Synopses & Reviews
A memorable period piece, remarkable for its vivid language and thematic structure, Yesterdays Burdens is an obsessive Story of New York life in the 1930s.
Malcolm Cowley, a close personal friend of Robert Coates, has pointed out in his Afterword to this new edition the aptness of this novel to its time. Yesterdays Burdens is an informal story of an unconventional young man of the 1930s. The central character, Henderson, typifies the successful young New Yorker, whose life style reflects the restless, seeking, discontented mood of his time. With him, the reader crisscrosses Manhattan, visits speakeasies, crashes parties, and participates in Hendersons sexual activities and his possible suicide (the novel has three endings).
Frankly experimental in technique, the novel attempts the universal in its appeal. Readers today no doubt will appreciate the unexpected tenderness and passion with which the author endows his very ordinary characters.
About the Author
A Yale graduate, Robert M. Coates went to Paris in 1921 and became a member of the expatriate set that included F. Scott Fitzgerald. His first novel, The Eater of Darkness, was published by Robert McAlmons now legendary Contact Press, which also published Hemingway. Returning to this country he obtained a job on the New Yorker with the help of his friend James Thurber, and was a staff member until his death in 1973.