Revolutionary Road
First edition
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| Author | Richard Yates |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Little, Brown |
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Publication date
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31 December 1961 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 337 pp |
| OCLC | 171266 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.Y335 Re6 PS3575.A83 |
Revolutionary Road (released December 31, 1961) is author Richard Yates' debut novel. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer. When published by Atlantic-Little, Brown in 1961, it received critical acclaim, and The New York Times reviewed it as "beautifully crafted... a remarkable and deeply troubling book."
In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.
When DeWitt Henry and Geoffrey Clark interviewed Yates for the Winter 1972 issue of Ploughshares, Yates detailed the title's subtext:
I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs—a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price.
Set in 1955, the novel focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as very different from their neighbors in the Revolutionary Hill Estates. In the opening scene, April stars in an embarrassingly bad amateur dramatic production of The Petrified Forest:
She was working alone, and visibly weakening with every line. Before the end of the first act the audience could tell as well as the Players that she’d lost her grip, and soon they were all embarrassed for her. She had begun to alternate between false theatrical gestures and a white-knuckled immobility; she was carrying her shoulders high and square, and despite her heavy make-up you could see the warmth of humiliation rising in her face and neck.
After the performance, Frank and April have a fight on the side of the highway, and Frank later begins an affair with his office colleague Maureen Grube.
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