My favorite writer is called Richard Yates . Her novels are the most famous and beautiful Revolutionary Road (from which it was derived the eponymous film directed by Sam Mendes ) and Easter Parade .
Se però dovessi consigliare un libro che riesca a descrivere R. Yates al 100%, suggerirei Cold Spring Harbor , il suo ultimo romanzo (1984), pubblicato appena qualche giorno fa da Minimum fax (che ha i diritti per la traduzione italiana di tutte le sue opere).
In Cold Spring Harbor, infatti, si possono ritrovare con chiarezza tutte le tematiche care a Yates:
- la credele e lucida descrizione di una middle-class decadente e attenta alle convenzioni, sognante e mai realizzata, illusa e lucidamente disperata;
- una coppia di giovani sposi alle prese con speranze vaghe e con un presente che non è mai quel that their desire;
- the painful realization that their aspirations are also, like reality itself, nothing but crock that people are built to move forward in spite of everything;
- 's lack of communication between the parties : asti's outstanding, suppressed anxieties and thoughts never expressed, contempt and shame;
- the theme of madness , unique and utterly paradoxical possibility, in view yatesiana , to extricate herself out of the paucity of a stupid society, albeit at the price of self-enforced imprisonment.
Well, yes, Richard Yates is not a comforting writer. But this is where lies his greatness: the sincerity in pushing the pedal even if it be extreme, fierce, sarcastic, mocking, and in so becoming a merciless mirror the pages of his books with which the reader is inevitably forced to make accounts.
Although it is true that the world belongs to America Yates provincial, oppressive and non-inclusive, so his characters can transcend any geographical or temporal contextualization, and making universal archetypes. They incorporate a constant effort to progress (but often only social existence), but also the secret knowledge that those same fruitless attempts they used are so heavily, in spite of everything and everyone, the unique ways to deal with earthquake victims and a slippery present.
After all, the power of Yates's all here: tackling head on the issue of always ambiguissima pursuit of happiness (with results diametrically opposed to those Muccino, note).
