So my sweet, straight-talking wife says that I’m an arrogant bastard. She pointed out that every time I write up a little review of some old book or another I tend to knock it. I really think I’m a fair-and-balanced kind of guy, but one negative comment has a way of erasing all of the rest. As it is with the rest of life, you’ve got to be sure to sandwich the cold cuts with some fresh baked lovin’ from the oven.
Anyhow, she’s wrong (I’m totally awesome.) Sometimes I do find something that I like the whole way through. Top-to-bottom. Stem-to-stern. Or this case: wingtips-to-fedora. Revolutionary Road is such a book. And why do I like it so much? Because it’s all about me! See, I’m not really an arrogant bastard, I’m a selfish bastard. Of this I quibble not.
But before the love-fest cranks into overdrive let me get something out of the way…
They went and made a movie of the damned thing. Staring Leo, who looks like my old pal JR. (Jonathan Robert Mitchell, where are you?) And I was a little underwhelmed. It was slow. It plodded along, somehow failing to properly establish characters and motivations while leaving plenty of space for plaintive looks out of picture windows and numbingly redundant trips on commuter trains. I thought they’d do the opposite — steam up the affairs, hype the small threats of violence, blow something up, add a homoerotic tryst, maybe some aliens. But it just sort of hung there on the screen, pleasantly enough but somehow disappointing, much like the suburban lives of the Wheelers. (Ah-ha!)
(Cuing up Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Postive, returning to the book, delving into the text…)
I’m a suburban guy. I say this much as one would say: “I am a white guy”, or “I was born in Pittsburgh”, or “My mole-infested skin makes me a likely candidate for melanoma.” It’s just the way I am. Now, I’ve done my best to branch out and claim a spicier slice of life, but with kids and crap comes a tractor beam of responsibility that yanks you out to that balanced little patch of always-cut grass where you have space and safety within driving distance of shopping and shows, which offers a very comfortable life and a nearly bankable shot at a sensible return on your mid-sized mortgage . It’s the Bang-For-The-Buck thing to do! The smart money sez: “Sold!” So I bought.
I’ve climbed out from the cradle to mount the saddle of suburbia, just like Frank sliding into the shadow of papa Earl Wheeler. I’m back on a street that looks a lot like the street I grew up on in Stow (backyard adjoining that of Neel Kashkari.) But there is one big difference: South Dakota is my Paris. My wife took the job out here. I was lured with the promise of time, of space, of a chance to find the Thing I wanted to do.
Now, it’s not as clear-cut as that: I have too many obligations, responsibilities, and opportunities to lounge about dreaming. Plus there’s the fact that money must be made by me as well as she. (The PhD is not a big-dollar guarantee, but academia is lovely place to land.) But I do have a chance to breathe a little and leave the Paxil behind.
Of course, Paris didn’t work for the Wheelers. There was a problem with Frank, and I fear it’s the same with me. The trouble is that Frank didn’t have another game to play, just the promise that he’d be good at something sometime down the road. So eventually life handed him a game. It’s called marketing, and it really wasn’t so bad. But instead of finding peace in the present while exploring possible futures he just got grumbly. I am guilty of the same, but things are looking up.
My apologies for the navel-gazing, but there are too many tangles tethering Frank Wheeler to Grant Wentzel. But do stop by and join me in a toast: To life, to the possibilities, to Paris. Now that I’ve arrived, my book will have a different ending.
