Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

“Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.” – Revolutionary Road


It was an early morning of October 2012. I slept late the other night, and when I was wide awake in my thoughts, I read the pages of the story which I was writing at that time. I read all the 178 pages and didn't find it exciting. Not a single word. Everything was something gimmick from from other writers. Every feeling was not true. I wanted to write something which defined me, which can shout in front of the world and say that This is truely me. This is what I am and These are the reasons why I am writing something. With this thought, and hatred for my own work, I tried to sleep.

When I woke up next morning, my friend suggested me to read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I had already seen the film and found LEonardo's acting very very touching. He was indeed the true Frank Wheeler. I started reading the book, I read, I read and I read. I just couldn't control myself from turning the pages. I read it in one sitting and that's when I knew, What I wanted to write. I wanted a family drama like that one.A relationship which Frank and his wife, April shares is what I wanted to write. This is what, I wanted to feel from inside.

Most of Revolutionary Road’s characters stare at themselves in mirrors with a glint of recognition of mediocrity before they relapse into self-delusion. Self-reflection is a recurring motif. Frank and April are in desperate need of self-revelation and self-revolution. To quote another Yeats, “Surely some revelation is at hand.”

In the 300-plus pages of the novel, nothing all that extraordinary happens to them, at least not until the end: Frank and April deal with dissatisfaction and fear, with pregnancy and ambition, and with the dream of escape. Yet in spite of this lack of surface pizazz, Revolutionary Road seems, each time I read it, ever more moving, and ever more an essential testament about mid-20th century America.

Richard Yates was a famously pessimistic writer, and there's no question that Revolutionary Road, while a hugely pleasurable read, is not an easy one emotionally. Every time I read it, I start to see the world the way Yates did: the clothes hanging on my clothesline begin to look a little shabby, my small living apartment in some desperate need of repair. But that's a small price to pay for Yates' clarity. The deeper I get into the life of marriage and parenthood — Yates' special territory — the more essential I find that clarity to be.