"Eleven kinds of loneliness" by Richard Yates (Vintage, 2008)

First published in 1962.

• Doctor Jack-o'Lantern - Vincent, 10, now fostered having spent most of his life in orphanages, starts at a new school. Pretty Miss Price tries (perhaps too hard, she thinks) to help him. He incompetantly tries to show off to classmates, writes rude words on a wall, is let off by Miss Price, then draws rude pictures of her. The PoV has slipped from her to him. She tell him about the concept of self-sabotage then he enacts it.
• The best of everything - Grace, who shares a place with Martha, is about to be married to Ralph. Martha, who goes out with college boys, has always looked down on Ralph. Now she apologies to Grace, and says she's going to spend the night away. Martha puts on her negligé and waits for Ralph to drop in as planned. He arrives, excited by his friends' surprise party, and leaves again.
• Jody rolled the bones - It's 1944. A platoon of New York 18 year-olds is being trained by Reece. There's a tricky negotiation of discipline and respect that the boys think Reece mishandles. He's never liked, and he loses their respect until, perhaps, his last day. He's transferred and a softer sergeant, one who creeps to the lieutenant, takes his place. Told using the first-person plural.
• No pain whatsoever - Myra visits her (dying?) husband each weekend in a TB ward. She's having a relationship with Jack. Myra and her husband don't recall the previous week's chitchat well. They end up in silence.
• A glutton for punishment - Walter thinks he's going to be sacked. He recalls games he played as a kid when he got shot and had to die - he just liked the dying bits of the games, which he performed like drama. Today he is sacked. He imagines cameras watching his subtle performance. Walking home he recalls the excitement of his first date with his wife. A little lie gives him the idea of a bigger lie - not telling his wife about his job-loss, faking until he got a new job. After an evening with the family he seems to be on the edge of telling the truth.
• A wrestler with sharks - At "The Labour Leader", a union newspaper, Leon Sobel starts. He's joined on principle, giving up a better paid factory job. He's written 9 unpublished books and sees this job as an opportunity to get himself known. He naively overplays his hand (supported by his wife) and gets sacked.
• Fun with a stranger - 9 year-olds are about to start with Miss Snell, 60 and grumpy. She said "When we learn a new word it's like making a friend ... And we all like to make friends, don't we?" The parallel class taught by pretty Mrs Cleary have much more fun. As in "Jody rolled the bones", the group is looking for opportunities to be proud of their "leader" (who's misunderstood by their peers?). They end up being embarrassed by Miss Snell's social incompetence.
• The B.A.R. Man - John's weeks are regular with his childless life. When she suggests a change on Friday his increasingly irritation his well-rendered. He goes on a bar crawl and meets 2 young soldiers. He reminisces and they go to a bar, meeting 3 women. W'hile he gets another drink the other 5 disappear. Wandering in the streets he gets involved with an anti-communist protest and is arrested.
• A really good jazz piano - Ken and Carson are young Americans from Yale having fun in France. Ken's socially inadequate without Carson. He'll be returning to work in the family business soon. Ken discovers a Jazz pianist, Sid, in Cannes. Carson comes from Paris and is impressed too. This pleases Ken who says he's impressed by the pianist's artistic integrity - he could be rich if he returned to the States and sold out. Carson thinks Ken's going over the top. They go out looking for girls and find 2 americans - too square for Carson. When they go to the jazz club again they discover that Sid's auditioning for a big US agent. To Ken's delight, Carson sides with Ken when Sid (a "Negro") stereotypes himself but then disappoints Ken by damaging Sid's chances.
• Out with the old - In a TB ward, 1950, patients (many terminal) hatch an idea to bring in the new year. They have their own culture of mutual teasing, smuggling in booze, etc. Some spend Xmas day with their family. Some have family responsibilities. When McIntyre returned to the ward he tried to draft a letter to his daughter because she was 4 months pregnant and wouldn't say who the father was. Later drafts avoid asking her the question. When midnight arrives, ward-life takes over.
• Builders - Twice as long as the other stories, with a narrator who knows he's narrating. Bob's a 22 y.o. married journalist who models himself on Hemingway. Bernie, a taxi-driver, who's been keeping notes about his experiences for 20 years, asks him to be his ghost-writer. He thinks of writers as builders - first the foundations, etc, and importantly the windows. As a start, Bob gets $5 for 2,000 word stories. The first story used a note from the taxi-driver, the others didn't. Bernie shows the stories to a psychology friend of his, Dr Corvo. Bernie gets Bob to write a piece showing how generous a local politician is, which causes the two to fall out. Bob loses his job, gets another, goes through a Scott Fitzgerald phase then thinks he finds his voice. It doesn't sell. Joan has a baby then separates from Bob, who comes to respect Bertie and regrets being snobby to him. At the end he critiques the story -

  I'm not even sure if there are any windows in this particular house. Maybe the light is just going to have to come in as best it can, through whatever chinks and cracks have been left in the builder's faulty craftmanship

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• Nichola Lezard (this was his genius: the precise dissection of people's unhappiness)
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