HOWDY!!! (Maybe!?!?!?)

[trailerpark]

I signed up here over a year ago, but I was quite drunk at the time and no matter how hard I tried my posts just wouldn't appear...which is probably for the good of all...especially my mum.

Anyway, I have recently signed on again (no 17-year-old asking for my UB40, thank god) and just thought I'd introduce myself 'cos I think I might have found some folks worth talking to on the intraweb thing.

My name is Ben; I live in Hampshire, England; I'm 28 but feel 58 (I've had a hard life!); I love Sherwood Anderson; Flannery O'Connor; Charles Bukowski; Raymond Carver; John O'Brien...and Richard Yates: which is what brought me in here in the first place (a year ago).

I was cruising the intraweb, looking for anything relating to Richard Yates, when I stumbled upon this hallowed ground! Twas then that I read your thread devoted to Yates and immediately fell in love with you all! I couldn't believe that I had found a place where so many appreciated the work of such an underestimated master. I read the thread many times over, marvelling at how many folks seemed to share my love of his work.

None of my posts "stuck" however, so I simply gave up on 'Palimpsest'. However, after a worryingly long period of, err, the blues last year, I found myself re-reading 'The Easter Parade' (and 'Nausea', and 'Notes From Underground' - WHOOT!!!) and made a mental note to try to wedge myself in here again...SO HERE I AM!!!

Your thread on Yates was GENUINELY fascinating, and I hope that you will all be welcoming of a relative youngster who hasn't read as many "classics" as he should have done!

Yours truly...

-a Richard Yates fan!

[Ang]

Welcome trailerpark! There are certainly some Yates fans here.

[Colyngbourne]

Hi, trailerpark and welcome: good to see another Yates fan around these parts (I *think* I'm a fan, though with some qualification ;-)) Looking forward to your thoughts.

[John Self]

Welcome trailerpark ... hey, 28 isn't so young, you know! If you like Richard Yates, you may enjoy Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (http://palimpsest.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=1560) or Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt (http://palimpsest.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=2609).

And can I ask you to turn down the exclamation marks a touch...?

[Noumenon]

Morning, TP, don't worry about being "quotes" ill-read, you are guaranteed to be higher up the literacy tree than I am and no-one around here has started to stamp on my fingers yet.

[JunkMonkey]

I'm happily playing mud pies down in the roots (to borrow Nou's metaphor for a moment) and no one's ever threw things at me around here - but then maybe I'm too thick (or just thick skinned) to have noticed. :-) Welcome.

[HP]

Howdy to you, too, TP. Draw up a chair and make yourself comfortable. Declaring a fondness for Yates is almost guaranteed entry to the Palimp's hallowed portals. (Hey, and John's right, 28 isn't that green: we have several members a good deal younger than you, y'know!)

[trailerpark]

Wow! What a friendly bunch you are! I've joined forums in the past and have been greeted like a leper for daring to intrude on the lives of those who have been there since inception!

Mr. Self, I will check out the books you mention. I've done 'Main Street' but haven't read the other Lewis you recommended. Will get on 'em asap!

[BiNS]

I should hate you just for being 28. ;-)

[trailerpark]

I should hate you just for being 28. ;-)

HA!!!

The thought of hitting thirty sends me into a fit! I've been telling myself for years that by the time I hit thirty I will have finished my education; got a proper career going; and will have a relationship that at least LOOKS like it might go the distance.

Am failing on all three fronts!

[Stewart]

by the time I hit thirty I will have finished my education; got a proper career going; and will have a relationship that at least LOOKS like it might go the distance.
Having recently turned 29, I've given up all hope.

[trailerpark]

Having recently turned 29, I've given up all hope.

HAHAHA!!!

I turn 29 in May. It's over! I tried, but I have failed in life!!!

Reading Richard Yates and listening to Richmond Fontaine and the Willard Grant Conspiracy are all that keep me going!

A few weeks ago, I was walking to the station to get the train to work, when I passed this girl talking on her mobile 'phone, and she was HAPPY! And I mean fucking HAPPY!!! She was fucking BEAMING! She was the happiest-looking person I've ever seen in my whole life! SHE WAS ELECTRIC!!! SHE WAS ALIVE!!! SHE WAS GORGEOUS!!!

Where does that come from?! How does one go about being happy?!

When I'm lying on my deathbed, the last image I will ever see will be THAT girl. My god, she was on fire with fucking happiness!!!

Seriously, you had to have been there to believe it - she was fucking HAPPY!!!

Maybe she hasn't read enough books.

[John Self]

Hey! What did I say about the exclamation marks!!!

You're right to worry about turning 30 though, tp; it was an absolute bloody nightmare as far as I was concerned. I intend to be heavily medicated for a week either side of my 40th birthday.

[JunkMonkey]

TP, I'll be 50 next year and I still haven't figured out what I want to do with my life but, like Tigger, I know an awful lot of things I don't like best - but one of these days I'll find it.

(I think that was meant to be encouraging)

[trailerpark]

"Do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life."

[JunkMonkey]

Hmmm, looks like I may have to read some Yates. But first I have to finish the thick book with all the short words and big explosions I'm reading at the moment.

[trailerpark]

Several Polish blokes work in the warehouse in which I am employed. I am lampooned because, on every break, I pull out a book to read. Anyway, two or three weeks back, this Polish geezer interrupts my reading by saying:

"Hey, Ben. In my life I read only one book."

"Really?! You've only ever read ONE book???"

"Yeah."

"WHAT WAS IT???"

"Demolition Man."


I'm fucking serious! That is the entire converstion, VERBATIM!!!

[ions]

Having recently turned 29, I've given up all hope.


Yeah.... just goes down from there. 30 is twice as bad. Forces you to stop counting.

[Ang]

I didn't mind 30 at all... or 40 for that matter. We'll see about the next "big one".

[gil]

Hi, trailerpark. I'm not far from you, just the Surrey side of the Hampshire border. Welcome aboard.

[HP]

The thought of hitting thirty sends me into a fit!


You're right to worry about turning 30 though, tp; it was an absolute bloody nightmare as far as I was concerned. I intend to be heavily medicated for a week either side of my 40th birthday.

Yeah.... just goes down from there. 30 is twice as bad. Forces you to stop counting.

You guys definitely need to throw off your knee-highs and get out more. Seriously, fellas, you need to do a little more living - then you'll realise just how bloody daft and shallow you sound. Smacked wristies all round (and no milk and cookies for supper). ;-)

[Ang]

Life gets better, not worse, guys!!

[bakunin_the_cat]

Hi trailerpark, welcome to the circus! I'm 34 now and have got to the stage when I'm not that bothered about what I'm going to do when I grow up. I used to think that if you haven't chosen your life and career and all that by the time you're 30 you're a bit of a loser, but who makes the rules? We stumble on. Stuff happens. We adapt to it. We get by. To paraphrase Python if everyone was Superman who'd fix the bicycles? You need Bicycle Repairmen. Let those who want to make their mark on the world, make it, but if you're happy with just mooching on, having a couple of people who like you, and enjoying a beer now and then, chill bro'. It's cool, I say.

Anyway, before this turns into some kind of lifestyle coaching which I'm blatantly unqualified to do, especially with someone I've barely met, then I just wanted to say hiya, hello and welcome.

[Digger]

Hey Trailerpark, welcome to Palimpsest, where you'll be happily for the next 30 years!

It didn't bother me turning 30, or even 31 last year - but I am one of those HAPPY people :-D Much aided by the fine folks here. And enjoy the Yates too - I did.

[Beth]

Hi trailerpark and welcome! Any friend of Yates is a virtual one of mine. These guys here have said it all...

Life gets better, not worse, guys!!


who makes the rules? We do!

[Quink]

In concerns of age, try:

a) renewing your ten year passport;
b) your first meeting with your probate lawyer.

[Stewart]

In concerns of age, try:

a) renewing your ten year passport;

Oh, that reminds me. I need to do that this year.

[Quink]

And there passes the tick-tock of time.

[JunkMonkey]

What's a "probate lawyer"? If it means a lawyer who draws up your will then they're great fun. For various tedious reasons I won't bore the world with, not that they're any of the world's business anyway, I'm on will number four at the moment. Last time I drew one up I had the poor sod in fits of the giggles and banging his head on the table trying to turn my unreasonable demands into acceptable lawyerese.

[Quink]

I know what you mean, JM. I emailed my interpretations of probate law to him today. Wait till he sees what I plan to do with bequeathing my books. Never has the English language suffered such contortions.

[Noumenon]

What's a "probate lawyer"?Isn't it one who sticks his finger up your a- oh wait. That doesn't narrow it down at all.

[trailerpark]

Life gets better, not worse, guys!!

Tell that to the Grimes sisters!

[Colyngbourne]

Tell that to the Grimes sisters!

I believe it does start to get better for Emily, or contains the seeds of hope for that by the close of the book.

[trailerpark]

I believe it does start to get better for Emily, or contains the seeds of hope for that by the close of the book.

I would also like to interpret the end of the 'Easter Parade' as containing at least a kernel of hope for Emily; but given that this is Yates that we are talking about, and given the autobiographical nature of his work (and thus the horrendously draining familial background present there), it's kind of hard to be too positive about a closing line such as "...come and meet the family". Which, in my opinion, is exactly why Yates left it like that - he didn't deal in morality, or right and wrong, or left and right, or black and white. Yates knew that life exists in between all of those things; that no matter how much we'd like things to be a simple case of night and day, the truth really lies in the half-light.

Yates once said that "I <AM> Emily fucking Grimes". And he was. There is more of Yates in her than in any other character he wrote about. And Yates died alone and broke...so who are we to suppose that he would've wanted anything more or less for Emily?

[Colyngbourne]

But we don't have to take what the author thought of the character (or whether he identified with her) as what the character definitively means. Just as Rowling's (to me, skewed) perception of Snape's character and actions has little to do with what the readers make of the character. I agree Yates left it open, but with more than a hint of good possibilities to many people's reading of the end.

[trailerpark]

But we don't have to take what the author thought of the character (or whether he identified with her) as what the character defininitely means. Just as Rowling's (to me, skewed) perception of Snape's character and actions has little to do with what the readers make of the character. I agree Yates left it open, but with more than a hint of good possibilities to many people's reading of the end.

Obviously it's open to each individual's interpretation, and, believe me, I *DO* yearn for Emily to find some kind of redemption, but as someone who comes from a background blighted by extreme poverty, alcoholism and violence, I guess I just don't DARE to hope for the best, for FEAR of disappointment. I know that will sound strange, but that's just how I have come to view the world. (And I fear that Yates viewed it in a similar way.)

I do, however, concede that Yates (whether he would've admitted it or not is another matter) genuinely CARED for Emily in the same way that Hardy did Tess. So, from THAT perspective, his desire for an outcome more positive than negative could well be argued in favour of the former.

But, as I have already stated, my life experience makes me lean towards the negative...if only for fear of disappointment. I relate to Yates/Emily so strongly that I find it difficult to disentangle my own hopes and feelings from those of him and her!

Ah! F*ck it! He was miserable; she was miserable; I'm miserable - we're all miserable! And this bottle of J&B won't drink itself...