Literature (and film) about middle class ennui

Reading L.J. Davis's "A Meaningful Life" right now, which has a number of similarities to another recent read, Revolutionary Road. Updike also comes to mind, although I've only read Rabbit Run and some short stories. I felt an urge to start a thread about this, but I'm not sure what shape it should take, much as the middle class protagonists of these novels feel an urge to free themselves but can't define what freedom would look like.

I love the Andre Dubus novella and short stories they collected for the We Don't Live Here Anymore movie tie-in. I think it might be out of print but there should be copies available online.

The Ice Storm (book and film)

The Exley Thread and also "Minor American Realists" - good recs here

Oh yeah, The Ice Storm is a good one.

One thing I was wondering is whether there's some connection between these novels and the popularization of Freud (Civilization and its Discontents, etc.). I mean is part of what fuels these novels just the idea that there is something inherently frustrating about the bargains we accept in order to live in civilization, and that our frustration and rage manifests itself as boredom, strange behavior, addictions, adultery, etc.?

Those themes pre-date Freud by a good way tho - Middlemarch, Madame Bovary, hell Don Quixote has a lot to say about strange behaviour brought on by the frustration of living in civilization. I think a lot of what fuels the novel full stop is the pain of living a bourgeois life.

There is maybe a shift in authorial attitudes towards the crushingness of respectability tho, from tragic inescapable fate to existential choice?

Hmm, yeah. Even the difference between Revolutionary Road and Meaningful Life is noticeable (what, like 1961 vs. 1971?). In the first, a more bohemian life seems like this remote possibility that you know its characters will never really act on (although it's probably more palpable than it would have been in 1951). In the second, the characters are quicker to actually try something else, though the wife is skeptical (I assume it doesn't exactly work out, but I haven't gotten that far). The Ice Storm, written from a very post-70s perspective, is partly about the futility of attempts to escape bourgeois life through sort of controlled anti-bourgeois activities within the bourgeois sphere.

Russian literature is full of this. Family Happiness, the Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Idiot. Noodle I think you have a good point. Just being able to sit down and write a novel would elicit this type of boredom. I read a lot of Douglas Coupland in high school which was probably my first encounter with the doom of a large privilaged class.

I think Gone with the Wind would fit with that shift, too. Although I don't know when/where you think the shift took place or whether people would consider Gone with the Wind to be literature. It was a pretty important part of my development at 13, honestly.

Oh you were talking about those specific books, nm. xp

No, not about those specific books. I think there's maybe a general shift in the attitudes of novelists, maybe at different times in different countries but still. Haven't read Gone with the Wind tbh but don't see why it wouldn't be part of that shift.

Maybe a class that was able to produce or read novels was always gonna be prey to certain kinds of ennui and stifle-ment, but the options open to that class change thru time.

The Ice Storm (book and film)

is the book good, btw? i never knew it was a moody novel until i saw it on the shelf a couple of days ago.

these probably fit, also. the latter usually gets lumped in with like franzen-antecedent family novels, but it fits:

http://filmsdefrance.com/1975_Jeanne_Dielman_23_Quai_du_Commerce_1080_Bruxelles.jpg

http://www.illiterarty.com/files/www.illiterarty.com/img/10/something_happened.jpg

A couple of not-widely-seen films from the early '70s: Desperate Characters and Loving. I think they fit, but I'd have to watch them again to be sure.

desperate characters is based on the paula fox novel, right?

yes, the novel def fits

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/105274.jpg

"Antoniennui," Sarris called it.

I keep thinking of Sagan and then dismissing it because all her characters are actually upper class. Damn.

there's a film of desperate characters? rad, gonna check it out

The Ice Storm (book and film)

is the book good, btw? i never knew it was a moody novel until i saw it on the shelf a couple of days ago.

I read it about 5 years ago and enjoyed it. I don't remember a whole lot about it, except for a couple of really good scenes. I think it would resonate with me much more now that I'm married and have moved to the suburbs.

I haven't seen the movie.

look to that display name

Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt."

Reading Desperate Characters now. Certainly some striking similarities to the LJ Davis, but I find it much richer and more beautifully written. I almost wanted to start a separate thread on "gentrification novels." I actually had this kind of deadpan ironic idea to make a book set called "The Brownstone Novels" and it could feature A Meaningful Life, Fortress of Solitude, Desperate Characters, idk something by Amy Sohn, and whatever else, and the spines would have the facades of brownstones on them, so they fit together like a little Brooklyn block. And of course every book would have an introduction by Jonathan Lethem, and there would also be an essay for the whole set by Jonathan Lethem, because Jonathan Lethem has some kind of lifetime contract that gives him right of first refusal on the introduction for any book about brooklyn or brownstones.