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Prof.dr.Rodica MihailaCourse 1_3American Literature since 19452nd Year American Studies, 3rd YearSpring Semester 2012

JOHN UPDIKE (1932- 2009)

The Centaurus (1963) has an epigraph from Karl Barth: Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man, earth the creation conceivable to him.He himself is the creature on the boundary between heaven and earth.(Gray 614) Updike once said I feel tobe a person is to be in a situation of tensionA truly adjusted person is not a person at all.

Updike= a literary institution (almost 60 volumes: novels, short stories, poetry, essays, memoirs, literary and art criticism, journalism)

A master of American style / of post war realism2 Pulitzer Prizes; many other awards except Nobel

Biography:-born in Pennsylvania Harvard worked for the New YorkerBorn in a small, farming town of Shillington, Pennsylvania reflected in some ofhis stories

Family - father: high school mathematic teacher struggled to support a large family - mother: ambitious, writerHis first short story at the age of 8.Honor student in schoolEntered Harvard (selected by his mother - wanted him a writer); graduated fromHarvard summa cum laude in 19541954 - sold his first short story to the New Yorker (established his reputation as a writer of short fiction in the 1950s and 1960s)1 year on a fellowship studying art in England (whised to be graphic artist)1955 - job as a staff writer on the New Yorker

regarded as "The Brillant Young Writer" ? poems, sketches, essays, revie

ws1957 - left the N.Y. moved to Ipswich, Mass. and became an independent writer.1958 - 1st book: The Carpentiere and the Hen (poems)1959 - 1st novel: The Poorhouse Fair

1st collection of short stories: The Same Doorbecame one of the most prolific writers in modern Am. literature (11 novels, articles &

reviews, an opera libretto, a play, short stories, 4 books of poems)1963 - The Centaur? National Book Award

more problematic, greater artistic significance highly symbolic & allusive novel

drew heavily on classical mythpartly an evocation of his father, partly a retelling in modern terms of the myth of Chiron, the tutor of Achilles. the myth of Prometheus & Chiron (a centaur whowas a teacher of

Achilles) - (schoolteacher Caldwell and his son)As Chiron yields his immortality to expiate the mis of Prometheus, so does Caldwell accept death as a sacrifice to his artist son.- various levels mythic

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- realistic - allegorical - literal

1968 - Couples? won widespread recognition; a novel of suburban life; commercial

success; adulteries1978 - The Coup? a dark comedy set in modern Africa. It reports the reminiscences of a one-time dictator of a newly emerged African nationMost frequently Updike has set his fiction in small-town America, villages & prosperous suburbia - a landscape

The Rabbit SeriesSeria Rabbit each book renders the sense of an era.Rabbit Run (1960) sexual frankness (brought him to attention)- the study of a mediocre young man of 26, Harry Angstrom (wife: Janice; son: Nelson) whose former excellence on the basketball court has imprisoned his life &destroyed his capacity to accept the unglamorous life into which he had drifted. An aimless, disaffected young husband. A former high school basketball champion, Harry wants to discover a fate for himself (spiritual quest in a waste land) -wife: Janice deserts her for Ruth -son Nelson (3)Rabbit Redux (1971) Rabbit is 36. Father in law owner of an automobile sales agency ; caught up in the social turmoil of the 60s; he befriends 2 radicals(Skitter- black Vietnam vet; Jill) a young man & a woman who is accidentally ki

lled. Updike exposed his old anti-hero to the radicalism and sexual freedom of the youth movement of the 1960s. Vietnam war, the black revolution. A small Pennsylvania town counter culture. Still without a clear purpose.Rabbit is Rich (1981)- National Book Award & Pulitzer Prize. Rabbit middle-aged,well-to-do. Inherited the father in laws business1979 Ten years after Rabbit Redux Harry Angstrom has come to enjoy considerableprosperity as Chief Sale Representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota Agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania. Member of the local county club. Problems with Nelson. Hefeels in good shape until his son Nelson returns from the West.America of 1979 double-digit inflation coincides with a deflation of national confidence.Rabbit at Rest (1990) Angstroms reconciliation with life and inadvertent death against the backdrop of the 1980s. criza si sfirsitul in soc. de tranzitie a anilo

r 80. Neoconservatorism.

Bech books writers, critics--Bech: A Book (1970)--Bech is Back (1982)--Bech at Bay A quasi Novel (1998)

The Witches of Eastwick (1984) + The Widows of Eastwick (2008)Roger's Vision 19861986 PoemsBrazil (1994)In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996)Still Looking: Essays on American Art (2005)

the paperback Three Trips: The Short-Story Writer as Tourist (2005)Terrorist novel (June 2006)

Characteristics of his artNovelists of manners:John Cheever (1912-1982), ex.: Falconer (1977) autobiography

Salinger- suburban settings- fictional locales on the eastern seacoast.neorealist fiction

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Updike often seen as the most realistic of all the remarkable new novelists who emerged in the generation just after the war- His remarkable stylistic precision + painterly aesthetic effects- His realism has the quality he identifies in his writer-hero Henry Bech, a concern with a tightness perhaps equivalent to the terribly tight knit of reality.(Columbia Literary History of the U.S. p. 1138)-shares the ironic temper & lexical ability of Nabokov & Barth-sterile in an odd way. Astonishing in imagery- chooses subtle middle-class characters (of their day) . Updike= the most significant transcriber or creator rather of middlenessin American writing since W.D.Howells- a satirist and a celebrator of our social & domestic conditions NORTON p. 2173- novelist of manners- major themes (in forms of some mythic resonance): love, death, freedom, the burden of redemption in the contemporary novel- some dread in his work: fear of chaos & waste a sense of ones own emptiness ? the dread remains locked in the detail.

His America- a commonplace world of middle-and lower-class materialism- a land of sterile, empty, trivial lives centered on TV, movies, and fan mags for the riff raff

- America's inhabitants are trapped in installment, buying, stomachs are bloatedwith franchised food, their minds are dulled by the soaps and by the tablois sold at checkout standsHis characters- often search for spiritual and religious meaning in life- they discover that in their worlds sentimental love is a trap and a deceit; happiness is brief; life is as dull as their prepackaged meals.Critics- named him the " sweet lonesome singer of Protestant mediocrity- complains that- he overburdens his prose by straining for elegance - his work is suffered with nostalgic ("mired in therealm of childhood")- too often his characters are predictably autobiographical:

-the puzzled young man -the loyal but not -too-bright girlfriend

-the strong, older woman animated by misplaced

enthusiasmHis strength lies in:- elegant prose, filled with balanced rhythmic sentences- his concern with the "business of memory" genetics of families (see interview)- his exploration of private feeling- his writing of clothes, houses, cars, parents & girlfriends ?

a means of portraying an America in all its uglinessHarry Angstrom depiction of the ebbs & flows of his existence across four decades of Am. social & political history (descriere p. 103 outline)-One of the finest short story writers

- a tender, delicately descriptive style- a sharp eye for the seemingly insignificant moments in which character

isrevealed and later determined.

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See bibliography next pageBibliography

Rabbit novels (1960) Rabbit, Run (1971) Rabbit Redux (1981) Rabbit Is Rich (1990) Rabbit At Rest (2001) Rabbit Remembered (a novella within the collection Licks of Love)Bech books (1970) Bech, a Book (1982) Bech Is Back (1998) Bech at BayBuchanan books (1974) Buchanan Dying (a play) (1992) Memories of the Ford Administration (a novel)Eastwick books (1984) The Witches of Eastwick (2008) The Widows of EastwickOther novels (1959) The Poorhouse Fair (1963) The Centaur (1965) Of the Farm

(1968) Couples (1975) A Month of Sundays (1977) Marry Me (1978) The Coup (1986) Roger's Version (1988) S. (1994) Brazil (1996) In the Beauty of the Lilies (1997) Toward the End of Time (2000) Gertrude and Claudius (2002) Seek My Face (2004) Villages (2006) Terrorist

Short Story Collections (1959) The Same Door (1961) A & P (1962) Pigeon Feathers (1964) Olinger Stories (a selection) (1966) The Music School (1972) Museums And Women (1979) Problems (1979) Too Far To Go (related short stories about a single family) (1987) Trust Me (1994) The Afterlife (2000) The Best American Short Stories of the Century (editor)

(2001) Licks of Love (2003) The Early Stories: 19531975 (2009) My Father's Tears and Other StoriesPoetry (1957) Ex-Basketball Player (1958) The Carpentered Hen (1963) Telephone Poles (1969) Midpoint (1969) Dance of the Solids (1974) Cunts: Upon Receiving The Swingers Life Club Membership Solication (limi

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ed edition) (1977) Tossing and Turning (1985) Facing Nature (1993) Collected Poems 19531993 (2001) Americana: and Other PoemsNon-fiction, essays and criticism (1965) Assorted Prose (1975) Picked-Up Pieces (1983) Hugging The Shore (1989) Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989) Just Looking (1991) Odd Jobs (1996) Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf (1999) More Matter (2005) Still Looking: Essays on American Art (2007) Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism