Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road

Sean Bernard

University of La Verne

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 dur-ing 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 trans-ferred 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. Bet-ter literature inspires emotions we haven’t admitted we possess; it awakens us to the deep complexity within—works, then, that illuminate the (our) hu-man spirit.

Revolutionary Road tells me:

1) 1950s suburban America had limited outlets for the creatively inclined
2) Conformity was then rampant.

3) People who lie to themselves are unhappy.

4) People who feel superior to their surround-ings 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 Mar-cus….)

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

Bad Books

R.M. Berry

Florida State University

What makes a book bad? It gives me small joy to hear the judgment pronounced, even by me, since the effect is always stifling, regardless intent.

Underlying it is an insinuation that we know what’s lacking, that spread-eagle badness restores our faith in norms. Not that bad books aren’t legion. Christ!!! But after piling on, I always need a bath. E. M. For-ster pronounced Gertrude Stein bad, and it would be pleasing to retort that the joke’s on him, but who is reckless enough to explain why? In truth, no book has ever made a difference to me that someone whose judgment I respected didn’t find execrable.

Genre books aren’t bad. They are the para-digm of good books. If any writing can be justi-fied, romances and Westerns and mysteries and