The TV Addict 

Cinematical’s Eugene Novikov latest edition of his excellent “From Page to Screen” column highlights an author and a novel very near and dear to my heart. Bear with me, I’m about to venture into theLiteraryaddict territory for this post, but it’ll come back to film, I promise. Sort of.

Richard Yates is one of the best authors of the twentieth century, and you’ve probably never heard of him. In many ways he’s become something of an inside thing, known and cherished by any number of famous authors whom he has influenced and also those with an obsessive love for fine literature. Though he wrote many successful novels, his most accomplished one was “Revolutionary Road” which many (including myself) consider to be one of the great American novels. It remains one of my favorite literary works ever (as are Yates breathtaking collection of short stories), and again you’ve probably never heard of it.

Except maybe you have now that Justin Haythe has adapted the novel into a screenplay to be directed by Sam Mendes, and starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. If not, do please head on over to Cinematical to check out Nokikov’s excellent article which does a great job of highlighting why “Revolutionary Road” is such a phenomenal novel and why you should be buying/reading it right now. Hopefully the film (and Novikov’s article for that matter) will get Richard Yates some of the attention he so righteously deserved, but never got as was poignantly and heart-breakingly documented in Blake Bailey’s excellent biography, “A Tragic History: The Life and Works of Richard Yates.”

If not, well then if you made the effort to read any of Yates work at least you will be part of the inside thing I mentioned above. And who doesn’t like to be an insider?