READING IS FUCKINMENTAL: Road to Suicide-ville

THE ROAD TO SUICIDE-VILLE

Revolutionary Road: A pitch-perfect examination of how middle class life can seriously fuck you up.

I just about pissed myself the other day when I found out that Sam Mendes (director of Jarhead and American Beauty) had recently completed a film adaptation of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road (1961). For details on the flick, go here. Due to be released in late December, the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Yes, the man-boy we all love to hate—but he’s actually a better-than-average actor once you suppress your initial gag reflex and pay attention to what he does. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?) and Kate Winslet (she of pale-and-heaving-bosoms aboard doomed ocean liner fame, like DiCaprio).

Now, understand that Revolutionary Road is probably one of the best American novels of the past 50 years, a pitch-perfect examination of how middle class life can seriously fuck you up. If you’re a fan of AMC’s Mad Men, then you have had a taste of the book’s mid-1950s/early 1960s flavor—but that’s only a weenie-on-a-toothpick sized sample of what you’ll find in Yates’ novel. Revolutionary Road has some of the most awkward, uncomfortable sex scenes you’ll ever read—just like real-life sex. And no one is better at illustrating the heady mix of anxiety, joy, fear, hope, disappointment, conventionality, and petty rebellion of American suburban life than Yates. I know, others have taken a stab at this, but Yates did it best and has yet to be topped. Ever had a fight with your wife or girlfriend, husband or boyfriend, or that blow-up doll you call a “companion?” Yates nails domestic disharmony and the snippy bitchiness between friends and lovers, and you’ll hear your own words spilling out of the mouths of protagonists April and Frank Wheeler.

If you don’t think that’s your cup of tea, then you need to change your brand of tea, because Yates’ book is a psychological rollercoaster with the most depressing ending in the history of depressing endings. Ever. You’ll want to slice open your wrists with a rusty flathead screwdriver. And then you’ll fight the urge to pay a meth-head to back a Ford F-150 over your crotch. Sound like fun? Seriously, though, there has been talk in Hollywood for years about making an adaptation of Revolutionary Road—but the project has oftentimes been scuttled because studio heads (read: pencil-pushing asswipes) found the ending too depressing. So here’s a note to Sam Mendes: I hope to God you didn’t fuck it up. America is popping anti-depressants like Mentos, so I think we’ve finally reached a point where we can take it.           

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams.