Customer Reviews

Revolutionary Road

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Reading the praise for this book actually made me less inclined to read it. Another unmasking of the banality of the suburbs and the bland conformity of the 50s didn't strike me as particularly appealing or necessary. Both of those things have been unmasked so often that I wonder why anyone bothers with either; there's nothing left to expose.

The choice of target is also a little unfair: first, hypocrisy and small-mindedness are not localized in the suburbs to the extent that authors and filmmakers seem to think. If a writer deliberately populates his story with caricatured materialistic bourgeois, then he shouldn't expect it to be a legitimate criticism of the age. In any case, if an audience can separate themselves too easily from the people being described, the book has no sting - like American Beauty had no sting. A real work of art should hurt a little.

But Revolutionary Road was not what I expected from the reviews. Yates knows all of the pitfalls of the standard send-up of the middle class: the main characters in his story are not the usual suburban types, but people who consider themselves better than the dull people in their neighborhood; they mock the people that we, as readers, are so used to mocking, and become our surrogates.

The real theme of this book is much deeper, and it transcends the era and even the plot of the book: what do people do when they are intelligent and spirited enough not to be satisfied with the conformity and blandness of their surroundings, but lack the drive to ever escape mediocrity, because they are, fundamentally, much more a part of their environment than they imagine?

The tragedy of this book is the discovery that you are, after all, perhaps not as extraordinary as you thought - and that has sting, because all of us, at some time, have thought that we were a bit better than the people around us, and most of us have realized with horror (although the realization doesn't always stick around) that we aren't as different, as far above them, as we thought. Many of the moments in this book stick with you because they remind you of those moments when you came face to face with your own mediocrity, and challenges you to either be honest with yourself about what you are, or try sincerely to fulfill the ambitions that you have pursued so halfheartedly until now.

It's a hard lesson to deal with: I can tell why this book didn't sell. The writing, by the way, is beautiful; scene after scene springs effortlessly to life, and you can't tell how much skill is involved until you go back and read it again.

I remember reading once that Yates - against the advice of his publishers - called this book Revolutionary Road because it seemed to him that the promise of the nation was petering out in the 50s, that the ambition and hope that had marked its founding had slowly led to a dead-end of uninspired and uninspiring prosperity (for some people, at least) - that the end of the revolutionary road had been reached.

This is overstated, and Yates's vision often seems to me unaccountably dark, as if he was blind to everything but his thesis. Something about his outlook is right, though; the problem with the society isn't necessarily that it's hypocritical or conformist or mediocre, but that it produces people with such a horrible gap between aspiration and capacity - it gives them the leisure and intelligence to want a fuller life while robbing them of the backbone to get it.

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!

I am a big advocate of reading the book before seeing the movie. Most of the time, at least. With Revolutionary Road'a movie I really wanted to see because of my love of Kate Winslet'I should have nixed the book and went with the movie. Both are boring, but the movie is definitely better than the book.

Normally, I always chalk it up to a movie being a drama. I tell my husband this. He thinks that dramas are boring and I tell him that he just doesn't understand what a drama is. However, there's drama and then there's just plain old boring and tedious.

Bored with their tedious suburban lives, April and Frank Wheeler decide to move to France. Or, at least they talk about it. A lot. They tell people about their trip excitedly, but it never happens. April finds out she's pregnant and they're thrown into tedium again.

This is a story about relationships, it seems, but I found it very difficult to latch on to any one character. They were all quite annoying, depressing, and unlikeable. In fact, the entire book was unlikeable, muddy, and really not worth the effort. Maybe I had to live in the 1960s, or read more books written in that time, but I really don't understand what all the praise and fuss was about.

Like I said, watch the movie. Don't read this book or you may find yourself throwing it across the room at every page turn.

April and Frank Wheeler are around thirty and live in a suburb in Connecticut. They have a nice house, Frank has a job that is not too demanding and they have two small kids, so in essence all a couple can wish. Except, that they are not happy at all: April has not become the actress she wanted to be, they consider their neighbours and friends to be narrow-minded and they have fights over small matters that become so big that it is practically impossible to cope with it. In a last attempt to escape April decides that the family will move to Europe: she will work and Frank will finally have time to develop his talents. Frank does not exactly want to go, but he does not know how to tell his wife. And so the family heads for disaster without anybody noticing or knowing what to do about it.

This book was written in 1961, was nominated for big prizes together with such classics as Catch-22 and was forgotten after that. It is really a very modern book: the dreams and expectations of "the common" people have not changed much in all those years and the way in which Frank and April react and interact is only too recognizable. At times this book really hurts. You would like to shout to them: "Listen to each other!" "Don't fight over marginal subjects!" A good book that deserves to be rediscovered.

You're likely to hear two thing about RR: it's a dark fifties anatomy of suburban emptiness and decay; and that it's a writer's novel, the unofficial progenitor of Richard Ford and Rick Moody. True, and true. If you haven't read it, do; but I wouldn't exactly say rush to do it. Yates hasn't aged all that well; there's an Elia Kazan feel throughout, of exaggeration verging on melodrama, and while Yates is sometimes capable of superb observation, he seems devoid of genuine sympathy. April Wheeler is better than her husband --more vital, more perceptive --but beyond that, emotionally damaged and corrosive. Many of the characters verge on being, though brilliantly drawn, typological cartoons. Nonetheless, there's a certain inexorable fascination in watching Yates send these people lurching into tragedy; and this book is very influential: given the durability of the suburbs, there will always be "suburban prose-poets," and they will always do well to study Yates before plunking away.

I had heard Revolutionary Road described as "satirical", but I think the tone is realistic. In any case, this is a very well written novel about narcissists who have no love or affection for anyone in their lives: not their parents, not their spouses, not their friends. Most startling is their indifference toward their own children. These characters look at their small children and, even as they go through the motions of parenthood, don't even see them as anything other than burdens. As I read Revolutionary Road, I kept thinking, what kind of people don't love their own children? I think it is significant that none of these characters gives a thought to God or religion of any kind: no church on Sunday, no wondering what God wants from all of them. Actually, this book is a good advertisement for fostering religiosity or spirituality of some kind in one's life. Solipsistic angst may be inevitable for people who don't, in the parlance of 2000, "get over themselves". The writing warrants three stars for this novel, but I can't really recommend Revolutionary Road. Better that readers go back to Steinbeck or even Fitzgerald and read about existential problems in a moral context.

This movie is down-right depressive. The book, according to some reviews, is a bore. I'd say when it is super depressive, squabbling from beginning to end, with everyone showing no interest to no one else, that's where it's successful. The couple is deeply trapped in a rut, unable to set themselves free. I don't know if that's true or not in the 1950s, but it seems true here for many in the 2010s. Everything seemed right for them to stay put: a good life, a beautiful house, couple of kids, well-paid and secured career, and friendly neighbors and associates. All seemed unrealistic for them to dump all of that and move to Paris in an attempt to save them from endless recriminations. So they stayed for the tragic end.
Bore. But I felt it. It's telling us what to do. I hesitated long in the same situation. Now I see my future clearly. I am in the same rut they were struggling in, hopeless. When everything seemed right, everything was actually wrong. It takes true courage to do everything wrong, just to set things right again.
The rut we are in is: me and my wife both have to work to keep the house. No matter how comfy the house may be, that's not right. After 40 hours' work, all we are capable of feeling is tiredness and bore; all we have time for is replenishing the refrigerator and attack some long procrastinated chore. In the meantime, all money is pouring into the bills: big leaking holes never got patched up. Where do we see ourselves in 10 years' time? Same old shit and nothing gets improved.
My happiest time in life was when I was renting a small room and working casually. There were no bills. $300 rent includes everything from internet to parking space, and every half a year, car insurance, that's it. I had plenty of time, leisurely hobbies and sense of freedom. Besides driving to the States, I even got to hiking around in the city for hours to get rid of my excess energy, looking at the big metropolis spinning in action and I felt totally free from it.
Revolutionary Road told me one thing important: if you are in a rut, get out despite all apparent reason. If you don't get that message, the movie is really dull and supper boring. It only sheds us some insight of how hopeless we are and how hopeful we can be. A change looks suicidal but maybe by chance a life saver. 5 Stars at the least.

The Laurel Players is an amateur theater group with high hopes of establishing a loftier cultural standard in their Connecticut suburb, but their short-lived attempt to put on a play is an utter failure. This sets the tone for the rest of the book, and the author's exploration of the themes of social aspirations, the desire the project oneself, and role-playing to meet or consciously balk social expectations.

Like the Laurel Players, everyone in the story knows that they are merely putting on a performance. They resent the trappings of middleclass life. Frank and April Wheeler get together with friends Shep and Milly Campbell to drink and put on a veneer of sophisticated and jaded ennui as they rail at the failure of the American dream and its lack of "authenticity." So long as they can scoff at society and speak of it with derision, they can remain above it and be untouched by it. But no one really remains untouched or unaffected.

The story is told from Frank's perspective and he is the master of play-acting and self-image. Yates adeptly uses imagery to convey this. One of the prevalent images is that of mirrors. Frank is constantly checking his reflection in the mirror and adjusting his expression so that it reflects what he wants to project. The book also contains extensive descriptions of Frank's clothes and how he feels in them. Apparently, in this case, the clothes DO make the man. Frank literally fashions himself into the image he wants to project, always conscious that his projection in insincere. He feels that his scorn is heroic, that he can see things to which others are blind, he can understand things that are beyond their comprehension. His understanding, however, is limited to the extent to which he can control his world.

The façade of toughness hides the fact that he has a basic need. What Frank seeks most of all, from his father, from his wife, from society, is affirmation of his manhood. April is aware of this and when she suggests her plan make it possible to move to Paris so that he can realize his dream of the artistic, intellectual life he has always claimed to want, she appeals to the logic that means the most to Frank: "It's your very essence that's being stifled here. It's what you are that's being denied and denied and denied in this kind of life... You're the most valuable and wonderful thing in the world. You're a man." He accepts this argument and is buoyed by it, feeling that "Never before had elation welled more powerfully inside him; never had beauty grown more purely out of truth; never in taking his wife had he triumphed more completely over time and space... He had taken command of the universe because he was a man."

Frank's elation, however, is short-lived. Although he had always purported to want to move to France to pursue the dream of the intellectual and cultured life, in fact he is horrified because actually trying to succeed would leave him vulnerable to failure. April unwittingly comes to his rescue again, when it turns out that she is pregnant. Frank now has the excuse he needs not to go ahead with the plan. April is devastated, and the events that unfold as she tries to keep their dream alive spiral into tragedy.

Richard Yates's writing style is rich in images and character contrasts. Revolutionary Road explores a lot of the same themes as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: the sham of the middleclass dream, the ordinary man as hero (at least in his own mind), infidelity, entitlement, social convention and morality, rejection of and by family, a lack of affect. The difference is that whereas Willy Loman embraces the American Dream, Frank Wheeler attempts to disavow it, even as he is being sucked into it. Both eventually end up being destroyed by it. This is the sort of future that one could foresee for Willy Loman's sons. In fact the timing would be about perfect, with Death of a Salesman being written in 1947 and Revolutionary Road coming out in 1959.

Even a lot of the imagery that Yates uses is a tactic nod to Miller's original. Both works contain symbolic references to: seeds (DOAS), plants (RR); diamonds (DOAS), golden (RR), the rubber hose (DOAS), the rubber syringe (RR).

For all that is borrows from Miller's masterpiece, Revolutionary Road stands up on its own as an independent piece that is still relevant today. The book's Revolutionary Road leads to the suburbs, and there is no escape.

Here is novel that ambitiously sets out to describe the essence of the American Dream as it impacts the lives of a very aspiring young couple who want to chart their own course through life. Franklin Wheeler and his wife, April, are products of a wealth-driven society that promotes the need to conform to a social image of suburban stability in order to be successful. Both have ability, both dream of a better life, but both, unfortunately, are caught in the web of circumstances that make such dreams impossible to realize. Trapped in this culture where they can only move ahead as they come to rely on the delimiting expectations and demeaning values of an older generation, Franklin and April make one radical move to escape and start anew. Their failure to realize their personal dreams of a new found freedom - fleeing Hemingway-style to Europe - leads to the unravelling of their hopes as bound up in each other. What happens tp Franklin and April in this story only proves that the life they can't shake is one that is an intricate part of who they are and will eventually destroy them. They are the sad children of America suburbia where people are held captive by crippling mortgages, boring jobs, and uninspiring friends. This story is load with irony that shows an America that doesn't realize that it has lost its ingenuity, moral compass and sense of moral courage. Everyone seems to be everybody else's prisoner when it comes to controlling their futures. This novel carries the same sense of glorified failure that Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" did back in the 1920s.

Frank and April Wheeler are a young couple who have a comfortable life in a lovely suburb. They go about their business - Frank hating his job in the city and April wishing she had become an actress or at least something more dramatic than a housewife - with public smiles and private despair.

Richard Yates' novel is absolutely wonderful; it's a witty, snarky, and poignant look at 50's suburbia, where everything looks so good but underneath, where it really counts, people are unfulfilled and bitter. His characters' dialogue is straight out of Father Knows Best, while their thoughts are stunningly raw and brutal. I heartily recommend this book; its slim plot and scant action allow for subtly powerful and haunting passions.

It is a period in the middle of the twentieth century - the hopeful 1950s - and a young couple, Frank and April Wheeler, begin their marriage in New York. Soon after, they are suburbanites, living in a development in Connecticut, on Revolutionary Road.

Their marriage had begun after an unexpected pregnancy. After the birth of the first child, a second followed. They seemed to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented...Maybe Frank's job is dull and perhaps April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they always believed, deep down, that greatness is just around the corner. And then, as the reality of their own limitations hits them with an almost blunt force, their illusions begin to crumble.

First come the dull, routine days, followed by the drunken fights. Then follows the almost manic plan to pull up stakes and move to Europe, where they can be glamorous expatriates, with April working at the embassy and Frank "finding himself", discovering his hidden talents.

When another unexpected pregnancy blasts them off course, the soul searching begins.

In one enlightened moment, following a terrible fight when each of them flung unforgivable words at each other, April comes to the following conclusions: "...In a sentimentally lonely time long ago, she had found it easy and agreeable to believe whatever this one particular boy felt like saying, and to repay him for that pleasure by telling easy, agreeable lies of her own, until each was saying what the other most wanted to hear - until he was saying `I love you' and she was saying `Really, I mean it; you're the most interesting person I've ever met.'...Soon you were saying `I'm sorry, of course you're right,' and `Whatever you think is
best,' ...and the next thing you knew all honesty, all truth, was as far away and glimmering, as hopelessly unattainable as the world of the golden people..."

Thus sums up the marriage for April on that day at the end...And then she does something so horrifying, so completely unexpected, yet expected at the same time and life for this couple is forever altered.

Revolutionary Road is a disturbingly authentic portrayal of what might seem to be a typical suburban young couple at a time when life was golden. Soon to be released as a movie, starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the characters are memorable and chillingly haunting.

Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of:
Web of Tyranny, etc.