Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really Tough Love

Yates has a reputation as a chronicler of the smug years of post-WWII America. Perhaps. But as an artist, he is much more than a period sociologist. Yates’s understanding of the folie a deux which we call marriage is profound. The reasons two people find each other attractive are buried in experiences of which neither is conscious much less rationally able to think about.

To call such attraction love is euphemistic. It may be, at best, an attempt to redeem or complete oneself that might eventually develop into love but only if the underlying reasons are resolved sufficiently and replaced. Subsequent decisions to bring children into such an indeterminate situation are likely based on equally fatuous thinking. It seems amazing therefore that the survival rates of marriage are as high as they are and that more of us are not functionally psychotic.

Yates raises the perennial if not eternal question of the nature and implications of commitment. I recall the distinction made when I was in the services between making a contribution and making a commitment: in one’s breakfast of bacon and eggs, the chicken has made a contribution; the pig is decisively committed. Does this anecdote express the reality or essential ethics of commitment? Are the reasons for making commitments, misguided or not, relevant to a continuation of a commitment? Do changed circumstances, including improved awareness of motives, abrogate the demands of previous commitments? Can 'Til death us do part' be anything more than irrational optimism and encouragement?

Personal sovereignty is analogous to national sovereignty. The implication would seem to be that treaties, contracts, agreements are never unconditional, never intended as eternal. There may be consequences of non-compliance with any of these, but acceptance of consequences is part of sovereignty - the share out of community property, loss of mutual friends, increased psychological and social tensions; and of course the fate of the next generation. The calculus of contract-termination may be complex but doesn't seem to imply any absolute moral constraints. On the other hand, can what we believe to be considered judgment be anything more than hapless struggle?

The alternative to withdrawal of commitment is what seems to fascinate Yates. We try to ‘work things out.’ In order to deny, or at least delay, the possibility of broken commitment, we tell each other stories. Stories about the past and how we arrived at the present could prove therapeutic by uncovering unconscious reasons and reasoning. But we tell stories about the future instead, about alternatives lives - in exotic locations, doing interesting work, with stimulating friends and colleagues. The stories promote hope but little else.

We hope these ‘ideals’ can compensate for any originating defects. But it’s likely that Yates is correct: these ideals simply reinforce the power of the neuroses already in play. A new script perhaps but the same denouement. There is no way to anticipate the psychological baggage we take on with our partner. The piper will be paid. Pain is inevitable. The issue is who pays and when. Unambiguously happy endings are not within the range of the possible.

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