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"Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" describes the lives of ordinary New Yorkers in the 1950s and 1960s after World War II in a cold way. It writes about eleven kinds of lonely lives. The protagonists are all people who lack security and live unsatisfactory lives: fired white-collar workers in Manhattan office buildings, people with outstanding imaginations A taxi driver, a young man who has been frustrated many times and wants to be a writer, a confused man and woman who are about to get married, an eccentric old teacher, a newly transferred primary school student, a tuberculosis patient, an old and sick wife, a jazz pianist, a frustrated military officer, a retired soldier, etc. Yates's works are all about the ordinary lives of ordinary people, describing the loneliness, loss and despair of ordinary people. He himself once said: "If there is any theme in my works, I think there is only one simple one: people are lonely, no one can escape, and this is their tragedy."

The representative work of Richard Yates, "the writer among writers", "the great writer in the age of anxiety" and the author of "Revolutionary Road". Michael Davenport was a young man who retired from the European battlefields of World War II. He was ambitious and dreamed of becoming a poet and playwright. He is aloof, lives for art, and does not want to get involved with his wife's money, but he still has to write articles for a business magazine to maintain his hobby of writing poetry. His wife Lucy is extremely rich, but she never knows what she wants. She just feels that others seem to be happier than her. As time went by, the couple's anxiety grew as they watched others achieve success while they themselves remained unknown. Their once happy lives are being swallowed up by adultery and isolation, and the monotony they thought they had escaped lingers like a nightmare. In this novel, Yates once again chose the broken American dream, which he is best at, as his theme. He used the heavy hammer of reality to smash the innocence of the dream, bringing an incomparable dull pain, making people feel the sentimentality of the times and personal difficulties when reading.

"The Love Liar" is Richard Yates's second collection of short stories after "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness", which includes seven short stories in total. It perfectly demonstrates Yates's superior powers of insight and description. With this book, Yates once again proves the power of the short story. Yates, who is obviously more interested in describing "failed life", relies on his keen mind and unique perspective of observation, like a collage art, to present the "little people" and their life fragments in the United States three-dimensionally before our eyes: failed artists, single mothers with difficult lives, alienated family relationships, estranged marriages, rebellious daughters, fleeting love affairs, unreliable dreams...

"Destiny" is a breakthrough transformation in Yates's writing career. The novel focuses on the life dilemma of a down-and-out mother and son. After his parents divorced, Prentiss and his mother depended on each other, but her mother was obsessed with becoming a sculptor. After repeated failures, the lives of mother and son fell into the abyss. Prentiss had to support his mother's emotional support while dealing with the pressure of life. At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the army. Prentiss is young, withdrawn and sensitive. The most trivial things in the military camp make him feel shattered and life-threatening. He fully hopes that being a soldier means becoming a hero, but he finds that no matter how hard he works, he always looks like a clown. The war is finally over, but Prentice's life has "no reckoning, no answers, no proof." However, this time Prentiss decided to "run away" as a decision for the future. It is difficult to say whether this is an escape from "destiny" or a compliance with it.

"I understand," she said. When will she learn not to say "I understand" to things she knows nothing about? The elder sister leaves her destiny to marriage, and the younger sister pursues knowledge and freedom, but neither of them can live a happy life. Is this a human dilemma, or is this only true for women? ? After the early release of the influential "Revolutionary Road" and "Eleven Kinds of Solitude", Yates's creative career went through a period of silence. "Easter Parade" once again demonstrates Yates's extraordinary creative strength. This work contains astonishing breadth and weight. Yates' usual elegant and tragic perspective flows through the plain and restrained narrative, tearing apart the fate and dreams of the two sisters bit by bit. It is "both cruel and heartwarming, heartbreaking and cruel." "This is Yates's best novel." As children, Sarah and Emily were two very different girls. In Emily's eyes, her rational sister is always superior. She is jealous of her sister's relationship with her father (who left them due to divorce) and her sister's seemingly happy marriage. Emily chose a path for herself that was not so safe and unconventional. All the romantic affairs could not really satisfy her. Although the bond that binds the sisters has always existed, the distance between them has grown further and further until, finally, a tragic event throws their relationship into the center of a storm...

The "Good School" of the title is a fictional Connecticut preparatory high school. The story takes place in the early 1940s. Boys in a "good school" must join the army immediately after graduation. Teachers have mixed feelings about their profession and the school they attend. Although this is a school, as one teacher in the book says, it "contains huge sexual energy", and this is true for students and teachers. To some extent, "Richard Yates: Good School" also continues the theme explored in "Revolutionary Road": the fragility of marriage. The husband is disabled, the wife is cheating on her, the husband wants to commit suicide, but he is unable to do so. The title of the book "Good School" is undoubtedly the greatest irony, and it makes people sigh after reading it.

A great writer in the age of anxiety, a spokesman for the urban frustrated; Richard Yates's fantasy work of conflicting phantoms confronts our unstable and mediocre life; can we dream again? Facing a life that is about to fall apart and this crazy era. John Wilder never thought that his life would start falling like a free fall from the age of 35. What on earth hindered his originally peaceful and peaceful life? Make him tired of everything in life. His decent and successful job became boring, his gentle and considerate wife made him doubt his love, and he felt powerless and guilty in the face of his increasingly withdrawn child. Endless fatigue came inexplicably, the happiness he had been accustomed to before became fleeting, and everything that was solid began to shake like a phantom. He felt that he was sick, trapped in volatile emotions, alcohol, and self-doubt that became increasingly out of control... "Life is really Is that it?" After questioning himself countless times, he decided to fight against this life that was collapsing halfway. Like many Americans in the 1960s, John Wilder made an unforgettable decision. He wanted to dream again to save this life that was about to fall apart...