Yesterday's Burdens

Book excerpt: A memorable period piece, remarkable for its vivid language and thematic structure, "Yesterday" "s Burdens "is an obsessive Story of New York life in the 1930s. Malcolm Cowley, a close personal friend of Robert Coates, has pointed out in his Afterword to this new edition the aptness of this novel to its time. "Yesterday s Burdens "is an informal story of an unconventional young man of the 1930s. The central character, Henderson, typifies the successful young New Yorker, whose life style reflects the restless, seeking, discontented mood of his time. With him, the reader crisscrosses Manhattan, visits speakeasies, crashes parties, and participates in Henderson s sexual activities and his possible suicide (the novel has three endings). Frankly experimental in technique, the novel attempts the universal in its appeal. Readers today no doubt will appreciate the unexpected tenderness and passion with which the author endows his very ordinary characters."