Revolutionary Road
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| Recent reissue edition cover | |
| Author | Richard Yates |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Greenwood Press |
| Released | 31 December 1961 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 337 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-8371-6221-1 (first edition, hardback) |
Revolutionary Road, the first novel of author Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Award along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer. When it was published by Atlantic-Little, Brown in 1961, it received critical acclaim, and the New York Times reviewed it as "beautifully crafted... a remarkable and deeply troubling book." [1]
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[edit] Yates on the novel's title
When DeWitt Henry and Geoffrey Clark interviewed Yates for the Winter, 1972 issue of Ploughshares, Yates detailed the title's subtext:
- I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs -- a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witchhunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that -- felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit -- and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties. [2]
[edit] Plot summary
Set in 1955, the novel focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as somehow superior to their neighbors in the Revolutionary Hill Estates. April Wheeler, with her thespian ambitions and her plans to move to Paris, is doomed, ultimately, to failure. The opening scene, in which she stars in an embarrassingly bad amateur dramatic production, is painful because her hopes are so earnest and honest:
- She was working alone, and visibly weakening with every line. Before the end of the first act the audience could tell as well as the Players that she’d lost her grip, and soon they were all embarrassed for her. She had begun to alternate between false theatrical gestures and a white-knuckled immobility; she was carrying her shoulders high and square, and despite her heavy make-up you could see the warmth of humiliation rising in her face and neck.
Her fantasies about Parisian life are the more absurd for being supported by her belief that her husband is fluent in French (he knows the language hardly at all, but once drunkenly boasted about his proficiency). Frank Wheeler's sense of his lawless masculinity coexists with his bland acceptance of a futile corporation job. To cope with his failings he often drinks too much and finds himself engaging in an affair with a co-worker. The narrative details the day-to-day lives of this couple and their concerns for their future.
In Boston Review (October, 1999), Yates was quoted on his central theme: "If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy." The Wheelers are thwarted at every turn. Confronted with the painful truth of their ordinary existence and conflicts in their crumbling marriage, their frustrations and yearnings for something better represent the tattered remnants of the American Dream.
[edit] Literary significance and criticism
William Styron, who once gave a reading of the novel's opening chapter at Boston University, called Revolutionary Road "a deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic."
Kurt Vonnegut called it "The Great Gatsby of my time... one of the best books by a member of my generation."
Tennessee Williams also praised the book: "Here is more than fine writing; here is what, added to fine writing, makes a book come immediately, intensely and brilliantly alive. If more is needed to make a masterpiece in modern American fiction, I am sure I don't know what it is."
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Ford, Richard (2000-04-09). American beauty (Circa 1955). New York Times Book Review. New York Times. Retrieved on 2006-07-26.
- ^ Henry, DeWitt and Clark, Geoffrey. "An Interview with Richard Yates," Ploughshares, Winter, 1972.
