Richard Yates’s first novel,
Revolutionary Road, was published in 1961. While this book
was not widely read in Yates’s lifetime (he had sold less than 12,000 copies by the time he died), at the turn of 2009 it was catapulted onto the New York bestseller list with the aid of Sam Mendes’s film of the same name. Highly regarded by contemporary writers such as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Tennessee Williams, Joan Didion and Richard Ford, the novel was nevertheless seen as an unrelentingly depressing view of marriage and suburban life in 1950s’ America. Even though
Revolutionary Roadexcited enough interest to be nominated for the 1962 National Book Award, on the whole this novel, along with the rest of Yates’s fiction, remained neglected by the critical elite. While Mendes’s film…
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Citation: Charlton-Jones, Kate. "Revolutionary Road". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 May 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23623, accessed 23 November 2024.]
