\/span>haw<\/span><\/i>) she glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw her \u201cexcuse\u201d bore the picture of a <\/span>kaht <\/span><\/i>[cat], and a \u201cDear T-bon.\u201d Laugh? I thought I\u2019d die!!<\/span><\/p>\n

My new school is peachy (oh-so). You might be interested in getting an ear<\/span>ful <\/span><\/i>of the gleeful fact that due to my duti<\/span>ful<\/span><\/i> studies, I, R. Walden Yates, was awarded 3 little bronze lapel-pins. Me and another guy who swings a wicked harmonica, have a sort of orchestra (not as good as the Scarborough jitterbugs). It will be peachy to see the T-bon this summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rich<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

Early in the summer of 1949, Yates fought with his wife Sheila Bryant, a recent graduate of secretarial school with striking red hair. These fights were so intense that the couple separated. Soon after, Yates attempted suicide. Upon waking in the hospital, he learned that there was a baby on the way. Shortly after the birth of their first daughter, Sharon, the family moved to Paris, which they hated, and then to London, where they lived in a basement flat in South Kensington for two pounds a week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At Christmas in 1952, Sheila\u2019s brother, Charles Bryant, suffered a severe mental breakdown and was committed to Fairfield Hospital in Connecticut. Sheila decided it was time to return home. But Yates wasn\u2019t ready, and so in March 1953, the couple agreed to a trial separation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

May 5, 1953<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Sheila, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s this month\u2019s alimony, with all my love.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll be damned if that isn\u2019t a masterpiece of a sentence, which could serve as an epigramatic [sic] definition of our marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is everything all right? Got no letter from you for over a week now, and it makes me a little nervous, especially since your last one was so full of cliff-hanging suspense\u2014you were on the verge of leaving your mother\u2019s, Charley was in Boston and on the verge of being discharged from the hospital, and it was still in doubt where he\u2019d go from there. I\u2019m awfully anxious to get the next installment, and if it doesn\u2019t come in a day or two I may get spastic diarrhea. I probably won\u2019t, really, but I do sort of worry about you when the mailman clumps up the steps and drops nineteen letters for Clifton-Taylor through the slot. I guess it\u2019s inevitable that your letters should start to space out, though, and I\u2019m sure you must be busy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Love,
\n<\/span>Rich<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"

Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

After the divorce, Yates began work on a novel that he said would \u201cbreak everybody\u2019s heart.\u201d After finishing <\/span>Revolutionary Road<\/span><\/i>, he promptly had a nervous breakdown. One night, after a worried call from Sheila, a mutual friend admitted him to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue in New York City. When Yates recovered, he learned that his agent, Monica McCall, was also in the hospital. She was being treated for exhaustion. Yates wrote to her with strong advice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

April 23, 1956<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Monica,<\/span><\/p>\n

We had no idea you were ill until Gunther told me on the phone today. It\u2019s a damn shame, especially the hospital part. I\u2019m an expert on hospitals and can assure you that they\u2019re all lousy, no matter what it says in the <\/span>Reader\u2019s Digest<\/span><\/i>. The thing you want to do now is get healed fast, and that means a careful observance of the basic strictures:<\/span><\/p>\n

1 \u2014 Ignore everything nurses tell you, and treat them with a mixture of pity and contempt. They are the helpless victims of a brainwashing so monstrous as to dwarf anything in Orwell. They really do believe in Rules, with all the fervor of their stunted little hearts. Go out of your way, if necessary, to thwart them. They thrive on it.<\/p>\n

2 \u2014 Be kind to doctors, and never let them know you aren\u2019t falling for their line. Medicine is a slick racket, as full of tricks and shabby motives as advertising or short-story writing, but the trouble with doctors is that they are constitutionally unable to admit it. There are few sights in the world more pathetic than the hurt, bewildered look of a doctor who has begun to suspect that you aren\u2019t paying attention.<\/p>\n

3 \u2014 Listen carefully, and obey, when they start talking about how you should take it easy and get plenty of rest. This is absolutely the only area in which they are qualified to discuss your problems.<\/p>\n

Number three is by far the most important of the strictures, if only because I suspect it\u2019s the one least likely to come naturally to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, be in a hurry to get the hell out of the hospital, but don\u2019t be in any hurry to come back to New York. We can all wait until you\u2019re good and healthy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sheila and Sharon send their best wishes.<\/span><\/p>\n

As ever,
\n<\/span>Dick<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1962, Yates flew to Los Angeles to work on the screenplay for an adaptation of William Styron\u2019s novel <\/span>Lie Down in Darkness <\/span><\/i>(1951), which would star Natalie Wood as Peyton Loftis. Although they were the same age, Styron had already published three novels, which Yates considered the best of the postwar era.\u00a0 Two years later, Yates wrote to the poet Miller Williams to explain how it fell apart.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

March 14, 1964<\/strong><\/p>\n

Miller,<\/span><\/p>\n

About the movie, Miss Wood\u2019s agent decided that it might Tarnish Her Image with the Teenagers if she appeared as a girl who loved her Daddy a little too much, and Blooey. She pulled out, then Henry Fonda pulled out, then United Artists pulled out, then John Frankenheimer (the Dedicated Young Director) pulled out\u2014and the whole God damned deal fell through\u2014leaving me with a fraction of the earnings I was supposed to reap. I had been counting on sending both my children through college on the money I\u2019d been promised, so when the axe fell it was something of a blow. That, I guess, is show biz.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dick<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"

Photograph by Martha Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

Shortly after <\/span>Revolutionary Road<\/em> was published, Yates got a call from Grace Schulman, a twenty-six-year-old writer for <\/span>Glamour<\/em> who loved the novel. Grace took Yates home to meet her husband Jerry, a well-read medical scientist, and the three quickly became friends. For Yates, gripped by loneliness since his divorce, it was almost like having a family again. At night they\u2019d cook beef stew, then lie around drinking and laughing while Grace played songs on the guitar. <\/span>In an effort to finish his new novel, Yates arranged to spend the summer at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He was given a secluded cabin with a desk, a bed, and a fireplace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

August 8, 1964<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grace and Jerry,<\/span><\/p>\n

The damn place MacDowell is a little too Bread-Loafy for comfort, by which I mean that too many evenings get wasted having Brilliant Conversations with the Nicest and Best People you\u2019ve Ever Met, and then waking up with a terrible hangover and going to the damn typewriter as if it were an instrument of torture. Sometimes I get good working days in and hardly drink at all; other times everything goes to hell. Worst feature now is that I\u2019m horribly aware of the time slipping away, and feel a compulsion to finish the effing book by September First whether it\u2019s any good or not, and this, of course, is not exactly a healthy attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

One good thing: there\u2019s a guy here with a collection of old-timey phonograph records, and I\u2019ve mastered both lyrics and tune of an absolutely great Al Jolson called \u201cWhere Did Robinson Crusoe Go with Friday on Saturday Night?\u201d I promise to sing it for you loud and clear the minute I\u2019m back in town.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dick<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"

At the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1963. Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Back in Hollywood, Yates tried to get sober, but it didn\u2019t take. For support, his publisher Sam Lawrence suggested he get in touch with his old friend Brian Moore, who was also in Hollywood writing a screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock. Yates was put off by Moore\u2019s new success, but he left a message at Universal and Moore invited him to his house in Malibu, where he met John Gregory Dunne.<\/span><\/p>\n

January 18, 1966<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dearest Vernon C,<\/span><\/p>\n

Dunne likes to say, \u201cI\u2019m John Gregory Dunne, the writer, and this is my wife Joan.\u201d What a colossal ego! Joan is the real writer in the family.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dick<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In 1973, Yates returned to New York with his second wife, Martha Speer, an art student twenty years his junior, and their new baby, Gina. Soon, Martha found the strain of Yates\u2019s alcoholism and mental illness too much to bear, and left for Washington, taking their daughter. Inspired by his stints in various psych wards, he wrote the novel <\/span>Disturbing the Peace<\/span><\/i> quickly, which was published in early September of 1975. <\/span><\/p>\n

Around that time, Yates went to Washington for a weekend with his friend Joseph Mohbat and Mohbat\u2019s wife Nancy. Yates was in such high spirits on the trip that he inadvertently spat in Nancy Mohbat\u2019s eye while telling a wild story. His apology came soon after.<\/span><\/p>\n

September 15, 1975<\/strong><\/p>\n

Joe and Nancy,<\/span><\/p>\n

Things I regret.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Smoking and coughing all the time.
\n2. Bending your ears so much.
\n3. Pulling that half-assed poetry recital on you in the restaurant.
\n4. Spitting on Nancy<\/p>\n

If you can find it in your heart to forgive me for these four then there would seem to be every chance that we might somehow get together again soon. Hope so.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think my new novel is okay, though not as big or as rich as I\u2019d hoped. Am trying to make up for that in my next one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yours,
\n<\/span>Dick<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"

Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

In late March of 1976, Yates was asked to interview for a writer-in-residence position at Amherst College. He hated the idea of teaching, but he needed the money. After the interview with the college president, he gave a reading to a group of students, then took questions. Although they asked fairly benign questions (\u201cWhere do you get your ideas?\u201d), his responses were sour, superior, and humorless. Yates didn\u2019t get the job, and soon needed some distraction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

April 26, 1976<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Mr. Geoff C,<\/span><\/p>\n

I tried smoking some of that marijuana you gave me in Rhode Island but found the highs too much like going crazy. Or maybe it\u2019s just that I shouldn\u2019t be doing it alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, I set my apartment on fire. Three guesses how it started, and the first two don\u2019t count. Apparently I put the butt in an ashtray on the sofa bed and the sheets began to smolder, then I opened the bathroom door and it created a cross-draft. When I discovered the fire I ran all the way to the ground floor and woke everybody in the building. Firemen came and I wish they didn\u2019t see me naked. Maybe worst of all, the manuscript of <\/span>A Good School <\/span><\/i>was on my desk and I couldn\u2019t get to it. Hope there is something to salvage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dick<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

In the late eighties, shortly after publishing his final novel, <\/span>Cold Spring Harbor <\/span><\/i>(1986)<\/span>, Yates was hospitalised with pneumonia and seemed to be slipping into dementia. Though he had every intention of finishing his novel, \u201c<\/span>Uncertain Times<\/span>,\u201d he began to accept the possibility he might soon die, largely out of print and broke. During this time, Yates sent sporadic checks to Gina, his youngest daughter, then in college, often accompanied by short notes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Yates and Gina in 1975 (left) and 1991 (right). Courtesy of the Estate of Richard Yates.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

October 14, 1991<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina,<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s utterly ridiculous, the way I feel about you.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Dad<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

October 31, 1991<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina,<\/span><\/p>\n

Every thought of you makes a little party in my heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dad<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

September 22, 1991<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina,<\/span><\/p>\n

I love you to an absurd degree.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dad<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

January 7, 1992<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina,<\/span><\/p>\n

Everything sucks in Tuscaloosa. Is life any groovier in Vancouver?<\/span><\/p>\n

Love,
\n<\/span>Dad<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***<\/span><\/p>\n

January 12, 1992<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina,<\/span><\/p>\n

I would like to be funny but am feeling too serious today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Very seriously,
\n<\/span>Dad<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

February 3, 1992<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina:<\/span><\/p>\n

If George Bush had you for a daughter he would never again have to fake a smile (though possibly you might).<\/span><\/p>\n

Love,
\n<\/span>Dad<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

August 12, 1992<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Gina,<\/span><\/p>\n

We miss you at Fools Anonymous meetings. <\/span><\/p>\n

It has been suggested that we change the name of our organization to something trendier that might attract younger members. What would you think of Fools-R-Us?<\/span><\/p>\n

Love,
\n<\/span>Dad.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Nathan Dunne is the author of\u00a0<\/em>When Nothing Feels Real. His translation of Tonino Guerra\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>The Honey\u00a0is forthcoming from World Poetry Books this October.<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Here\u2019s this month\u2019s alimony, with all my love.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68530],"tags":[67827,1362,19948,182,27281,68913,68915,68914,515,11],"class_list":["post-174841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","tag-featured","tag-joan-didion","tag-john-gregory-dunne","tag-letters","tag-macdowell-colony","tag-monica-yates","tag-natalie-wood","tag-revolutionary-road","tag-richard-yates","tag-william-styron"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cLaugh? 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