The first time I read RR, I was 23 years old--and while I wasn’t a father of two who was stuck in a completely wrong marriage, I nonetheless felt a profound connection to him. This quote sums it up best: “He could even be grateful in a sense that he had no particular area of interest: in avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations” (page 22). Of course, I have a goal but my inability to take the plunge made my early 20s as useless as if I hadn’t felt even a tiny flicker of that urge. Temping at offices, coasting along like a blade of grass in a still pond, my memories of myself in my 20s is of a shamefully deluded child, drinking and talking, drinking and talking, drinking and talking.
And when I wasn’t talking, I was stuck in my own mind, crafting fantasies and daydreams that excused my passive behavior and allowed me to convince myself that I was still somehow the person I wanted to be. It was the only way I could accept myself. Reading RR helped to see myself for who I really was, and has inspired me to get off my ass and actually do something with my life...............MT
2 comments:
Excuse the ignorance, but who is RR and who is MT. Since when have you started reading books? On second thoughts, it the second Q dosen't matter as I'm glad that you have...
RR - Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
MT - Mike Tully, the one who wrote this
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