Revolutionary Road

I'm reading Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. In the past, I've liked his books for one reason: they are depressing. They start depressing, give you a glimmer of hope in the middle, but by the end you are fully entrenched in the book's depressing qualities. A cheating spouse, a handicapped husband, a life different than you imagined. These themes or variations of these themes are all prevalent in Yates's short stories. The same is true for this novel. It is de-press-ing. I mean, Yates is an eloquent writer with an awesome use of prose and an outstanding ability to describe the subtle workings of people's minds, but what grabs me is his bleak outlook on life. For some reason, bleakness is what I search for in the books I read.

One minor character in the book, Shep Cambell, is particularly interesting to me. Yates describes Shep as a man from an upper-class home who always yearned to be a blue-collar man. Basically, Shep rejected his upbringing and romanticised blue collar life. He always hung out with the tough kids at school, was a humble infantry man who excelled in his field during the war, avoided going to an East-Coast private school and chose instead a technical college that was paid for by the GI bill, moved to Phoenix and worked as a middle class mechanical engineer, and finally married a Plain Jane. He understood the riches he came from, but sought what he thought was a simpler life as a working class man.

But, midway through his life he freaked out. He realized that he hated talking cars with his co-workers, detested the dusty housing development he lived in, and found his life boring. Instead he wished for what he was originally destined for. He wished he had never sought a working class life. His his life wasn't filled with the romantic ideals he imagined. Instead, he wished for the world of intellect and sensibility that he turned away from. He describes a brief section of the life he should have taken:

In the East, when college was over, you could put off going seriously to work until you'd spent a few years in a book-lined bachelor float, with intervals of European travel, and when you found your true vocation at last it was through a
process of informed and unhurried selection...

Uhh-ohhh. I'm leaving for the East Coast on Tuesday, and this is how I picture my life in NYC. Exactly like that, in fact. Reading through some obscure book by an even more obscure Victorian-era author as I pour coffee from my French press. Meeting friends for drinks in SOHO after laughing off the latest amateur exhibit at a trendy gallery. Working my way up the ladder from my journalist internship into a potential paid position overseas. The list goes on.

I know this image I have of my life in NYC isn't grounded in much reality. But it is my true romantic image of how my life will pan out while living in NYC. Because of this, two questions come to my mind:

1- Am I running away from what I truly am, just like Shep Cambell did? Will I
wake up one day stuck in a false life, surrounded by things that aren't really
me? All because I lived out my fantasy of what I thought I wanted in life? Will
I become a journalist, only to realize I had romanticised that profession?

2- If I am like Shep Sheppard, what am I running away from? My West-Coast
upbringing? A life destined to be a salesman or a cartographer like my parents?

Deep questions.

Ultimately, most of my body isn't concerned about this. Life is what life is. I know I liked working at the radio station. Not just thinking I liked the work, but actually liking it. And I am self aware enough to realize the difference between what I actually like and what I think I should like.

I would have been like Shep Cambell if I went to China. Wanting to go to China not because I loved China, but so I could tell people, "yeah, I lived in China for a year...."

Yet a small part of me is still scared that I am a Shep Cambell. I don't know why. I know I am going to NYC for the right reasons. And if at any time I don't like my life, fu*k it, I'm going to Puerto Rico. Still, Shep remains in my mind.