Review of Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road"

[The above is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure, as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

I am about one hundred pages short of finishing the novel, and have to begin writing the review now, not because I don’t want to finish the book, but because I think I will have forgotten too many of the things I wanted to mention. Richard Yates has received quite the resurgence in interest recently, especially from online amateur book reviewers, and judging solely from “Revolutionary Road” alone, it is well deserved. 

The lives of its two central characters, the married couple April and Frank Wheeler, are dripping with tragic irony. (In many ways, it resembles a modern retelling of something from Euripides or Sophocles.) The entire novel is an investigation into the different modes of irony that deeply infiltrate even the most intimate parts of their lives. April and Frank – what two names could better express the blunting dullness of the hope-springs-eternal optimism of the 1950s in which the novel is set? From the very first page, however, Yates is single-minded in his goal to have the reader see that this optimism is simply an illusion. On that first page, we learn that April is an aspiring actress who has been relegated, much to her chagrin, to a suburban amateur theatre group. When her co-actors’ weak performances disappoint her, she goes home to take it out on her husband who at first seems the model of forbearance, putting up with hours of her icy “silent treatment,” but who eventually shows himself to be every bit as cruel and calculating as his wife. To support them, Frank has taken a middle-manager job in the technology company where his father used to work. For whatever reason, and the author never makes it wholly clear, both Frank and April both think that success and everything else they deserve is right around the corner. They have convinced themselves that “these mindless drones working in the sales department don’t think and feel in the same ways we do.” Why should they? “They’re just silly brownnosing ladder-climbers.” They even secretly hold this sense of smug superiority toward their neighbors, who also happen to be their best friends.

Yates is really masterful at describing the profound changes that took place between the time when Frank’s father worked there and now. Frank’s father always worked hard, was always tired – but he seemed satisfied. He was a company man and proud to be identified as one. Frank, twenty years on, does nothing but sit and collect his check; moreover, he’s disgusted by the corporate business mentality that pervades the whole place. Yates wants you to see that the corporate workplace definitely has become more alienating, but I think he also wants to show healthy and unhealthy ways to accommodate it, and that Frank’s attitude of seeing it only as a place where you spend forty hours a week and try to do as little as possible is one of the unhealthy ways. Frank and April either refuse (or perhaps are just incapable) of discovering what they need for themselves.

If there could be anything like one clear, distinct message to be taken away from this novel, it is that meaning – what you want to do with your life, the worth of your relationships, what makes life worth living – is never simply handed to you, an artisan-crafted thing on a silver platter. You have to build it yourself, to make it with your own hands. Meaning is something that we must continually weave for ourselves out of our personal needs, passions, and drives. Waiting for it to arrive means it never will. That, ultimately, is the tragedy for April and Frank Wheeler.