READ: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple in the 1950s, who long for a life more uplifting and less stultifying than the suburban Connecticut where they come to raise their young family, because they see themselves as among the best and brightest. Frank has, by his own admission, “the dullest job you can possibly imagine”. But a plot by April to spring them from the trap of boredom and suffocation in their lives, including the insufferable irritations of enduring their friends and neighbors, goes awry.
Yates’ book reads close to character, very much third person limited point of view, with quick, conversational prose. My only quibble was with his shift mid-way through the book, to the points of view of other characters, a little late in coming for me, but necessary to illuminate character and move the plot forward.
Careful characterizations of supporting players—the mild mannered Milly and Shep Campbell, the nervous Mrs. Givings and her hapless husband Howard, and the foil of the Givings’ son John, long incarcerated in a mental institution, give the book more resonance.
Having grown up in the environment described in this book, rich with its suburban cocktail hours, crowded station wagons, desolate evenings at run-down clubs listening to outdated music, and dreadful presumptions and pretenses, Yates’ depiction brought back memories I’d thought were long-lost. It’s obvious that he has both sympathy and contempt for his characters, whose lives are shellacked by a coat of pleasantries to disguise their shallowness. He captures this culture so deftly that I found myself recovering my own revulsion for that time, those ghastly cocktail hours, and the drunken decisions that led people to self-disgust long afterwards.
The characters are only marginally likeable, so the book may put you off. But it is a masterful period piece and a kind of morality tale for our time. As art, it stands up well.
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