Over at Cinematical, Eugene Novikov dodges the misguided suburban angst tag for Revolutionary Road, and gets at what I believe to be the book's true core:
The jacket pitches it as being about "the opulent desolation of the American suburbs," but Revolutionary Road
is not another of those books that merely mocks the empty lives of
well-to-do suburbanites. It's about our attitudes toward life and love
and each other. Almost a half-century after it was published, it
contains as much devastating insight into human nature as just about
anything else I've ever read.
Imagine a book where you see the characters clearly as weak, insincere, pitiable, sometimes even repulsive – and yet also eerily familiar. Oh, maybe not familiar in the lives they lead or the things they do, but in the way they think, interact, rationalize, compete, calculate.
Imagine a book where you see the characters clearly as weak, insincere, pitiable, sometimes even repulsive – and yet also eerily familiar. Oh, maybe not familiar in the lives they lead or the things they do, but in the way they think, interact, rationalize, compete, calculate.
Yes, people, the story takes place mostly in suburbia, but chalking it up to being merely a screed against life inside the area just outside the city takes the responsibility away from the rest of us. We are all Frank and April Wheeler. We're all fooling ourselves. And we all fall short. But it's okay; it's normal; it's the human condition.
Nice post, Cinematical.
Good to see this note, Revro, and you make a good point about dismissiveness and suburbia.
My favorite thing about the Cinematical post, which I quoted when I wrote about Blake Bailey's Yates biography, is when he says:
"Have you read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates? Huh? You have? Then why the hell haven’t you told me about it? What’s your problem, anyway? And where has this book been all my life?" That, and the fact that he goes on to "betray (his own)column's reason for being. F*** the movie. Read the book." Fantastic stuff, but you do a good job by noting how Cinematical gets it right about the strong, disturbing core of the book.
I just finished reading Disturbing the Peace over the weekend, enjoyed it quite a bit, and wrote about it this morning--but being an old schooler, I still have to type it up onto the blog. Curious to hear your thoughts--have you read it? In writing about it I got caught up in seeing how it's an extension of sorts of RevRoad, a leap into the abyss.
Posted by: zhiv | September 17, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Hey, Zhiv!
Nice hearing from you. I have not read Disturbing the Peace, I'm ashamed to admit. I have read R. Road, Easter Parade, A Good School, A Special Providence and the collected short stories (plus the Blake Baily bio, natch).
Posted by: Revro | September 17, 2008 at 02:59 PM