![]() First edition | |
Author | Richard Yates |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Tragedy[1][2][3] |
Publisher | Little, Brown |
Publication date | 31 December 1961 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 337 pp |
OCLC | 171266 |
813/.5/4 | |
LC Class | PZ4.Y335 Re6 PS3575.A83 |
Revolutionary Road is American author Richard Yates's debut novel about 1950s suburban life on the East Coast. 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."[4] In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.[5]
When DeWitt Henry and Geoffrey Clark interviewed Yates for the Winter 1972 issue of literary journal 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.[6]
A film adaptation of the book, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Kathy Bates, directed by Sam Mendes, and written by Justin Haythe, was released in 2008.
So he adds an epilogue-like final chapter, turning the Wheelers' domestic tragedy into, exactly, a story that their neighbours tell.