My consideration of Faulkner and Updike together is not arbitrary. Despite the differences in their generations and background, there are many surprising similarities in their work—one of these is particularly relevant to the future of the American novel: each author produces work which shows the contrary pulls of structure and the absence of structure. By this I do not mean that each writes some books which are structured and some which are not; I mean that repeatedly one encounters in their novels structures adopted and abandoned, and finds therefore one of the great problems of the twentieth-century novel—the relationship between order and meaning on the one hand, and chaos and nonsense on the other, a struggle which is fought out not only through their themes but through the very texture of the works themselves. The consequences for the novel's traditional habit of expressing all its themes (even ones of formlessness) in a formal structure are interesting—as interesting as the future of its traditional techniques. (p. 73)
[Updike's] novels have for the most part enjoyed a wide and varied readership, and as far as the general public goes his name is well known. However, neither intellectually nor academically is he as well thought of as he might be. Though he does not lack academic attention, all too often he is seen as slick, rhapsodic, glossy and middlebrow. While I think those criticisms are not entirely groundless, and am of the opinion that he has not come close to fulfilling his real promise, there is a great deal to be said for him as a writer of what is both good and representational in the modern American novel. (p. 91)
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