Revolutionary Road

See the legion of admirers of Revolutionary Road (1961): many of my peers, Ben Marcus, Kate Winslet, Kurt Vonnegut, Time Magazine. I suspect Laura Bush and Joe Biden, as well.

Of it Richard Yates told Ploughshares:

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…a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that….

Good literature inspires emotion that is transferred beyond simple admiration ("magic seems neat") into reality ("Having read this novel, I must weep"). This emotion can be internal or external. It can be anything: moral outrage, jaded humor, deep sorrow, a reassurance that one is not alone, etc. Better literature inspires emotions we haven't admitted we possess; it awakens us to the deep complexity within—works, then, that illuminate the (our) human spirit.

Revolutionary Road tells me:

1. 1. 1950s suburban America had limited outlets for the creatively inclined.

2. 2. Conformity was then rampant.

3. 3. People who lie to themselves are unhappy.

4. 4. People who feel superior to their surroundings are frustrated.

By this, I am as illuminated as I am by a college essay decrying drunk driving.

(And yet my peers, and Vonnegut, and Marcus….)

Why is it bad? Because it's tricked so many into thinking it's good.