Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

This classic story collection from the renowned author of Revolutionary Road presents eleven tales of Americans adrift in the mid-twentieth century.

First published in 1962, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness showcases the piercing eye for telling detail and profound insight into human turmoil that have become Richard Yates’s signature. The New York Times Book Review hailed it as “the New York equivalent of Dubliners.”

Out of the lives of Manhattan office workers, a cab driver seeking immortality, frustrated would-be novelists, suburban men and their yearning, neglected women, Richard Yates creates a haunting mosaic of the 1950s, the era when the American dream was finally coming true—and just beginning to ring a little hollow.

In Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, you'll discover some of the most influential and sharply observed short fiction of the twentieth century, and find out why Richard Yates was a true American master.