Richard Yates's List of Underrated Writers

PS: Who do you consider some other good, neglected writers?

RY: Read the four splendid books by Gina Berriault, if you can find them, and if you want to discover an absolutely first-class talent who has somehow been left almost entirely out of the mainstream. She hasn’t quit writing yet, either, and I hope she never will.

And read almost anything by R.V. Cassill, a brilliant and enormously productive man who’s been turning out novels and stories for twenty-five years or more, all the while building and sustaining a large influence on other writers as a teacher and critic. Oh, he’s always been well known in what I guess you’d call literary circles, but he had to wait a long, long time before his most recent novel, Doctor Cobb’s Game, did bring him some widespread readership at last.

And George Garrett. I haven’t read very much of his work, but that’s at least partly because there’s so very much of it—and he, too, has remained largely unknown except among other writers. I guess his latest book, like Cassill’s, did make something of a public splash at last, but that, too, was long overdue.

And Seymour Epstein—ever heard of him? I have read all of his work to date—five novels and a book of stories, all expertly crafted and immensely readable—yet he, too, seems to have been largely ignored so far.

But hell, this list could go on and on. This country’s loaded with good, badly neglected writers. Fred Chappel. Calvin Kentfield. Herbert Wilner. Helen Hudson. Edward Hoagland. George Cuomo. Arthur J. Roth—those are only a few.

My God, if I’d produced as much good work as most of those people, with as little reward, I’d really feel qualified to rant and rail against the literary establishment.

- Richard Yates interviewed in Ploughshares (Issue 3, Winter 1972)

(Evan S. Connell, Brian Moore, and Edward Lewis Wallant are also mentioned in the interview.)