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Revolutionary Road
Oct. 8th, 2005 04:23 pmI just finished reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. It's not a happy book -- more the kind of book you find on a high bridge weighed down by a rock and a note that says "Sorry, just couldn't handle the thought of things turning out like this" and you look down for a body but you don't see one, because the person is long gone.
I want to have breakfast or something with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aykroyd, who lent it to me, and discuss it, because it reads like a remorseless laundry list of Things Not To Do. Don't pretend that your neighborhood doesn't shape you. Don't pretend that your job doesn't shape you. Don't assume you're better than everyone else. Don't have a child you don't want. Don't pretend to want a child you don't want. By the way, don't cheat on your spouse. And for God's sake, if you have two children and don't want another and you get pregnant, have an abortion!
The only part of this masterfully dreary book I had to laugh at comes on almost the last page, when finally a secondary character refers to the main characters as irresponsible. I can hear the author: please, please somone call this the 'Great Gatsby' of our time... they were careless people really, and I couldn't say so because F. Scott Fitzgerald got to it before I did, but there is a nice resonant comparison to be made there, don't you think? And Kurt Vonnegut obliges him in a nice quote on the back cover. Hmm... maybe this falls under the category of 'things I shouldn't find funny', but I do. There's just something a bit pathetic about that grab for parallelism.
I want to have breakfast or something with
aykroyd, who lent it to me, and discuss it, because it reads like a remorseless laundry list of Things Not To Do. Don't pretend that your neighborhood doesn't shape you. Don't pretend that your job doesn't shape you. Don't assume you're better than everyone else. Don't have a child you don't want. Don't pretend to want a child you don't want. By the way, don't cheat on your spouse. And for God's sake, if you have two children and don't want another and you get pregnant, have an abortion!The only part of this masterfully dreary book I had to laugh at comes on almost the last page, when finally a secondary character refers to the main characters as irresponsible. I can hear the author: please, please somone call this the 'Great Gatsby' of our time... they were careless people really, and I couldn't say so because F. Scott Fitzgerald got to it before I did, but there is a nice resonant comparison to be made there, don't you think? And Kurt Vonnegut obliges him in a nice quote on the back cover. Hmm... maybe this falls under the category of 'things I shouldn't find funny', but I do. There's just something a bit pathetic about that grab for parallelism.
