The new issue of Philosophy Now magazine (Sept./Oct. 09) is available. The issue is dedicated to existentialism, and in it you’ll find my review of Revolutionary Road, the film, mostly, but also Richard Yates’ incredible novel, which I couldn’t resist talking about as well.
I’ve copied in the first few paragraphs here, and I encourage you to buy the magazine. There are a number of terrific articles for all of us parlor existentialists to enjoy. It’s a great issue.
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Nick DiChario asks if it’s existential, or just depressing.
All April Wheeler wants is for her husband Frank to shut up. Chances are you’ve felt a similar frustration. You suffer a setback in life – not your run-of-the-mill disappointment, but a game-changer, one of those epic collapses that forces you to take a long, hard look at who you are and what it means to be alive in a world that has turned against you; a moment that makes you reassess a life-long dream and decide whether it’s time to give up on it for good – and you just need a little time and space to think it through.
This is exactly where April is in the opening scene of Revolutionary Road, the film based on Richard Yates’ classic 1961 existential novel. April always wanted to be an actress, and she went to acting school before she met Frank. When she joined the local production of The Petrified Forest, it was mostly to remind herself of her former life, to rediscover the flame that once burned brightly inside her. Connecticut isn’t exactly Broadway, but for a woman of thirty-something, mother of two, opening night at the high school was a big deal. If she had performed admirably – if she had gotten a standing ovation, or even a sincere round of applause – it might have been enough to justify her existence.
But she was awful – so awful that she knew she would never act again, and most likely had no talent to begin with. Although this scene is passed over quickly in the film, Yates gives it a good measure of attention in his novel. It is an important moment, a moment in April’s life when desire runs hard up against truth and comes out the worst for it. Frank does his best to console her, make her feel better about her failure; but all she really wants him to do is shut the hell up so she can think, put it all in perspective and rearrange her psyche to cope with the death of her dream. Not too much to ask for – but Frank is incapable of giving it. During the ride home the couple argue violently, each saying things they know will deeply hurt the other. Welcome to the lives of Frank and April Wheeler.
Friend and fellow writer Chadwick Ginther loaned me his copy of Victor Pelevin’s The Life of Insects. We’d been chatting about the author, and I’d mentioned that Pelevin was one of those writers I’d recently heard a lot about but hadn’t had a chance to read. I knew a little of Pelevin, that he was a Russian author who liked to mess outside the lines of realism and mix philosophy and pop culture and other weirdness into his stories. Basically, just the kind of stuff I love. Even though I was expecting a strange bit of literary smoke, it took me awhile to get into the book. Were the visiting American and his two Russian acquaintances really mosquitoes? Who (or what) was Marina? A flying ant? And what could possibly be running through the head of a young dung beetle other than his black sphere? I soon discovered that the trick to mastering this book was to simply give in to it and let the prose and the odd bits of philosophical observations carry me into the lives and stories of the people-insects. Once I realized that Pelevin’s characters were not humans transforming into insects (or vice versa) but they were both humans and insects at the same time, living in both worlds, this one and that one, I stopped worrying about the details and simply became one with the music he was playing. Take, for example, this completely bizarre love scene between Sam and Natasha:
