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Revolutionary Road

By Richard Yates

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| Others | 9780307454782

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Book Description

The rediscovery and rejuvenation of Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosContinue

Critics

Revolutionary Road

"Se nella letteratura americana moderna ci vuole qualcos'altro per fare un capolavoro, non saprei dire cosa": questo il giudizio di Tennessee Williams su Revolutionary Road, uno dei classici "dimenticati" della narrativa americana del secondo Novecen ... (read full critics)

librerie published on Fri, 3 Dec 2010

Revolutionary Road Richard Yates

Primavera 1955, zona residenziale di Revolutionary Hill, Connecticut occidentale: i Wheeler vivono qui e hanno le sembianze della tipica coppia borghese americana degli Anni 50. In realtà, ignorano le regole del buon vicinato, detestano la vita borgh ... (read full critics)

elle published on Fri, 3 Dec 2010

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18 Reviews

3 people find this helpful

I love you when you're nice

"Just happened to feel like it, I guess." (...) She just happened to feel like it. Wasn't that, after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?
"I love you when you're nice," she'd told him once, before they were marr ... (continue)

"Just happened to feel like it, I guess." (...) She just happened to feel like it. Wasn't that, after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?
"I love you when you're nice," she'd told him once, before they were married , and it had made him furious.
"Don't say that. Christ's sake, you don't 'love' people when they're 'nice'. Don't you see that's the same as saying 'What's in it for me?'Look. You either love me or you don't, and you're going to have to make up your mind."
Somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happenend to feel like doing and who might at any time - this was the hell of it - who might at any time of day or night just happen to feel like leaving him.
Bel romanzo, di quelli forti, introspettivi, che ti catapultano nella realtà che raccontano. Le questioni affrontate girano attorno al problema del benessere, dell'ipocrisia, della mediocrità e del conformismo: una giovane coppia americana incarna la medio borghesia: villetta fuori città, immaturità nascosta dalla rispettabilità, due bimbi, giardino, velleità artistiche di lei, lui lavoro noioso ma che dà da mangiare, amicizie poche e che non impegnino. Spunti culturali, vivacità mentale, capacità d'iniziativa assenti. Una lieve depressione li avvolge, trovano conforto nella critica pur sapendo che se li avvolge il nulla, è perchè lo incarnano anche loro ("Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity." The happy implication was that they alone, the four of them, were painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.).
Let's have a whole bunch of cute little winding roads and little houses painted white and pink and baby blue; let's all be good consumers and have a lot of Togetherness and bring our children up in a bath of sentimentality - Daddy's a great man because he makes a living, Mummy's great woman because she's stuck by Daddy all these years - and if old reality ever does pop out and say Boo we'll get busy and pretend never happenend.
Un piccolo sobbalzo di vita, e decidono di andare a vivere in Europa. Questo miraggio riporta in vita April e Frank, per poco, prima di soccombere nuovamente di fronte a normali avvenimenti. Il finale non dà speranze.
Lo scontento, la depressione, la noia non sono fattori esterni, nascono e vivono in noi. Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it, scriveva Einstein. Con quanta ragione!

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Giulia Irene said on Aug 13, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

3 people find this helpful

Kate Winslet won her Oscar for her role as Hanna Schmitz in "The Reader", but I think she really aced it in "Revolutionary Road" as April Wheeler, the frustrated, disenchanted and vulnerable suburban housewife. She literally steals the show with her powerful and stunning performance that would leav ... (continue)

Kate Winslet won her Oscar for her role as Hanna Schmitz in "The Reader", but I think she really aced it in "Revolutionary Road" as April Wheeler, the frustrated, disenchanted and vulnerable suburban housewife. She literally steals the show with her powerful and stunning performance that would leave her audience with a broken heart.
Many film critics said that the film does not do justice to Richard Yates' novel, which has become a classic. I saw the movie first and was so shaken by the crisp and impassioned dialogues that I had to read the book in order to savour the lines which are nothing short of masterpieces.
Set in 1955, the story is about the couple Frank and April Wheeler who led a quiet but unsatisfying middle-class life with their two children in suburban New York. April who could no longer bear the "hopeless emptiness" of the suburbia, wanted the whole family to take off and move to Paris. It brought all the underlying problems in this marriage to the surface and led the couple to a path of no return.
Why this book has become a classic is exactly its brilliant demonstration of the weakness and foibles of human beings - that we are so selfish, egotistic, unrealistic and full of excuse when things do not turn out the way we want them to be. If the story and characters were set in the present day, they would still be very true.
"It's as if everybody'd made this tacit agreement to live in a state of total self-deception," said Frank Wheeler, talking about how suffocating the suburban life was and that people like him should deserve a more noble life. But weren't both he and April deceiving themselves? They thought that they were in a league of their own, but in what ways were they better than their neighbours? At least their neighbours wouldn't take off without a plan. I think that's why I don't give this book 4 stars because I just don't like the characters. You just wouldn't sympathise with April or feel for her because what she did was so reckless and foolish.
But still, the book is worth reading as the dialogues are superb. I kept on re-reading a few exchanges between Frank and April, and those between them and their mentally-ill neighbour John Givings, because they really hit the nail on the head.
For example, what John told Frank about jobs is so true: "Interesting? ... You worry about whether a job is 'interesting' or not? ... You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like ... Anybody comes along and says 'Whaddya do it for?' you can be pretty sure he's on a four-hour pass from the State funny-farm ..." Don't always say you would quit a job because it's not interesting if you need the job for a living - just stick with it.
And what April said about herself is in fact what I have been telling myself unrealistically all these years: "I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere ... 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 bad job because it never occurred to them to do anything less than perfectly the first time ... and I always imagined that when I did find them I 'd suddenly know that I belonged among them, that I was one of them ..." Well, to be exact, I have been telling myself those first few lines - I know those golden people exist - but I definitely am not one of them, and I'd better live with it.
I think what I have learned from this book is that you have to know who you are, know where you stand, and be true to yourself. We can never pretend to be someone we are not. It will lead us nowhere and we will never be happy.
"Revolutionary Road" is a semi-autobiography of Richard Yates and his wife in the 1950s. The book was first released in 1961, but it became famous only after Yates died alone in a desolate apartment in 1992. This added a shred of sadness to the already tragic story.

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Tracy W said on Mar 3, 2009 | 1 feedback

3 people find this helpful

suburban hypocrisy

"It's all the idiots I ride with on the train every day. It's a disease. [suburban smugness] Nobody thinks or feels cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity"
The irony of this speech of Frank's is that the Wheelers fit ... (continue)

"It's all the idiots I ride with on the train every day. It's a disease. [suburban smugness] Nobody thinks or feels cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity"
The irony of this speech of Frank's is that the Wheelers fit right into this stereotype, only they make believe that they break the mould. April's attempts to escape are thwarted by a cowardly husband, and the last straw is their hypocrisy being exactly identified by a supposed paranoid schizophrenic. Great stuff, although very bleak. Just as relevant now as in the 60s.

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goldtop said on Apr 13, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

eh, si, è stato difficile da leggere. è difficile entrare nella parte, capire a cosa serve descrivere minuziosamente e con dovizia di parole complesse ogni singolo movimento, espressione, complemento d'arredo. poi arrivi alla fine, divori come un forsennato in piena notte le ultime 100 pagine e capi ... (continue)

eh, si, è stato difficile da leggere. è difficile entrare nella parte, capire a cosa serve descrivere minuziosamente e con dovizia di parole complesse ogni singolo movimento, espressione, complemento d'arredo. poi arrivi alla fine, divori come un forsennato in piena notte le ultime 100 pagine e capisci che senso ha. quando finisce tu sei li dentro.

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Snakebiter said on Jan 25, 2012 | Add your feedback

L'ho letto, anche se male, nel senso metà in inglese, metà in italiano...non conosco l'inglese da poter esser certa al cento per cento di quanto scriverò, ma l'ho trovato stilisticamente piatto e ripetitivo, già l'inglese è assai limitato a sinonimi rispetto all'italiano, in versione originale assen ... (continue)

L'ho letto, anche se male, nel senso metà in inglese, metà in italiano...non conosco l'inglese da poter esser certa al cento per cento di quanto scriverò, ma l'ho trovato stilisticamente piatto e ripetitivo, già l'inglese è assai limitato a sinonimi rispetto all'italiano, in versione originale assente è la fatica di trovare quei pochi sinonimi che immagino esistano. In secondo luogo: per quale motivo dovrei provare empatia per Frank e April, e tutti i personaggi che ruotano loro intorno? Malgrado la seconda arrivi a uccidersi piuttosto che continuare ad essere vittima di una vita che ha capito essere fasulla? Scusatemi, ma io non ho più pazienza. I miei genitori hanno passato al loro giovinezza, e la loro vita, a combattere questa mediocrità e questa ipocrisia, io sono cresciuta con questo spirito e ne sconto ogni dannato giorno le conseguenze, visto che la maggioranza delle persone, consapevoli o no, è imprigionata in relazioni più o meno "ufficiali" e "riconosciute" e nulla fa se non riproporre l'idea castrante dei suburbs. Dovrei anche dire "oh poverini"? Oh poverini un paio di palle. Magari la maggior parte di loro avesse fatto la stessa scelta di April, il mondo sarebbe stato liberato da una massa di egoisti ana-emotivi, fasulli, ipocriti vanagloriosi del cazzo.

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Chiara Desiderio said on Jan 16, 2012 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Una strada senza amore

Il grande assente di Revolutionary Road infatti è l'amore. L'amore che è innanzitutto capacità di uscire da sè per accogliere l'altro. Nessuno dei personaggi del libro ne è capace. Non April per la quale l'amore si riduce all'ammirazione per una esteriorità perfetta che invano cercherà di riprodurre ... (continue)

Il grande assente di Revolutionary Road infatti è l'amore. L'amore che è innanzitutto capacità di uscire da sè per accogliere l'altro. Nessuno dei personaggi del libro ne è capace. Non April per la quale l'amore si riduce all'ammirazione per una esteriorità perfetta che invano cercherà di riprodurre, e nemmeno Frank, preoccupato di apparire interessante e non ordinario, non Miss Givings così terrorizzata dalle emozioni da ricoprirle di parole vuote e incessanti, e nemmeno Shep il cui presunto amore per April è puro desiderio di possesso e invidia per Frank. Fino al penultimo capitolo avrei forse salvato Molly, ma Yates ha pensato bene di annientare, alla fine, anche lei!
Sullo sfondo la realtà borghese dei "suburbs" americani. Ma non sono i suburbs, come pensano April e Frank, a plasmare la vacuità delle vite che vi si svolgono, quanto piuttosto questa vacuità che in un altro ambiente risulterebbe intollerabile, trova nei suburb l'ambiente ideale che permette ai più di sopravvivere senza sensi di colpa, dietro la maschera delle casette dai muri dipinti di bianco, dei prati falciati di fresco e dei fiori nei giardini.
Il racconto che fa Yates di questa realtà è incalzante e impietoso. Tutti i personaggi sono antipatici, perchè descritti con la stessa mancanza d'amore che permea l'intero romanzo. Purtroppo la sostanza del racconto non è sostenuta da una scrittura all'altezza dei temi quasi filosofici che tratta. La scrittura ricorda piuttosto quella dei classici film hollywoodiani. Tutto viene scritto nei minimi dettagli, anche laddove era già intuibile. Nulla è lasciato all'interpretazione del lettore. Questo rende spesso la lettura ridondante, ripetitiva a tratti decisamente noiosa.

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Cxr said on Jan 14, 2012 | 1 feedback