Malcolm King

Thirty years before the movie, I had read the book in my late teens, bought second-hand from a run-down bookshop on Kensington Road – a bargain hardcopy at $4.00

It was dog-eared with pencilled comments such as ‘yes’ and ‘that’s for sure’, as if it had been a guide to the human heart, a Lonely Planet for the soul, on the dangers of self-deception.

Like Frank in Revolutionary Road, I had been to Paris once and drank deeply of its streets and people. I lived the life of a cliché on the Rue St Germaine.

One spring morning, a little hung over, I saw the most beautiful woman in the world, walking confidently down a cobbled lane. She was dressed for work with a white leather handbag slung over one shoulder and a portfolio in the other hand.

I stopped to say hullo (having consciously overcome my shyness). I told her of her beauty.

She smiled and said in French

“You have come to Paris to find your dream.
You have found a woman, but not the dreamer”

I sold Revolutionary Road at a garage sale and told the buyer, a young woman, that she was buying two novels. One written by Richard Yates and the other, by a stranger who had continued the story in pencil.

I did not add my adventures in Paris as a young man. She put the book in her bag and said good bye.

Twenty years later I was browsing through a second hand bookshop in Newtown in Sydney, 1000 kilometres from Kensington Road, and there was my old copy of Revolutionary Road. It was in good shape.

The pencil comments were still there, although faded. And in a new hand, a stranger had added their own story in pen, making the changes indelible, proof of their testament. They told of a war against self-deception and how love unfulfilled suffocates.

I thought about buying it again, but decided against it. I’d read it.