Literature │The Many Lives of a Book:
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

(published in Avrupa newspaper)

I have often wondered about what makes one pick up a book. Is it the luring picture on the cover? Is it a recommendation from a friend? Or maybe because it is the book that everyone is talking about and Revolutionary Road is on everyone’s lips at the moment, but it is not the book, it is the film. Revolutionary Road was Yates’ first novel, written in 1961. The novel was an immediate success, landing itself as a finalist in the National Book Awards. The novel has been classed as ‘Modern American Fiction’ as well as termed as a classic, which has been brought to the spot light a number of times. In 2005 the Times newspaper declared it to be one of the top one hundred ‘best English language novels from 1923 to the present’. Now here it is again, in 2009, brought to the centre stage, and the reason why I picked the book up. The novel, as with many others had gotten attention from Hollywood, the film stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DicCaprio, directed by Sam Mendes, which shall be hitting the screens on January 30th, and I wanted to read the novel before I was subjected to a possibly awful interpretation of the book. My opinions on novel-to-film adventures are quite sceptical, as the film rarely portrays a resemblance to the book that I have thoroughly enjoyed, so much so that I want more, as was with the case of Alex Garland’s fantastic novel The Beach and the terrible interpretation of it in the film. However, one must leave such bitterness aside and remember that they are in fact, completely different mediums and must be left to live lives of their own.

Revolutionary Road can be defined as a form of ‘realist’ fiction, as it tackles issues surrounding married life in the 1950s, which turn out to be far too realistic at times, as the eye is betrayed by actual goings on. Yates also deals with themes of loneliness, emptiness, mental illness, abandonment and the all important institute of marriage set in the back-drop of 1950s American suburbia. Yates sets out to immediately destroy any kind of image of the “American dream”, instead, we are provided with the image of a young married couple who have had children and resigned to a quiet life in a beautiful house in the suburbs. The image is not quite complete without the typical family structure, Frank Wheeler is the breadwinner, in a job that he has no emotion for other then boredom in the city, whilst the wife, April, is in the apparent rightful place, at home, looking after the home and children, making sure that dinner is on the table, and a drink is waiting for her husband when he gets home, picture perfect? It is anything but picture perfect. The roles that are assigned to each gender is challenged quite quickly in the book, it is important for Frank to be a “man”, whatever that may really mean, and April is desperate to throw off her apron and become a part of the real world which can not be offered by sunny suburbia. With these two opposing forces, problems with the marriage begin to come through like light piercing through a worn out blind, showing the marriage to be what it really is, a sham and a huge juggling performance of ideals and reality.

There is a constant clash between what we see on the outside and what we hear from the character’s individual thoughts, which usually belong to Frank. With each point being personalised, and the lacking of an omniscient voice, we are left to the interpretation of a truth, rather then the actual truth. With this constant internal focalisation, we are plunged into Frank’s inner thoughts which tend do be repulsively judgemental, the very reason why there is no such thing as “The American Dream.”

The concept of realism and naturalism became more popular in theatre and drama in the nineteenth century, and these concepts are crucial to understanding this novel, which deals with the loss of hopes, dreams and aspirations and in turn, dealing with the honest brutality of life. What was important about the concept of naturalism is that it was an attempt to understand human nature, especially in the context of one’s environment. Frank and April have grown up believing that as long as they have a pretty house and children, then everything else falls into place, making sure that there is no space for sadness and disappointment, but what happens when the truth begins to seep through? Well, a novel like Revolutionary Road is written, showing what marriage was really like. Yates, I believe, goes out of his way to make it hard to choose whose side you want to be on by making his characters unlovable, by doing this; he goes against one of the major rules of novel writing which is to make a loveable and believable character that the reader is able to have compassion for. However, no matter how much you may wish to see things in black and white, the goody and the baddy, Yates will not permit it, because in real life, sometimes all you have is people making mistakes and falling into traps out of stupidity or sadness. This is a strong point contributing to the novel’s success; admittedly it’s not as comical as Zola’s Thérèse Raquin in which a young girl goes out of her way to kill her husband with her lover, who she then marries, but they only to end up hating one other, and then killing each other. Instead, what we have here is a symbolic death, the death of a marriage and the death of a dream that simply turns out to be a nightmare. The novel causes one to blame the marital problems experienced by the Wheelers down to the fact that they were married too young, but many people get married young and die old together.
Frank has an obsession with looking at himself in the mirror in which he notices changes such as maturity, usually after he believes that he has carried out some sort of noble act, and takes pleasure in associating his actions with his image in the mirror. One can look at this from a Lacanian angle in which he discusses the ‘mirror stage’ where a child is able to identify with his own image and become ‘I’. Frank seems to be seeking approval from his mirror image, whilst the rest of us take on full responsibility and reliability in our actual actions, and not some image staring back at us in the mirror which makes left look like right, and right look left.

The most important aspect of a book is how it leaves the reader feeling at the very last full stop, and this book left me feeling unsettled. The last time that I felt this unsettled was when I read Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight, which left a feeling of emptiness, and blankness, possibly the effect that Yates was going for, I then questioned myself, “Would I recommend this book?” The answer is ‘yes’, it offers a realism that a vast amount of people shy away from, but it is a story that could belong to any couple, even today. The book is well written with a strong likeness to plays written by Tennessee Williams, two plays come to mind; Stairs to the Roof and The Glass Menagerie which offer a true insight into personal experience and human nature, so why not give this book a chance before it’s true image diminishes with the interpretation that is about to hit the screens.

© Zehra Mustafa