Revolutionary Road, the first novel of author Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer. When it was 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."
In 2005 the novel was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.
When DeWitt Henry and Geoffrey Clark interviewed Yates for the Winter, 1972 issue of 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. | ” |
Read more about Revolutionary Road: Plot Summary, Themes, Literary Significance, Film Adaptation
Famous quotes containing the word road:
“Telephone poles were matchsticks, put there to be snapped off at a whim. Dogs trotting across the road were suddenly big trucks. Old ladies turned into moving—vans. Everything was too bright, but very funny and made for my delight. And about half a mile from my long liquid breakfast I turned carefully down a side street and parked, and sat beaming happily through the tannic fog for about an hour, remembering how witty we all had been, how handsome and talented ... [ellipsis in original]”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)