Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

[Dominique]

I just finished Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates and it struck such a chord with me that I felt I had to start a thread on it.

It's tense, depressing, oppressive, gripping.... and a masterpiece. Yates' writing is so taut and expert. The book definately falls into the wounding and stabbing category of Kafka's quote "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us."

Has anyone else read it?

I kind of wish I hadn't seen the movie first now, the movie is great too but I wish I could have experienced the story for the first time through Yates' writing.

[bookslayer]

This is one of my favorite books and so I've read it a few times. My book club read it recently and they all hated it! They felt like Yates was misogynistic in his portrayal of women but I don't take it that way at all (and I'm a feminist!). I think he was simply portraying women and their role in society as it was in those times.

[Dominique]

I can see how they might think that, but I disagree as well. Yates is very, very hard on all of his characters, both the women and the men. Some of the descriptions of the women; April's figure, Milly's sweating etc, were strikingly nasty but I don't think he was any more critical of them than he was of the male characters. I think he was very skilled at making his characters both sympathetic and repulsive at the same time.

I agree that Yates was simply portraying the stifling nature of conventional society in general at that time. Yates seems so critical of 1950s society and both women and men's roles in it that I find it hard to believe he was a misogynist, looking at the book from a feminist viewpoint I think that, if anything, the book is a warning against conventional gender roles and testament to the importance of women having other options in life than getting married and starting a family.

I think that you need to be in a specific frame of mind to enjoy Revolutionary Road, so I can understand how some more sensitive readers wouldn't enjoy it.

Welcome to RBC by the way! I see that you're a new member