Short stories by Robert M. Coates
Robert Myron Coates (April 6, 1897 – February 8, 1973) was an American writer and a long-term art critic for the New Yorker. He used the term "abstract expressionism" in 1946 in reference to the works of Hans Hofmann, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and others.[1][2][3][4] As a writer of fiction, he is considered a member of the Lost Generation, having spent part of his life abroad in Europe. His first three novels are highly experimental, drawing upon Dada, surrealism and expressionism for their effect. His last two novels are examples of crime fiction in which the narrator presents a psychopathological case study of the protagonist. Nowadays, Coates is best known for The Outlaw Years (1930), which deals with the history of the land pirates of the Natchez Trace. Anthony Boucher praised Coates as "one of the most persuasive recorders of the unaccountable and disturbing moment," singling out his fantasy stories for their "haunting tone of uncertainty and dislocation."[5]Floyd C. Gale said that The Eater of Darkness "has been called the first surrealist novel in English".[6]Maxim Lieber was Coates' literary agent from 1935 to 1938 and in 1941 and 1945. Coates was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1897 and died at the age of 75 in New York City in 1973.[7]
Listing 6 stories.
A man escapes a hit and run accident and feels immense guilt until he meets his own misfortune.
Accused of gun possession, a man gets arrested after a night at the bar. However, he manages to escape but realizes that escape is far from comforting.
In an East Ohio town, a middle-aged man checks into a hotel and explores the various characters, events and surroundings that define small town life.
A disturbed man — consumed by fury at the world and the wickedness he believes it contains — attempts to kidnap a little girl and meets a brutal end.
A man from New York recalls his most poignant memories, realizing they were all moments when others had needed something from him and he had let them down.
After a man sees his ex-wife with another man on the street, he follows her home and his rage overtakes him, making him do something he regrets.