Revolutionary Road
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| Revolutionary Road | |
 Recent reissue edition cover |
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| Author | Richard Yates |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Greenwood Press |
| Publication date | 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 in 1962 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]
The week of October 16, 2005 the novel was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. [2]
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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.[3] | ” |
[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 very different from 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 of The Petrified Forest, 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 all the more absurd for being supported by her belief that her husband is fluent in French (he hardly knows the language 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 corporate 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
Stewart O'Nan's essay: "The Lost World of Richard Yates: How the great writer of the Age of Anxiety disappeared from print"
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] Film adaptation
Screenwriter Justin Haythe has adapted the novel for filming by Evamere Entertainment (formerly HartSharp Entertainment) with BBC Films. Revolutionary Road will be helmed by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and will reunite Titanic stars Kate Winslet (Mendes' wife), Leonardo DiCaprio and Kathy Bates. It has wrapped filming, and will be released December 19, 2008.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Ford, Richard (2000-04-09). American beauty (Circa 1955). New York Times Book Review. New York Times. Retrieved on 2006-07-26.
- ^ Time: "All-Time 100 Novels"
- ^ Henry, DeWitt and Clark, Geoffrey. "An Interview with Richard Yates," Ploughshares, Winter, 1972.
- ^ BBC News: "Titanic stars in reunion"
[edit] External links
- New York Times Book Review: Richard Ford reviews Revolutionary Road (April 9, 2000)
- Review of the novel
- Film in development
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