The Easter Parade (1976)
This is the mystery of Richard Yates: how did a writer
so well-respected? even loved? by his peers,
a writer capable of moving his readers so deeply,
fall for all intents out of print, and so quickly?
How is it possible that an author whose work defined
the lostness of the Age of Anxiety as deftly as
Fitzgeraldís
did that of the Jazz Age, an author who influenced American literary icons
like
Raymond Carver and Andre
Dubus, among others, an author so forthright and plainspoken in his
prose and choice of characters, can now be found
only by special order or in the dusty, floor-level
end of the fiction section in secondhand stores?
And how come no one knows this? How come no
one does anything about it?
-Stewart O'Nan, The
Lost World of Richard Yates (Boston Review)
Well, as it turns out, O'Nan did do something about. His essay, and similar proselytizing by Richard Russo, got Yates back into print and earned the recent release of his Collected Stories genuine big event status, with reviews and reappraisals in all the leading papers and journals. For now at least, he's been rediscovered and restored to an exalted position. But if you read The Easter Parade, it's easy to see why he faded away so fast; this isn't the kind of book that the intelligentsia would want people reading, nor would they care to continue to face its ugly truths themselves.
In one of the most depressing opening lines you'd ever want to read, Yates let's the reader know exactly what he's in for, and why :
Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy
life, and looking back it always seemed that the
trouble began with their parents' divorce.
The promise of the 60s was that the abandonment of traditional morality, family structures, traditions, and beliefs would have a liberating effect and make all our lives better. But Yates proceeds instead to show just how catastrophic these changes were. The older Grimes sister, Sarah, marries a man who looks like Laurence Olivier, and despite an outwardly happy and comfortable life, ends up being battered as they teeter on the brink of financial ruin.
Younger sister Emily becomes little more than a slattern, scrumping in parks and waking with strangers, though she does have a couple of longer term relationships.
The troubles of both can be traced directly to the divorce of their parents. When Emily finds out that her sister is being beaten by her husband, Sarah tells her :
It's a marriage. If you want to stay married you learn to put up with things.
Emily's prototypical affair is with Ted Banks :
...both felt an urge to drink too much when they
were together, as if they didn't want to touch each
other sober.
The one sister is so desperate to hold her marriage together that she'll endure anything. The other is so afraid of being rejected that she has to have serial relationships and to erect a haze of booze between herself and her men.
The story is, in fact, soaked in alcohol. And it becomes clear that people use drink to avoid their real selves, each other, and genuine interaction. It turns out that the "freedom" they've theoretically gained has made them miserable, is even killing them.
Towards the end of the novel, after Sarah has apparently, though not officially, been killed by her husband, one of her sons tells Emily :
'You know something? I've always admired you, Aunt
Emmy. My mother used to say "Emmy's a
free spirit." I didn't know what that meant
when I was little, so I asked her once. And she said
"Emmy doesn't care what anybody thinks. She's
her own person and she goes her own way."
The walls of Emily's throat closed up. When
she felt it was safe to speak she said 'Did she really
say that?'
Of course she's proud, an older sister pronouncing that she'd realized the dream of their generation, to be free. But we, the readers, are privy to the awful truth : she's utterly alone, her past wasted, her future hopeless, alcohol killing her as it killed her mother and father, and contributed to the death of her sister. The hard won kudos of which she is so proud reads like a death sentence, not just for her, but for all who thought that this atomized life would make them happy.
The book is exactly as depressing as it sounds like it would be, though
there is much dark humor in it. The story is direct and economical,
covering the two women's lives in just over two hundred pages. Most
of all, it is devastating, a brutally honest depiction of tragic choices
and truly empty lives. No wonder he went out of print, the folks
who foisted this culture on us were just destroying the evidence, the way
any guilt-ridden perps would..
(Reviewed:18-Sep-01)
Grade: (A)
