John Updike Summary

Biography EssayA reader would be hard pressed to name a contemporary author other than John Updike who is more in tune with the way most Americans live. Unconcerned with apocalypse in his fiction, und... Read more

"A reader would be hard pressed to name a contemporary author other than John Updike whose work is more in tune with the way most Americans live," wrote Donald J. Greiner in Dictionary of Literary Bio... Read more

John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Following graduation (summa cum laude) in 1954 from Harvard University, where he was an English major and editor of the Harvard Lampoon, he studied f... Read more

While his stature as a short-story writer may be perpetually overshadowed by the novelistic achievements of the Rabbit tetralogy--Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Ra... Read more

In the following essay, Epstein provides an overview of Updike's literary career, fiction, and critical assessment. According to Epstein, Updike's fiction is undermined by the author�... Read more

In the following review, Pollitt strongly criticizes Updike's portrayal of women and contemporary gender stereotypes in The Witches of Eastwick. After one of my male friends praised The Witches... Read more

In the following review, Abbey gives a laudatory appraisal of Roger's Version. A professor of theology named Roger Lambert, subsiding comfortably into middle age, is aroused from his dogmatic s... Read more

In the following review, Donoghue offers a positive assessment of Self-Consciousness. When a memoir by a writer as well known as John Updike appears, it inevitably arouses curiosity. But this is not a... Read more

In the following essay, Fleischauer examines the language and syntax of Updike's prose, particularly aspects of irony, symbolism, and literary detachment evoked in his use of descriptive vocabu... Read more

In the following review, Searles offers a positive assessment of Rabbit at Rest. For sheer output and versatility, few writers can touch John Updike. Since his 1958 debut he has given us a play, four ... Read more

In the following essay, Leckie examines the social, literary, and philosophical significance of marriage and infidelity as presented in Marry Me. [F]iction is also a mode of spying; we read it as we l... Read more

In the following review, Amis offers a positive assessment of Odd Jobs. We often think in terms of literary pairs, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, etc. But what about literary opposites? Jorge Luis Bor... Read more

In the following review, Bayley offers a tempered evaluation of Brazil. “The hazards of the wilderness,” writes Bayley, “do not suit the genius of suburban America.” In the... Read more

In the following review, Barnes offers a positive assessment of In the Beauty of the Lilies. Domestic and epic, intimiste and magisterial, In the Beauty of the Lilies begins with a sly misdirection. D... Read more

In the following review, Atwood offers praise for Toward the End of Time. Toward the End of Time is John Updike's 47th book, and it is deplorably good. If only he would write a flagrant bomb! T... Read more

In the following review, Boyers gives an unfavorable assessment of Toward the End of Time. John Updike's new novel [, Toward the End of Time,] is set in the year 2020, not long after a brief bu... Read more

Critical Essay by Victor Strandberg Back in the second decade of this century, Herman Hesse remarked that "Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Towers "The Coup" is a comedy of racial and cultural incongruities; but whereas Waugh and Theroux use a white protagonist … to clear a path for us into th... Read more

Critical Essay by Alastair Reid Kush, an imagined sub-Saharan country in Africa, a poor peanut-producing territory once ruled by the French under the name of Noire, is the improbable setting for John ... Read more

Critical Essay by Gene Lyons The Coup attracted my interest because of its subject matter. Writing about the Sahel, I thought, might help transform the muffled glories of Updike's ornate prose ... Read more

Critical Essay by Paul Theroux So many of John Updike's characters seem to inhabit the suburbs of Splitsville and to toy with infidelity as soon as the shower presents are unwrapped that one th... Read more

Critical Essay by David Evanier At least five out of the 23 stories [in Problems and Other Stories] rivet: "Transaction," "The Egg Race," "Separating," ... Read more

Critical Essay by Margaret Drabble After the glittering and extravagant landscapes of The Coup, we return in [Problems and Other Stories] to more familiar domestic terrain—gas stations in Nevad... Read more

Critical Essay by Anatole Broyard [In Problems and Other Stories] divorce is like a more profound kind of marriage. The relationship is purified by distance, ennobled by nostalgia. It becomes a traged... Read more

Critical Essay by Doris Grumbach Seventeen of the stories in [Problems and Other Stories] first appeared in The New Yorker, and they have upon them the white, bloodless thumbmark of that publication. ... Read more

Critical Essay by Martha Heimberg Compelling and revealing and brought off with superb control of language and theme, [Problems and Other Stories] confirms Updike's growing position as the fore... Read more

Critical Essay by Donald J. Greiner When Updike publishes a novel or a collection of tales, most major journals and many general readers respond. Such is not the case with his poetry. Only literary sp... Read more

Critical Essay by Miles Donald My consideration of Faulkner and Updike together is not arbitrary. Despite the differences in their generations and background, there are many surprising similarities in... Read more

The two stories, "A and P", and "Where are you going, where have you been"" are very similar in the perspective that they are coming of age stories. While Oates and Updike write from different points ... Read more