RICHARD YATES, Part II: Don Draper lives on Revolutionary Road

If it wasn’t obvious, readers should note that we here at Flatmancrooked love the TV series Mad Men like it’s our job, so much so that we literally made it our job. “Don Draper” is an official title on our masthead. I bring this up not to discuss what a dreamboat Jon Hamm is, or how much you want to punch Pete Campbell in the face, or how you’d probably sleep with Roger Sterling even though he’s a dirty old man, but because in part, Mad Men is Revolutionary Road’s accidental baby. Matthew Weiner, the creator of the show, hadn’t read the novel prior to writing the pilot, but the folks at AMC gave him a copy before the series began production. Consider the following quote from his interview in Variety:

“If I had read this book before I wrote the show, I never would have written the show. I would not compete with that. I don’t have the balls. It was so much exactly what I wanted to do, and the guy was there. And it’s very internal. In fact, I’m looking forward to seeing the movie. I don’t know how they’re going to do it. As a writer, I’m curious to see how they did it.”

Lucky for us, then, that Weiner got a hold of the book after he had his story set; otherwise, our editorial meetings would revolve around discussions of publishing and past episodes of The Wire only, and that shit is stressful. The more relevant point, though, is Weiner’s overwhelming respect for the novel now, as he continues to write the show. Considering how Weiner believes that “the guy”—Weiner’s parallel protagonist, Don Draper—“was there” in Revolutionary Road in the form of Frank Wheeler, it is logical to assume that Yates will provide future inspiration for Mad Men. In fact, the references may already be there. Betty Draper’s unwanted pregnancy in Season Two seems to mirror, or at least reference, April Wheeler’s struggle in Revolutionary Road; April has the tube and hand pump, and Betty has her horse.

Acknowledging these parallels between the Drapers and the Wheelers, I hope, will lead Mad Men fans to this neglected American master. As Richard Ford once said, Yates existed only as “a sort of cultural-literary secret handshake among devotees.” Now, maybe, he will become a known and valued commodity. Along with Cheever, Yates is one of the strongest voices to chronicle the Age of Anxiety, and now, because of Matthew Weiner, and, ironically, to a lesser extent, Sam Mendes (the director of Revolutionary Road), the evidence that Yates exists has been disinterred.

But we’re still left with the question: How was Matthew Weiner able to reincarnate Yates, when Kate, Leo, and Sam Mendes, despite a good effort and nice photography, failed? The answer, which might be an indirect—or at least epoch-specific—criticism of Yates, is that the novel Revolutionary Road lacks a certain optimism that may be crucial to its positive critical reception in 2009. Frank and April fail to get out of their ruts, in the book and in the film. But in Mad Men, Don and Betty Draper both, consequences be damned, find ways to triumph, if briefly. Frank couldn’t leave for Paris, but Don disappears in California and comes home a different man. Both Betty and April have one-night stands. But whereas the experience catalyzes April’s despair, it seems to empower Betty. The Drapers’ behavior may reflect Weiner’s retrospective imagination. He was not an adult in 1963, so even if he can empathize with a woman handling an unwanted pregnancy forty years ago, Yates may have more accurately captured the authentic emotion. What makes Revolutionary Road less palatable than Mad Men, perhaps, and what may have ruined its Oscar chances, is that we know the repression of the 50s and 60s turns into liberation before the 70s. Mad Men, therefore, indexes the solution. Revolutionary Road is still mired in the problem. That doesn’t make the novel a lesser piece of art, but it handicaps a filmic adaptation released in 2008, when a job and a house in the suburbs doesn’t seem so awful.

Whether or not Mad Men is the catharsis of Revolutionary Road’s traumas, Matthew Weiner has thrown a lifeline to the forgotten genius of Richard Yates, and will apparently continue to do so long after Mendes’ film goes to DVD and stops getting rented. If Revolutionary Road (the novel, that is) were to go out of print again, it’d be tragic, so let’s ensure it doesn’t. The very thought of its disappearance makes me itch for a martini, and if there’s one thing the novel (and the show it retroactively inspired) both effortlessly achieve, it’s making you feel less bad about drinking too much. Thank goodness for Don Draper, indeed.

Read Part I

By Deena Drewis