Monday, July 3, 2017

Patrick Dacey's "The Outer Cape"

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