I just finished Revolutionary Road. My forthcoming novel is about the hell of suburban living, but this book set the bar way back in the fifties. What a great book on the suburban culture of America. Frank and April are the quintessential suburbanites who have it all but have nothing. We pick up on them as they return from a play and get into a horrible fight. The fight is amazing in how vicious it becomes and the way Richard Yates funnels the stress of suburban living. This novel takes place in the fifties, but it certainly could be today.
April and Frank had been bohemians in Greenwich before moving to the burbs. A stunning scene is when April walks to the end of her drive and stares at every house just like hers. The isolation, the nihilistic sense of doom is palpable as she stands in her drive in the quiet plasticity that is suburban life. She and Frank decide they want to go to Europe and escape the smothering sameness of their existence. As they plan their getaway Frank has numerous affairs and is promoted at his company. The brakes are put on their plan when April becomes pregnant. Desperately unhappy she has an affair and they fight over the abortion that April wants to have. An ancillary character that visits them from a mental institution raises the question of who is really insane.
The ending is dead on, but what Yates does masterfully with this novel is capture the soul deadening quality of suburban living for anytime. The frustration and desire of Frank and April of course are our own and while our resolution may not be as violent, Yates gives us a final image of a man turning down his hearing aid so he cannot hear his wife. He needs to say no more about the quiet madness of suburban life. We can relate.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
William Hazelgrove's latest novel, Rocket Man is due out in January.
Showing posts with label revolutionary road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revolutionary road. Show all posts
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Revolutionary Road--A Review
I just finished Revolutionary Road. What a great book on the suburban culture of America. Frank and April are the quintessential suburbanites who have it all but have nothing. We pick up on them as they return from a play and get into a horrible fight. The frustration is amazing in how vicious it comes and the way Richard Yates funnels the stress of suburban living. This novel takes place in the fifties but it certainly could be today. April and Frank decide they want to go to Europe and escape the smothering sameness of their suburban existence. As they plan their getaway Frank has numerous affairs and is promoted at his company. The brakes are put on their plan when April becomes pregnant. Desperately unhappy she has an affair and they fight over the abortion that April wants to have. An ancillary character that visits them from a mental institution belies the question of who is really insane. The ending is right on, but what Yates does masterfully with this novel is he captures the soul deadening quality of suburban living in the 1950's. The frustration and desire of Frank and April of course are our own and while our resolution may not be as violent, Yates gives us a final image of a man turning down his hearing aid so he cannot hear his wife. He needs to say no more.
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Politics of Obscurity
John Kennedy Toole. How many people have heard of him? Maybe some. Maybe.
He wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. The novel went on to win a Pulitizer. Highly reviewed. A classic. The author. He committed suicide ten years before the book ever saw print. 32. He was just thirty two when in 1968 he decided to cash it in. Written a huge manuscript dog eared and typed and smudged. Sitting down in New Orleans with his mother. Doing nothing. Waiting to be discovered. Eating rejection letters. Waiting to be discovered. Not many people know what thats like. You spend your best moments. Your heart and soul. Give your best years to this mound of paper filling your desk and then you begin funnelling it out to the world at large and it comes back. No one gives a damn.
So you can imagine old John. I personally never knew him but I do know him.Any writer does. You have one horror as a writer. Comes to you at night in your sleep. That you will die in obscurity. That what you have to say will find no voice among your fellow man. You write because you are driven. You write because you have no other way to make sense of your existence.You publish so you will leave footprints. That no one will see your passage is the knife at your throat as the sands flow. Time. It starts to run you down right after you finish your book. How long will it take to get it in print. Will it ever get in print. Will it stay in print.Will the manuscript ever escape the box, the basement, the attic. Immortality. A flag that you have passed.
And so you press on. Send it out. Send it out some more.And then it comes back just as fast. No one wants it. No one gives a damn that the talent you've been given. God palmed to you. Means nothing in the world. Take John. Just written his opus.His raison d etre. Reason for being. And there it sat. He must have known. You always know in some part of you when you have written your gift to the world. Usually it's the first novel. Sometimes the second. But you know. This was the one that I came together for. I know it's good. No one else gives a damn. So you send it out some more. Then again. Then again. Again. No one cares. Worse. No one wants it.
John must have papered his room with rejection letters.He must have decided there was no way to pass that wall. The wall of indifference.The world did not want his testament. He sat in his mothers house with his thousand page manuscript. Typed. Carboned. Smudged. In New Orleans. 1968. Hot. Twilight. Sitting. Obsurirty floating in with the night and then it overwhelmes. Drowns you like some miasma. I'm never going to beat this thing. It will win. Not me. I will be crushed underfoot by indifference. No one cares. The writer unrealized. Just thirty two. And so he ends it. Snuffs out his life. The wall of indifference falling on him.
Ten years later his mother takes his manuscript to an edtior.A genius discovered. Dead genius. Obscure. A pulizter. A classic. John Kennedy Toole. You think he didn't know. Didn't know that in death his novel might have a chance. Or was it just some black horror coming over him. Swirling him up. The horror of the artist damned to obsucurity. To the night.
Maybe he got the last laugh. Maybe.
He wrote A Confederacy of Dunces. The novel went on to win a Pulitizer. Highly reviewed. A classic. The author. He committed suicide ten years before the book ever saw print. 32. He was just thirty two when in 1968 he decided to cash it in. Written a huge manuscript dog eared and typed and smudged. Sitting down in New Orleans with his mother. Doing nothing. Waiting to be discovered. Eating rejection letters. Waiting to be discovered. Not many people know what thats like. You spend your best moments. Your heart and soul. Give your best years to this mound of paper filling your desk and then you begin funnelling it out to the world at large and it comes back. No one gives a damn.
So you can imagine old John. I personally never knew him but I do know him.Any writer does. You have one horror as a writer. Comes to you at night in your sleep. That you will die in obscurity. That what you have to say will find no voice among your fellow man. You write because you are driven. You write because you have no other way to make sense of your existence.You publish so you will leave footprints. That no one will see your passage is the knife at your throat as the sands flow. Time. It starts to run you down right after you finish your book. How long will it take to get it in print. Will it ever get in print. Will it stay in print.Will the manuscript ever escape the box, the basement, the attic. Immortality. A flag that you have passed.
And so you press on. Send it out. Send it out some more.And then it comes back just as fast. No one wants it. No one gives a damn that the talent you've been given. God palmed to you. Means nothing in the world. Take John. Just written his opus.His raison d etre. Reason for being. And there it sat. He must have known. You always know in some part of you when you have written your gift to the world. Usually it's the first novel. Sometimes the second. But you know. This was the one that I came together for. I know it's good. No one else gives a damn. So you send it out some more. Then again. Then again. Again. No one cares. Worse. No one wants it.
John must have papered his room with rejection letters.He must have decided there was no way to pass that wall. The wall of indifference.The world did not want his testament. He sat in his mothers house with his thousand page manuscript. Typed. Carboned. Smudged. In New Orleans. 1968. Hot. Twilight. Sitting. Obsurirty floating in with the night and then it overwhelmes. Drowns you like some miasma. I'm never going to beat this thing. It will win. Not me. I will be crushed underfoot by indifference. No one cares. The writer unrealized. Just thirty two. And so he ends it. Snuffs out his life. The wall of indifference falling on him.
Ten years later his mother takes his manuscript to an edtior.A genius discovered. Dead genius. Obscure. A pulizter. A classic. John Kennedy Toole. You think he didn't know. Didn't know that in death his novel might have a chance. Or was it just some black horror coming over him. Swirling him up. The horror of the artist damned to obsucurity. To the night.
Maybe he got the last laugh. Maybe.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Revolutionary Road
Back about four months ago a reviewer said, "Rocket Man reminds me of Revolutionary Road." I thought, well, interesting title. That was it. Another review came in a few weeks later, same comparison. I still did nothing. Then came another. And another. Then I heard about the movie and I finally went to a bookstore. Richard Yates struggled in 1961 to get readers. His book came out and basically dropped from site. Now why is that? Here is a book that pegs suburban living in the 1950's, nails down the monotony, the feeling that we should be doing something more than just going to work and coming home to a house in a suburb among other people doing exactly the same thing. Maybe the reason Richard Yates novel found a hard audience is because people do not like a mirror put in front of them. Now the novel and the movie are deemed brilliant. Seen through the safety of almost fifty years we can safely relate to this suburban couple. I have had people react violently to Rocket Man. Some had defended the suburbs. The Daily Herald just came out and termed the article "Author's new Novel Takes on Suburbs" http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=262957&src=5The assumption that an author is attacking an institution is implicit in the headline. There have been fears from other people that Rocket Man would be alienating, neighbors would stop talking to us, we would be politely shown the door back to the city. In Revolutionary Road, the couple see themselves apart, some would say in the year 2009 they see themselves as the "cultural elite." People who have reviewed the novel have been dismayed with this view and see their eventual comeuppance as just deserts. We are told from day one to not rock the boat and we don't appreciate our art pointing out our foibles, posing the question that there must be a better way. Yates named his novel, Revolutionary Road, thinking that the placidity of the fifties had to give way to something. It did, the sixties. But here we are in 2009 with another novel questioning the way we live in the year 2009...I wonder what the teens will be like?
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