Cold Spring Harbor
by Richard Yates
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard YatesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987-08-11
ISBN: 0385295960
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Delta
Book Reviews of Cold Spring Harbor
Book Review: Alienated After the War
Summary: 3 Stars
This belongs in any short list of novels about alienation.
The reviews emphasize that this is a novel about a group of lost people, struggling through problems that are largely of their own doing. Fair enough. Evan Shepherd seems to never make the right choice. The Shepherd ability to judge character poorly seems to pass along from generation to generation. The only difference is their response. Whereas Charles hangs on to his alcoholic wife, Evan escapes.
I was still searching for a sense of a meaning about this book all the way to the last sentence. That sentence, spoken by Rachel to her newborn son, seems to add one more layer of dark wit. Rachel, the wife of Evan, is nursing her son the morning after a fight with Evan. Evan has left, and unknown to Rachel, intends to start up again with his first wife. Rachel's words seem to indict both Evan and all men in general. "You're a miracle," she says, "because do you know what you are going to be? You are going to be a man."
To me, that is especially dark, because it would seem to mean that she is consigning her future expectations of Evan, Jr., to the same path worn by his father.
In the end, I don't know of this book has one main idea. Instead, it seems content to show the reader a contrary vision of life after World War II. This is not a book about plenty, about men coming home with pride, about love of family and institutions. These are not the people that Studs Terkel wrote about in the Good War.
This could hardly be more different. The war has touched the lives of these men. Charles Shepard must go to great lengths to explain that he was not a war hero. Flash Ferris dreams of joining the marines, but it is only a dream. Evan himself is rejected for physical deficiencies.
This could be one of those novels that successfully undermines the notion of white Protestant virtue. Both Evan and his friend, Flash, attend elite private schools. Even Phil, cast as unfortunate because he has no money for a bike and needs to get a summer job, is still going off to board in the fall. In spite of their class status, most of these characters are not weighed down by any kind of noblesse oblige. With the exception of Phil, who stands up for the right thing, these people are ready to turn on each other at a whim or convenience. They drink badly. They don't serve their country.
I love Richard Yates' style with words. It reminds of his contemporay, Evan S. Connell (Mrs. Bridge, and later, Mr. Bridge), for its deliberate realism. Many of the pages career back and forth along the wayward doubts that fill the heads of Evan, Phil, and Rachel. This is a rare kind of writing that seems to have disappeared in the last few years.
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