""It took me a long time to figure out... that the best way to handle [the couple's dialogue] was to have them nearly always miss each other's points, to have them talk around and through and at each other. There's a great deal of dialogue between them in the finished book... but there's almost no communication." In other words Yates had remembered the lesson of his first great master, Fitzgerald—namely, that people rarely say what they mean, and good dialogue is a matter of catching one's characters "in the very act of giving themselves away"."
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Novelists from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesPeople from New York City
Original Language: English
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Richard Yates, about writing Revolutionary Road (Ploughshares, 68); plus an observation by Blake Bailey on this. Chapter 6, "A cry of prisoners: 1953-1959", at p.178
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Yates
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Richard Yates
Richard Yates (February 3, 1926 – November 7, 1992) was an American fiction writer. His first novel, "Revolutionary Road" (1961), was a finalist for the 1962 National Book Award and is listed in Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels.
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