my good god, it's supposed to be two in the morning according to my east-coast internal clock and I'm still up and I'm blogging, what is going on. basically I so lost myself in training all week that I have been itching to write, I even proofread some stuff of mine on the airplane. it was funny because the guy next to me was proofreading as well, but he started earlier, so it kind of looked like I was just aping him. except he was proofreading some boring law school stuff.
airplanes have been making me kind of emotional the last few times I've taken them, it's kind of embarrassing; I get teary and stuff. I guess it has to do with the immensity of the earth and the relatively small size of our lives, or something typical like that. maybe it has to do with a deep-seated love for travel. I found myself being fascinated by the actual machine, the airplane, in a way that I normally am not, but the fact that it can just go really fast and then lift off the ground seemed pretty amazing this time.
I sound like a hilbilly moron, I'm sorry. I finished reading revolutionary road on the plane and was duly astounded. I really want to talk about it with someone but I don't know anyone else who's even heard of it. the book basically set out a premise: here's a guy, frank wheeler, who is maybe a bit smarter than most people, and lives in a pretty dull suburban town. he knows he's capable of doing more in life and complains a lot that the culture around him is really stupid. so, there are three things frank could do: he could prove he's actually worth more, and leave, and do something amazing somewhere else. or, he could stay, just out of habit, and complain for years until he retires. third, he could stay and find something in his environment that he likes and that stimulates him. (yates didn't put it that way, as three choices, that was just something I worked out.)
there's a blurb on the book that compares revolutionary road to gatsby; I didn't connect with frank in the same way I did with gatsby, but I did definitely connect. mostly it had to do with yates' seemingly transparent way of writing, the way he kept showing a character's imagining of a situation and then the way it actually happened. frank wheeler lived in a world of fantasies, was basically what the book showed us. there were things that yates didn't show us, of course, but when you look at all the characters and their motivations there aren't any holes. it seems to make sense.
which is why it's probably even stronger than a really similar story, american beauty. as much as I was obsessed with that movie, I began to feel that the characters were just "types" invented to prove symbolic points; revolutionary road feels much more grounded. it actually felt like a really classic "edifying" book, that teaches you something about yourself and your life by the time you're done reading it.
I don't know what to say about new york. I was more interested in just watching new yorkers than the city itself. I saw lots of rich people driving around in really nice cars and thought, these people live in the same country as me. this is all happening in real time, not in my imagining of what a rich person in new york city is like. I have been realizing lately that I get really wrapped up in imagining a random person's daily life.
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