RICHARD YATES, Part I: Why Kate and Leo aren’t sufficient to cement a legacy
Richard Yates: “I wrote a good novel once; you probably never heard of it.”
With the print industry settling in to what appears to be a terminal slouch, it seems that making a lucrative living as a writer nowadays is possible only if A.) you are Malcolm Gladwell B.) you’re a Mormon with a vampire fetish or C.) you have a novel that is being made into a movie. The film industry has relied on literature for stories as long as film has been around; January alone saw the release of He’s Just Not That Into You, and Confessions of a Shopaholic, both of which were best-selling books. I use those as examples not because they are fine instances of literature, but because with the money involved in adaptation, combined with sales from the movie tie-in edition of the book, it’s likely that the respective authors are wealthy in general terms, and filthyfuckingrich in writers terms.
Similarly, yet not at all similarly, December of 2008 saw the release of Revolutionary Road, a film based off of Richard Yates’ 1961 debut novel of the same name. Unlike the aforementioned authors, this did not make Yates rich, mainly because he died in 1992 in relative obscurity; none of his novels were best-sellers, although he was considered a contemporary master by the likes of Tennessee Williams, Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, and Kurt Vonnegut, and he later went on to hold teaching positions at some of the most prestigious writing programs in the country, such as Iowa, Boston, and USC. Revolutionary Road was nominated for the National Book Award alongside Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 and Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. His unfussy style was descendent from Hemingway, and he in turn went on to be a big influence on Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Andre Dubus. However, despite the fact that he was a darling of the literati during his prime, Yates’ work never sold particularly well and he went out of print entirely until Stewart O’Nan drew attention to the lacking in 1999 in an article entitled “The Lost World of Richard Yates: How the great writer of the Age of Anxiety disappeared from print.”
Now, thanks to the film, Richard Yates has his first best-seller, albeit it’s the paperback version with Kate and Leo on the cover. A hardcover reprint is yet to be issued, although a first edition is up for grabs on eBay for $1,500. Sadly, Yates isn’t around to see it. Writing never kept him rich, and he resented the fact; in an introduction to the Everyman’s Library edition of a Yates collection, Richard Price recalls how Yates, his then-professor, once said to him “I wrote a good novel once, you probably never heard of it,” and in response to Price’s news of an offer on his book, his advice was, “Just make sure the bastards pay you through the nose.”
The story of Revolutionary Road follows April and Frank Wheeler, a middle-class couple living in the suburbs of Connecticut who are eventually consumed by their own expectations of extraordinary lives. The film has done moderately well at the box office, grossing over $19 million to date, and does an admirable job of sticking to the novel; dialogue is extracted straight from the text, and the smallest details, down to the apron April wears on Frank’s birthday, are faithfully represented. I will resist commenting on how the movie is still wildly insufficient in capturing the remarkable interiority of Yates’ novel in the way that movie adaptations almost always fall short, and instead address how the film is a solid adaptation that came out in prime Oscar season with the Oscar all-star team and was still snubbed. Winslet and DiCaprio have eight Oscar nods between them, director Sam Mendes, had, up until this point, a perfect 3/3 Oscar nomination record for Best Director, and cinematographer Richard Deakins has shot most films worth seeing in the last decade. The film had all the makings of greatness, but even still, Revolutionary Road failed to garner any major Oscar nominations besides Michael Shannon for Best Supporting Actor in his performance as the insane son of the Wheelers’ realtor. In the end, it’s the Academy that calls the shots, and they’re the ones that nominated Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button over DiCaprio’s harrowing portrayal of Frank Wheeler, and it’s anyone’s guess as to why.
Aside from my difference of opinion with the Academy, my advocacy of the film is not universal in the critical realm, either; David Denby’s review in the New Yorker doesn’t suggest that DiCaprio was necessarily snubbed—he “gets the externals right, but he seems a little afraid of revealing the depths of Frank’s shallowness”. What is clear in his article on the major nominations, however, is that a spot was needlessly taken up by Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button, where “the central drama in the picture turns out to be Brad Pitt’s makeup…[his] modesty when he comes into his own handsome flesh is becoming, yet his eyes are unforgivably blank.”
My point is not to decry the Academy because I feel personally insulted by Revolutionary Road getting the shaft, but because a misnomination such as Pitt over a worthier DiCaprio may serve as a detriment to the continuation of Yates’ literary presence. Cormac McCarthy became a household name, not after The Road (dear God) won the Pulitzer, but after No Country for Old Men won Best Picture at the Oscars last year. And even if McCarthy will be best remembered for his worst book, Yates, who is a much more delicate writer, albeit less dramatic, may not survive in American minds past this Sunday, when the title of his novel gets mentioned briefly in conjunction with Michael Shannon, who will rightfully lose to Heath Ledger, if for no other reason than the characters portrayed are so similar. To put it plainly: maybe I’m a pessimist, but with a moderately grossing film that’s not nominated for Best Picture, recent book sales of Revolutionary Road (the best the novel has ever seen) are sure to decline fatally in March, after the honeymoon is over. And I can’t shake the feeling that Revolutionary Road and Richard Yates are in danger of fading into obscurity. Again. Or can I?
NEXT UP: How, despite me being a downer, Yates’ voice has a shot at being heard through the years, through the mouth of Don Draper.
By Deena Drewis
February 18th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I just pirated me some Rev Road and I don’t feel as bad because Yates is no longer alive. Glad Joe did not take you, D!
February 25th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Another completely useless wannabee Slate.com counterpoint.
I don’t know where to begin in dressing this down. Ok, here: your understanding of Cormac McCarthy’s relationship to literary fame—however unclear such a concept is left by your bewilderingly ignorant article—is completely incorrect. McCarthy had already had a filmic adaption *starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz* and a National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses when OPRAH plucked him from semi-obscurity (or at least a certainly level of notoriety among New York Times-reading bohos) when she picked him to go on our TV show. That TV appearance was the McCarthy’s only possible entry to general consciousness, certainly not the Oscars. Guarantee: anyone who didn’t know who Cormac McCarthy was before the Oscar telecast was certainly NOT familiar with him after the show was over. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that was him on stage accepting the statue for Best Picture. So why do you think a potential Best Picture nod was going to do ANYTHING for the ‘legacy’ of Richard Yates beyond what O’Nan’s article and the movie’s being made had already accomplished — namely, an Everyman edition and a review in just about every major book-reviewing general interest magazine out there?
February 25th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Book sales, Buster, book sales. Oscar nominations keep the name in the mainstream for longer and helps books retain that special “Seen the movie? Read the book!” spot at Borders for a few more weeks. The Reader will likely continue to outsell Revolutionary Road, not because it’s a better book, but because it won Best Actress and was nominated for Best Picture.
To address your Cormac McCarthy issue: I did indeed see “All the Pretty Horses” and am aware that he was nominated for a National Book Award. The movie didn’t go over well, despite some big names in the cast, so it didn’t do too much for expanding his readership. And to say that an appearance on Oprah was his “only possible entry to public consciousness” is, I think, putting too much importance on Oprah. Don’t get me wrong; she’s fantastic. But while an Oprah mention has tremendous monetary benefits-she does indeed have an influence over book sales-having the Cohen brothers use your novel for one of their films that ends up being nominated for a handful of major Oscars garners, I think, more credibility amongst an audience that may not watch Oprah. I’m not saying Oprah has bad taste, but sometimes she (or her staff, rather) has really bad taste, and I for one would be more likely to take a recommendation from the Cohens. That is beside the point, though. It is true that even after the they mentioned McCarthy’s name a lot and the editors cut to him during the acceptance speech that most people still wouldn’t be able to pick him out on the street, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that everyone who didn’t know who he was prior to the Oscars are “certainly NOT familiar” with him now. My guess is that people are able to name the author of No Country for Old Men quicker than All the Pretty Horses even though they’re written by the same man, if only because the former was mentioned all over the place last year, which translated in to book sales. So in short, I suppose my assertion that an Oscar nod for Revolutionary Road would do “ANYTHING” for the Yates legacy really comes down to drawing out those book sales, you feels?
February 26th, 2009 at 6:04 am
I keep hoping Brent Newland is going to get in on this!
Thanks for responding Deena, but I think our disagreement over sales/Oprah/Oscar influences exposes the fact that your article in no way defines what ‘legacy’ is or how it should be measured. It seemed to me that you were implying that an Oscar nomination (or win) can add a lot of sales for book beyond the simple fact of a film adaptation being made. Which is just not the case.
Re: Oprah and Cormac McCarthy, you should know that the paperback version of The Road (tying in to a movie that has not even come out yet!) has a MUCH higher Amazon.com sales rank than the paperback version of No Country for Old Man, even with its bevvy of Oscars. Slumdog Millionaire was adapted from a novel too. Pop quiz: who wrote Slumdog Millionaire?
So don’t underestimate Oprah. She is the most important motivator in book publishing, period. It goes without saying that were Oprah to choose Revolutionary Road as a book club pick, its ‘legacy’ (no matter that we still don’t know what you mean by ‘legacy’) would be cemented. (The Reader, btw, was an Oprah pick back in 1999).
Another important premise in your article that I think was fundamentally flawed, however, is that Revolutionary Road as a book was somehow in danger of becoming forgotten, even before the movie was made, even before Stewart O’Nan wrote his article, and that it is one again in danger of being forgotten all because Kate Winslet accepted the statue for The Reader instead of Revolutionary Road. Richard Yates may have been broke, but his book always had a cult following, particularly among writers, which is a pretty damn enviable position relative to history, I think. Whether a certain work of literature will be read or discussed decades down the line is pretty much an impossible thing to predict, and sales, Oprah, and the Oscars may make a book feel important right now but as time marches on they quickly come to mean diddly squat. I mean, if eighty years ago you were to be a nationally recognized author, win a Pulitzer, and have Orson Welles adapt one of your novels, you would think your legacy to be in pretty good shape, right? Well, ever heard of Booth Tarkington? Go to your local Barnes and Noble and say, please take me to your Booth Tarkington section and see what happens. The salespeople will be too ignorant even to laugh at you.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
diid someone call me
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
no you dont understand im not brent newland <inot him
hey yall could we talk about something else this is bringing back bad memories of my mom and dad
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
also im worries that all these words might be tldr as f**ck and im concern about the younger audience (the kids)