At the 'End' of Revolutionary Road

What I was struck by, as I raced to finish Richard Yates’ book in time for the movie’s arrival (current Netflix queue position #1), was the intense self consciousness of main characters Frank and April Wheeler. The degree to which we, as the readers, sit in their minds and eavesdrop on their affectations is nearly maddening. For example, here is Frank simply walking across a room:

… Walking toward or away from her across a restaurant floor, for example, he remembered always to do it in the old “terrifically sexy” way, and when they walked together he fell into another old habit of holding his head unnaturally erect and carrying his inside shoulder an inch or two higher than the other, to give himself more loftiness from where she clung at his arm. When he lit a cigarette in the dark he was careful to arrange his features in a viril frown before striking and cupping the flame (he knew, from having practiced this at the mirror of a blacked-out bathroom years ago, that it made a swift, intensely dramatic portrait), and he paid scrupulous attention to endless details: keeping his voice low and resonant, keeping his hair brushed and his bitten fingernails out of sight; being always the first one athletically up and out of bed in the morning, so that she might never see his face lying swollen and helpless in sleep.

The main characters are essentially paralyzed by their own dreams — of who they should be, could be, ought to be. I found this to be incredibly interesting. Here’s another example of April in the act of hugging her husband:

… There was a certain stiffness in the way she was holding him, a suggestion of the effort to achieve the effect of spontaneity, as though she knew that a nestling of the shoulder blade was in order and was doing her best to meet the specifications.

Beyond the self consciousness of Yates’ characters is their role-playing (and their arguing, two points that make Revolutionary Road and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf an excellent double-feature). Not only are vague daydreams getting them through the day, so too are the roles they play within them.

This reminds me of one of my favorite maxims — “When walking into a room, act as if you’re walking into a room” — by Barney’s window dresser Simon Doonan.

In other words, when you’re about to enter the room of, say, a party, you should be acutely aware that you are, in fact, entering the room of a party - and you should act accordingly. Hold your head up. Arc the fingers and flash your cigarette. Blink at the right people as you pass. Smile wide enough for your white teeth to glint beneath the lights. Pretend not to notice how fabulous you are.

Doonan’s is a finely wrought truism that describes a very specific way of viewing yourself from a third person point-of-view. It’s also a maddening way to exist, as though you’re being pressed in from all sides.