Patrick Dacey holds an MFA from Syracuse University. He has taught English at several universities in the U.S. and Mexico, and has worked as a reporter, landscaper, door-to-door salesman, and most recently on the overnight staff at a homeless shelter and detox center. His stories have been featured in The Paris Review, Zoetrope All-Story,Guernica, Bomb magazine, and Salt Hill among other publications. Dacey is the author of The Outer Cape and We've Already Gone This Far.Here Dacey dreamcasts an adaptation of The Outer Cape:
It’s been awesome and intimidating and somewhat embarrassing to have this book talked about as a contemporary version of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, but it’s also an honor, and though I’ve read the novel a number of times, I didn’t necessarily think of this as a similar book. I mention Revolutionary Road because here was a movie where the two actors—Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet—just didn’t seem to fit the way I read the Wheelers on the page. Ironically, Kathy Bates seemed to play the realtor exactly as I imagined her. I think it’s dangerous to imagine a novel on screen. A novel explores something much deeper than a screenplay ever can, and an actor can’t translate the source material without a talented screenwriter, director, producer, crew, etc. With that said, I’d love to see this novel be made into a film. I’d love Carey Mulligan to play Irene, the mother/wife/artist, whose life we get to experience over the course of four decades. I could see Joaquin Phoenix as Robert, the father/husband/builder/gambler. Robert is such a complex character, embodying all of what America has been over the last forty years. I think Joaquin Phoenix could pull that off. He seems to take a darkness to his characters that don’t come just from the material.Follow Patrick Dacey on Twitter.
The Page 69 Test: The Outer Cape.
--Marshal Zeringue