Robert Myron Coates was an American writer and a long-term art critic for the New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

. He coined the term "abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

" in 1946 in reference to the works of Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...

, Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

 and Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

.

As a writer of fiction, he is considered a member of the Lost Generation

Lost Generation

The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...

, having spent part of his life abroad in Europe. His first three novels are highly experimental, drawing upon Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

, surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 for their effect. His last two novels are examples of crime fiction

Crime fiction

Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...

 in which the narrator presents a psychopathological case study of the protagonist. Nowadays, Coates is best known for The Outlaw Years (1930), which deals with the history of the land pirates of the Natchez Trace

Natchez Trace

The Natchez Trace, also known as the "Old Natchez Trace", is a historical path that extends roughly from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee, linking the Cumberland, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers...

.

Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...

 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."

Coates was born in New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...

 in 1897 and died at the age of 75 in New York City in 1973.

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)
• The Farther Shore (1955)

Short story collections

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

Non-fiction

• The Outlaw Years (1930)
• The View from Here (1960). Memoir
• Beyond the Alps (1961)
• South of Rome (1965)

Articles

Reviews Peter Blume

Peter Blume

Peter Blume was an American painter and sculptor. His work contained elements of folk art, precisionism, Parisian Purism, Cubism, and Surrealism.-Biography:...

 at the Durlacher Gallery, Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was a French artist who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee...

 at the Sidney Janis Gallery, and William Glackens

William Glackens

William James Glackens was an American realist painter.Glackens studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later moved to New York City, where he co-founded what came to be called the Ashcan School art movement...

 at the Kraushaar Galleries

Kraushaar Galleries

Kraushaar Galleries is an art gallery in New York City founded in 1885 by Charles W. Kraushaar, who had previously been with the European art gallery, Schaus....

. Reviews Rembrandt at the Wildenstein Gallery; Gris at the Buchholz Gallery.

Further reading

• Pierce, Constance. "Gertrude Stein and her Thoroughly Modern Protege." Modern Fiction Studies 42.3 (Autumn 1996): 607-25.
• ---. "Language • Silence • Laughter: The Silent Film and the 'Eccentric' Modernist Writer." SubStance 16.1 (1987): 59-75.
• Roza, Mathilde. "Following Strangers: The Life and Literary Works of Robert M. Coates." Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.