Robert M. Coates
Robert M. Coates was an American author born on April 6, 1897, in New Haven, Connecticut. His childhood was marked by frequent travels across the United States, which shaped his identity as an outsider—a theme that recurs in his literary works. Coates attended Yale University but briefly interrupted his studies to train as a naval aviator during World War I, graduating in 1919. He began making a name for himself in the literary world with his first novel, "The Eater of Darkness" (1926), which is noted for being one of the first Dadaist novels in English, characterized by its unconventional structure and blending of reality with fantasy.
During the 1920s, Coates lived as an expatriate in France, where he interacted with prominent writers and was influenced by movements like Dadaism. Despite his popularity among publishers and editors, particularly with The New Yorker, Coates did not achieve significant critical acclaim during his lifetime, partly due to his reluctance for self-promotion and long periods of inactivity in publishing. He was associated with a group of writers who explored contemporary narrative techniques, including metafiction, and maintained a lasting friendship with fellow writer Malcolm Cowley, who advocated for a reevaluation of Coates's contributions to literature. Coates's work reflects a deep social awareness and a passion for innovative storytelling.
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Robert M. Coates
Writer
- Born: April 6, 1897
- Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
- Died: February 8, 1973
Biography
Robert M. Coates was born on April 6, 1897, in New Haven, Connecticut, the only child of Frederick and Harriet (Davidson) Coates. He spent most of his childhood traveling widely throughout the United States with his parents as his father searched for business opportunities. The frequent upheavals of his childhood resulted in Coates’s perception of himself as an outsider, and this is a recurring theme in his fiction. After finishing high school in Rochester, New York, Coates returned to New Haven to attend Yale University. He took a leave from the University to train as a naval aviator, and he planned to serve in World War I, but the war ended before he finished his training. He returned to Yale in time to graduate with his class in 1919. In 1927, Coates married Elsa Kirpa. A son, Anthony, was born of this marriage, but the couple divorced in 1946. In that same year, he married Astrid Peters. His professional memberships included P.E.N., Cercle Internationale des Critiques d’Art, Authors League of America, National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Century Association of New York.
Coates was influenced both by the transience of his childhood and by his life as an expatriate near Paris during the 1920’s, where his work was affected by his personal association with writers such as Gertrude Stein and James Thurber, and by his interest in Dadaism, the aesthetic precursor to Surrealism. Coates’s first published work of fiction, The Eater of Darkness (1926), is said to be the first Dadaist novel written in English. The novel’s lack of structure, its blending of reality and fantasy, and its emphasis on subjectivity are characteristic of the Dadaism that informed Coates’s fiction throughout his career.
During his time as an expatriate in France, Coates formed his lifelong friendship with the writer Malcolm Cowley, who later lobbied for a reappraisal of the importance of Coates’s work in an article titled “Reconsideration.” Although Coates’s fiction, especially his short fiction, was popular with publishers and with magazine editors, he achieved comparatively little critical recognition during his lifetime. This situation may have been due to his aversion to fame and self-promotion. However, Coates also went for long periods without publishing novels or story collections, possibly due to devotion to his work as an art critic for The New Yorker, a magazine that published many of his short stories. Known as a figure in The New Yorker school of writing, Coates’s fiction exhibits keen social intelligence, a love of form, and is an example of some of the first forays into contemporary narrative strategies such as metafiction.