Robert Coates

Robert Myron Coates (April 6, 1897 – February 8, 1973) was an American novelist, short‐story writer, and a long-term art critic for The New Yorker magazine. He coined the term "abstract expressionism" in 1946 in reference to the works Hans Hofmann, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and others.

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."

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.

Maxim Lieber was Coates' literary agent from 1935 to 1938 and in 1941 and 1945.

Robert Myron Coates was born on April 6, 1897, in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Frederick Coates, was an expert toolmaker, who liked to travel. 

As a youth, Coates lived in Cripple Creek, Colo.; Salt Lake City; Portland, Ore.; Seattle, Springfield, Mass.; New York; Rochester, and Cincinnati.

Coates graduated from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1919. After spending a year in naval aviation during World War I, he emigrated to Europe and lived among the American expatriate artist community in Paris from 1921 to 1926. While there, he came in contact with other literary giants, including Malcolm Cowley, Ford Madox Ford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Morley Callaghan, and Ernest Hemingway (with whom he also boxed as a sparring partner.)

As a writer of fiction, Coates is considered a member of the "Lost Generation," having spent part of his life abroad in Europe. While abroad, Coates developed his celebrated experimental style with short stories and sketches he published in the expatriate magazines Gargoyle, Broom, and Secession.

Coates wrote his first novel The Eater of Darkness in 1926 while living in Paris. It was published in the US in 1929. It was his relationship with Gertrude Stein that helped his first novel find international success. Floyd C. Gale said that The Eater of Darkness "has been called the first surrealist novel in English". The novel remains a cult classic among fans of dadaist and early twentieth-century science fiction.

After the publication of The Eater of Darkness, Coates returned to the United States and began writing book reviews and Sunday features for The New York Times, The Tribune, and other papers. In 1927, he landed a job with the newly established The New Yorker magazine, with the help of his friend James Thurber. He worked as a contributor and an art critic for The New Yorker for more than 40 years, contributing 109 short stories, several of which appeared in annual O'Henry and O'Brien prize‐story collections. It is from these contributions that he is credited with coining the term "abstract expressionism" in reference to the works of abstract expressionist artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. His art criticism for The New Yorker was definitional and influential for three decades in the post World War II modernist era. He retired from New Yorker in 1967. 

Coates followed The Eater of Darkness with two non-criminous works—The Outlaw Years(1930) and Yesterday's burdens (1933)—also surrealistic in form, that met with mixed receptions from critics. The Outlaw Years deals with the history of the land pirates of the Natchez Trace. It is described as "a valuable piece of Americana." Yesterday's burdens is an obsessive Story of New York life in the 1930s.

His last two novels were Wisteria cottage (1948) and The Farther Shore (1955). Wisteria Cottage was nearly universally applauded as a tour de force study of madness and mayhem. It details the mental disintegration over several months of Richard Baurie, a young bookstore clerk (and supposed struggling poet) in New York. The novel was also known as The Night Before Dying.

Coates' short stories are featured in Short Stories from the New Yorker (1940). The book is a collection of short stories by famous The New Yorker writers including, besides Coates, John Cheever, Rhys Davies, 

Wolcott Gibbs, A. J. Liebling, Mary McCarthy, Carson McCullers, Edward Newhouse, Frank O'Connor, John O'Hara, J. D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, Jean Stafford, James Thurber, Jessamyn West, Christine Weston, and E. B. White.

In 1958, Robert J. Gurney Jr. and Irving Lerner directed Edge of Fury based on Coates' 1948 novel Wisteria cottage. The film, starring Michael Higgins, Lois Holmes, Jean Allison, Doris Fesette, and Malcolm Lee Beggs, was released on May 1, 1958, by United Artists.

The 2019 short drama The Hour After Westerly, starring Peter Jacobson, Shannyn Sossamon, and Holly Hawkins, is based on Coates' 1957 short story of the same title.

• In 1955, Coates was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
• He was a member of the International Art Critics Association, and P.E.N.
• Coates was also a member of the Century Association.

Coates was married twice. His first marriage with Elsa Kirpal ended in divorce. They had a son, Anthony. 

Coates then married his second wife Astrid (née Peters) Coates (1910-1995).

Coates died on February 8, 1973, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, New York, at the age of 75.

Novels

• The Eater of Darkness (Contact Editions, Paris 1926; Macaulay, New York, 1929; republished by Putnam, 1959)
• Yesterday's burdens (1933; repr. 1975)
• The Bitter Season (1946)
• Wisteria cottage (1948) (also known as The Night Before Dying)
• The Farther Shore (1955)

Short fiction

Collections

• All the Year Round (1943)
• The Hour After Westerly (1957)
• The Man Just Ahead of You (1965)

Stories

Non-fiction

• The Outlaw Years: The History of the Land Pirates of the Natchez Trace (1930)
• Coates, Robert (January 15, 1949). "The Art Galleries: Blume, Delaunay, Glackens". The New Yorker. 24 (47): 48–49. Reviews Peter Blume at the Durlacher Gallery, Robert Delaunay at the Sidney Janis Gallery, and William Glackens at the Kraushaar Galleries.
• Coates, Robert (January 28, 1950). "The Art Galleries: Rembrandt and Juan Gris". The New Yorker. 25 (49): 60, 62. Reviews Rembrandt at the Wildenstein Gallery; Gris at the Buchholz Gallery.
• The View from Here (1960). Memoir
• Beyond the Alps (1961)
• South of Rome (1965)