[179] Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates

“Sort of. I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a best job because it never occurred to them to do anything less than perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind…that I’d been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake…” [272]

It’s 1955 in suburban Connecticut; the country poised at the crossroad of radical change, but without drastic progress as it’s clutched by McCarthyism. That’s it is on the heels of World War II and that the grim prospect of another war was on the loom add to the uncertainty of the time. Frank and April Wheeler, both in their late twenties, appear to be the model couple: bright, talented, beautiful, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. They seem to have it all together. Like many of their contemporaries, they despise the mediocrity, stagnancy, and sentimentality that have shaped the nation’s psyche.

“It’s as if everybody’d made this tacit agreement to live in a state of total self-deception. The hell with reality.” [68]

Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But are they sure that they are not self-deceived themselves? Always being wary of the fact that she’s a mediocre graduate from a dramatic school, April’s botched performance at a play takes a technically worse turn on her marriage. Perhaps she gets married too young and is not cut to be a housewife. Frank’s job at the business machine company is dull, condemning him to a slow, painless death. April has conceived the move to France in order for Frank to find himself in life. The talk of relocating overseas with no employment lined up, the absent-mindedness during daytime, the withdrawal from consciousness in office, the relaxation of child discipline, and the dependence on alcoholic stimulation are all tell-tale signs that their certainty is crumbling and that they are the jaded ones. Ironically and sadly, only John Givings, the institutionalized son of local realtor Helen and her husband Howard, is able to see what’s simmering beneath their surface.

Revolutionary Road is written with such mordant unsentimental perceptions that elucidate emotions in precision—emotions of being stuck up and trapped. Yates takes the time to unfold the young couple’s lives, exploring our critical modern shortcomings in school, work, marriage, family, and community. But these are mere instruments that Yates employs to pave for the shocking revelation: the inability to love, which threaten to topple the whole intricate structure of just the marriage but their selves. They have instead turned to the will-o’-the-wisp in order to elude their problem. 355 pages. [Read/Skim/Toss]