Revolutionary Road

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Summary: Martinis, skyscrapers, abortion, despair
Review: 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.

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Summary: Haunting, Extraordinary Novel
Review: Richard Yates is not as well known as many other mid-20th century novelists, but he certainly should be. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is as well written and intriguing a book as you're ever likely to read - a true modern classic. The plot concerns the increasingly unhappy marriage between surbanites Frank and April Wheeler. Many other authors have explored similar territory, notably John Updike (e.g., "Couples"). However, no one has done so with such deft and beautiful writing. The plot is ultimately somewhat incidental, and you'll likely figure out the resolution quite early. However, the brilliantly realized characters, including friends and neighbors of the Wheelers, make the book so worthwhile.

The meaning of the book is likely to vary for different readers; many people are likely to see an indictment of suburban life and values. I saw it more as pointing out the dangers of being unnecessarily dissatisfied with your life, and expecting brilliance where none exists. Whatever meaning you read into the novel, it's extraordinary. Most highly recommended!!!

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Summary: Absolute Classic
Review: This story knocked me off my feet - I've read it three times. The quality of writing is so skilled, so perfect, that you just gape in awe at the page infront of you. The story grabs you by the mind and heart and does not let you go until the last word is read. This is a book to be savoured, discussed, and read again.

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Summary: Yates' characters are genius
Review: This book is priceless. If you are a writer, if you even fancy yourself a bit ot a word-smith, you need to pick up this book. I consider myself a pretty well-read guy, and I have never read anything more technically sound, more painstakingly thought out, or more tediously true and on point. Yates uses a cast of characters that all delicately mesh together. Either they somehow share the same worldview, or the same idiosycnricies or share similar heartaches or just plain have dramatic, traumatic lives. In short, his characters are distinctly, almost painfully humane and fully round. And Yates takes the time to develop each character from the inside out and then back outside to in. I guess it's harder to explain than I expected but, trust me, this book is a tremendous read. Richard Yates' is a wrier's writer if that's what you want to call him. He leaves the reader saying "what he just did there, that point of view switch, that throughline, is f-ing amazing!" He blew me away. And the dialogue is effortless and perfect. You will love this tale, mostly becuase of the characters, but hidden between the lines is a beautiful little lesson in love.

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Summary: Brilliance to Banality
Review: Yates is brilliant in the first two sections of this book. In these sections, some of my marginalia reads: "A terrific description of a tender memory experienced through the hazy pain of a hangover." "How a loving conscientious father blows up at the kids." "Terrific paragraph with the well-intended Frank moving from consoling to attacking his wife."

Here is one quick example of the painful neutralizing internal life of Yates's characters. "Frank took two wrong turns in driving Mrs. Lundquist home, and all the way back, alone, he rode with one hand pressed to his mouth. He was doing his best to reconstruct the quarrel in his mind but it was hopeless. He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive. His throat was still raw from shouting and his hand throbbed from hitting the car-he remembered that part well enough-but his only other memory was of the high-shouldered way she had stood in the curtain call, with that false, vulnerable smile, and this made him weak with remorse."

Nonetheless, the third section of "Revolutionary Road" moves from the internal life of the characters to a drama between the characters. This drama, while poignant, wasn't especially involving, at least to me. Even so, read this book if you want to learn about your last fight with your spouse or your behavior in the office.

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Summary: Revolutionary Novel
Review: Devestating drama of marriage going bad in the suburbs, years before Updike and Cheever got to the same level of social criticism. The book is also bracingly satirical, which can be off-putting at times. This book is considered a "writer's book," because so many famous writers cite it as an inspiration, but the book is not all that elegantly written; instead, it has a creeping narrative power that surprises even the most jaded reader, and the final chapter, after the death of one of the major characters, is shocking for the casual cruelty and selfishness of the other characters. It's easy to see how Yates was ahead of his time.

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Summary: shallow, selfish, predictable
Review: So disappointed in this 50s story. Was motivatedd to finish, thinking the rave reviews had to make it worth it. It was not. In all fairness, the book may have seemed revolutionalry at the time is was written, but now it just seems cliche.

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Summary: An overlooked masterpiece
Review: even though this book is about the 1950's, it is still the best novel on the suburbs that you will ever read. i don't think any modern writers today can approach the monstrosity of suburban life with as much passion and honesty as Yates. every one of his sentences seems to carry us headlong into a whirl wind of disaster. watching the wheelers is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. we'd like to turn away, and pretend that this is only a novel we're reading, but we know, deep down, that there's so much more going on here. we feel as though Yates has carried us to the farthest recesses of despair; he has touched upon some semblance of truth, and we can't do anything but look and listen, and take it all in, in spite of the pain. Kafka said in his youth that "we should only read the books that wound and stab us...we need the books that affect us like a disaster." if there is any one novel of this century that fits that description, it is Revolutionary Road.

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Summary: hard lessons
Review: 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.

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Summary: This is a truly great book
Review: Most of the other reviewers on this site have written good reviews of this book. I can only add that everyone should read this book now! It will change your life. I know that is a cliche, but in this case it is true. It will also inspire you to start writing.