Revolutionary Road is American author Richard Yates's debut novel about 1950s suburban life on the East Coast. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962, along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer. When 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."[4] In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.[5]
When DeWitt Henry and Geoffrey Clark interviewed Yates for the Winter 1972 issue of literary journal 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.[6]
A film adaptation of the book, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Kathy Bates, directed by Sam Mendes, and written by Justin Haythe, was released in 2008.
