Revolutionary Road

It's a new movie adapted from Ricard Yates 1950's novel.

Here is a wonderful review of the original novel. I am most touched by it because I share the same feeling watching the movie, finding myself mediocre and lacking: no better than anyone I used to look down at.

"

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.
 "

The American Dream, May 24, 2000

By	Robert Derenthal "bucherwurm" (California United States) - See all my reviews

A good job, a pretty wife, nice kids, and a home in the suburbs. This
novel, written in 1961, is about a couple that lives this American
Dream. But this pre-yuppie pair leads a life of exquisite monotony. He
hates his white-collar job; she stays home with the kids. One of their
most frequent recreational activities is to visit with another similar
couple, and spend a few hours shaking their heads and complaining about
how unevolved everyone else is. We smile ruefully as we read about
them, thinking how common these folks are. Or have we fallen into a
trap by putting ourselves in the same place by looking down on Frank
and April as they look down on others.

Frank
and April Wheeler look forward to things: a part in a little theater
play, a move to Paris, an affair, a promotion. It would seem, though,
that for them happiness is only in the anticipation of events. The
story's participants also are deeply into playing roles with their
spouses, their co-workers, their friends, and above all with
themselves. There is no one in this book that you want to identify
with. Why? Is it because they are poor, hopelessly lost dullards, or is
it because they represent us in too many unpleasant ways? It's a sad
story, but one that makes you think about your own life, and the
ultimate value of what you have accomplished. While some of our culture
has changed since this book was written (we no longer sit in hospital
waiting rooms smoking cigarettes), its theme is as modern as can be.