Revolutionary Road

Zusatztext " The Great Gatsby of my time...one of the best books by a member of my generation." —Kurt Vonnegut"Beautifully crafted...a remarkable and deeply troubling book." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Informationen zum Autor Richard Yates was born in 1926 in New York and lived in California. His prize-winning stories began to appear in 1953 and his first novel, Revolutionary Road , was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961. He is the author of eight other works, including the novels A Good School, The Easter Parade, and Disturbing the Peace, and two collections of short stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love . He died in 1992. Klappentext Hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs since it's publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves. In his introduction to this edition, novelist Richard Ford pays homage to the lasting influence and enduring power of Revolutionary Road. Leseprobe ONE The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium. They hardly dared to breathe as the short, solemn figure of their director emerged from the naked seats to join them on stage, as he pulled a stepladder raspingly from the wings and climbed halfway up its rungs to turn and tell them, with several clearings of his throat, that they were a damned talented group of people and a wonderful group of people to work with. "It hasn't been an easy job," he said, his glasses glinting soberly around the stage. "We've had a lot of problems here, and quite frankly I'd more or less resigned myself not to expect too much. Well, listen. Maybe this sounds corny, but something happened up here tonight. Sitting out there tonight I suddenly knew, deep down, that you were all putting your hearts into your work for the first time." He let the fingers of one hand splay out across the pocket of his shirt to show what a simple, physical thing the heart was; then he made the same hand into a fist, which he shook slowly and wordlessly in a long dramatic pause, closing one eye and allowing his moist lower lip to curl out in a grimace of triumph and pride. "Do that again tomorrow night," he said, "and we'll have one hell of a show." They could have wept with relief. Instead, trembling, they cheered and laughed and shook hands and kissed one another, and somebody went out for a case of beer and they all sang songs around the auditorium piano until the time came to agree, unanimously, that they'd better knock it off and get a good night's sleep. "See you tomorrow!" they called, as happy as children, and riding home under the moon they found they could roll down the windows of their cars and let the air in, with its health-giving smells of loam and young flowers. It was the first time many of the Laurel Players had allowed themselves to acknowledge the coming of spring. The year was 1955 and the place was a part of western Connecticut where three swollen villages had lately been merged by a wide and clamorous highway called Route Twelve. The Laurel Players were an amateur company, but a costly and very serious one, carefully recruited from among the younger adults of all three towns, and this was to be their maiden production. All winter, gathering in one anther's living rooms for excited talks about Ibsen and...

Report

A powerful treatment of a characteristically American theme, which might be labeled trapped.' ... A highly impressive performance. It is written with perception, force and awareness of complexity and ambiguity, and it tells a moving and absorbing story. The Atlantic Monthly

"The Great Gatsby of my time ... one of the best books by a member of my generation." Kurt Vonnegut, acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five

"Beautifully crafted ... a remarkable and deeply troubling book." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Every phrase reflects to the highest degree integrity and stylistic mastery. To read Revolutionary Road is to have forced upon us a fresh sense of our critical modern shortcomings: failures of work, education, community, family, marriage . . . and plain nerve. The New Republic

Richard Yates is a writer of commanding gifts. His prose is urbane yet sensitive, with passion and irony held deftly in balance. And he provides unexpected pleasures in a flood of freshly minted phrases and in the thrust of sudden insight, precise notation of feeling, and mordant unsentimental perceptions. Saturday Review

"A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic." William Stryron, National Book Award-winning author of Sophie's Choice

Product details

• Authors: Richard Yates
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 25.04.2000
• EAN: 9780375708442
• ISBN: 978-0-375-70844-2
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 205 mm x 20 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature