Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Revolutionary Road
Book Review: A Great Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Too often Yates is referred to as a "writer's writer." Well, I'm not a writer. But I just love this book. This is a great read, not an exercise in writing acrobatics. I picked it up at a friend's house one day, and read about fifty pages. I bought it on my way home, and have since read all of Yates' work more than once.Yates is a great writer. Clear, simple, powerful. Honest, unflinching, observant, funny. He writes about the everyday tedium of office work better than anyone. Most important, he writes honestly about human self-destruction.
This is often seen as another indictment on suburban living. But the 'burbs don't do anything evil here. It is the characters who destroy themselves. Self-delusion, selfishness, ego. The fascinating thing about this painful story is how much we can relate to the characters.
The end is a bit over the top, but the journey is a pleasure. Illuminating, entertaining, horrifying. Read it.
Book Review: A Terrible Honesty
Summary: 5 Stars
When you say the name Richard Yates today you usually get blank stares. If you say Bellow, Cheever, Updike, Roth or Styron you get knowing nods. Yet Yates, to my mind, is easily the equal to any of the aforementioned names and belongs on the same literary shelf. He failed to find a wide and general fame before he died in 1992 (though, I believe, this book was up for the National Book Award in 1961 alongside Catch-22), and it is only recently that his name is being revived. He is revered by writers such as Tobias Wolff and Andre Dubus (who was a student of Yates').
Without Yates there is no Raymond Carver; he was the natural heir to Fitzgerald and mentor to those writers willing to take up a dangerous literary thread: the exploration of the depths of our self-delusion, our virtually incessant need for self-validation, and most importantly, our progressive moral disintegration. Never flashy in his style, nor even particularly poetic or lyrical, spare in his descriptions which seem, in spite of their austere quality, to strike the mark with a terrible sharpness, Yates was a great genius of plain prose. His writing is like a bear trap, hidden in the leaves, waiting to slam shut and catch the reader completely unawares. This kind of writing should have gained a wider readership, but it did not. Perhaps because, like the bear trap, when it closes on you, it hurts.
I myself had not been aware of Yates at all (something a writer friend found incomprehensible) until it was suggested I read Revolutionary Road. I read it, and I still have not recovered. Revolutionary Road is considered by many to be Richard Yates' best work. I think it is probably that and a lot more.
This book is one of the most powerful works of fiction I have ever read and certainly belongs in the company of the best American fiction written after WWII. I say that without hyperbole. Yates was as close to genius as any of his contemporaries, and this book in particular is written so close to the bone that, after I had finished it I wondered how Yates himself survived the effort. Apparently he did, but only just. I do not know if I have ever used the word masterpiece in any of my Amazon reviews; I don't think so. I would like to use it now. This book is a masterpiece. This book reads like a string of thoughts coming from inside the reader's own mind. It's that good. And the end is so powerful that I found myself weeping. I felt as though I had been waylaid, sucker punched. I did not expect anything like that to happen.
Having said that, it should not be thought that this book is some kind of "downer." It is way beyond those kinds of simplistic descriptions, besides which, it is often very funny. The portraits of middle-class American people of the 1950's are concise and devastatingly honest. Depending upon where you are in your own life at the time you read it, it will obvously have different effects. Some people may hate it. For me it was nothing short of life-changing. I know that sounds exaggerated, but that is the effect this great work had on me. I encourage anyone who is interested in what great fiction writing really is supposed to be to read Revolutionary Road. Along with all these tags I have used, great, genius, masterpiece, etc., it should be remembered that the writing in Revolutionary Road is extremely accessible. The sentences flow effortlessly, the book has its own momentum.
It should not be taken - from this review - that Revolutionary Road is one more swipe at an old and obvious target, the alienated middle class suburbians who have had a bullseye on their backs for generations of authors, nor is it merely another scathing attack on the emotionally-removed characters of the soul-barren Fifties (though I must take pains here to mention that the author himself said exactly that, "I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the nineteen-fifties.") While this is certainly a clear enough statement and we should take the author at his word, as a reader I have to take exception to this extent: the layers and depths Yates has uncovered propose - I believe - a greater intellectual and emotional map than even he had intended. While it is, as he says, an "indictment," it is also a deeply compassionate book. The author's own pain at writing this shows a soul who is both furiously angry and filled with loathing yet desperately and almost fatally loving. So great is his skill that both these irresolvably conflicted emotions are able to co-exist on the page. Yates knew this life, and he seems to feel what the people he writes about here feel. He is not superior to his characters but lives in their skin. Rather than taking a broad brush to it, he goes at it with a finer tool and teases up the nuances so often lacking in the more obvious fiction of the genre. Once I had read the first sentence I felt a kinship with the writer. I was hooked. I hope this happens for you.
NB: I have altered the last paragraph of my review slightly in order to include some of the information and insights which I have recently gained as a result of having read the brilliant and searing biography of Yates by Blake Bailey called, "A Tragic Honesty". I do suggest that the reader familiarize himself with Yates's work first by reading three or four of his novels and his collection of short stories before tackling this very well-written (and in its own right, painfully revealing) biography.
Book Review: A Writer's Writer
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Yates is by far one of the best writers of the past 50 years. His work, other than Revolutionary Road had been underappreciated until the mid-1990's when people started reading his short fiction again. But Revolutionary Road is his masterpiece. Yates is a master storyteller whose work is, as many other reviewers have already said, is timeless.
This book revolves around Columbia graduate Frank and his wife April Wheeler and their suburban lives. Each feels unfulfilled in his or her own way, Frank, someone who while at Columbia is always told great things are in store for him after he graduates and figures out what he wants to do with his life, and April, who mourns an acting career that never took off and instead leaves her pining away her days as a bored housewife. What is remarkable about this work is its ability to capture the trapped feeling one gets when faced with the reality of one's mundane existence. Something always seems just out of reach for these two and everytime you think their will be a change in their fortune, something happens to leave them right where they started.
I cannot emphasize enough how fantastic this book is. As someone who studied creative writing, Yates amazes me with the rich texture of his language and the way he captures a person's mindset so perfectly.
Add this book to the many you must always have at your side.
Book Review: A book of bored people..
Summary: 1 Stars
This book was unforgettable to me also. I read it back in the 70's when I was very much interested in having a different life than my parents(IBM!). And what is unforgettable is that this book, although highly recommended, was very boring and disappointing. At one point the characters are looking at their extensive book collection, remembering that it was supposed to have made all the difference, as though the books would jump off the shelf and live their lifes for them. It's just sad and depressing and mad me feel bad about books for quite some time since I had been looking for change in this bland tome.Book Review: A classic in world literature.
Summary: 5 Stars
R Yates yearned to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Revolutionary Road rivals, possibly exceeds the mastery of the Great Gatsby. Almost every scene, each sentence astounds the reader with its simple beauty and emotional power.