Communication Quote by Blake Bailey

“Only the early Fitzgerald was great. Then came an orgy of brutal realism”

— Fellini, Federico

“Not only had Yates continued to grow as a writer in terms of craft, but also philosophically, salvaging from the ruins of his life…

— Blake Bailey

If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort…

— Tao Lin

“As Henry Dan Piper, one of Fitzgerald's most perceptive critics, has commented, his fiction heroes "are destroyed because they attempt to fulfill themselves through…

— Scott Donaldson

“But what ultimately made Yates the scourge of copy editors was his simple aversion to criticism; any emendation in his manuscript, be it a…

— Blake Bailey

“Mr. Fitzgerald is a novelist and Mrs. Fitzgerald is a novelty”

— Ring Lardner

“But Yates was desperate enough to put aside his anxiety and give teaching a try. He could think of no more demoralizing prospect, after…

— Blake Bailey

“Yates’s determinism, like Flaubert’s, was a matter of knowing his characters well enough to know their fates, and making the reader see this, too.…

— Blake Bailey

It’s Fitzgerald’s thin-but-durable urge to affirm that finally makes Gatsby worthy of being our Great American Novel. Its soaring conclusion tells us that, even…

— Maureen Corrigan

“Unfortunately, Vaughan Williams talked and wrote a great deal of sheer nonsense about his supposed amateurishness.”

— Alain Frogley