Yesterday's Burdens

A Yale graduate, Robert M. Coates went to Paris in 1921 and became a member of the expatriate set that included F. Scott Fitzgerald. His first novel, The Eater of Darkness, was published by Rob­ert McAlmon’s now legendary Contact Press, which also published Hemingway. Returning to this country he obtained a job on the New Yorker with the help of his friend James Thurber, and was a staff member until his death in 1973.