Read complete books and articles on: John Updike

Updike, John - 1932–, American author, b. Shillington, Pa., grad. Harvard, 1954. His novels and stories, written in a well-modulated prose of extraordinary beauty and dazzling fluidity, usually treat the tensions and frustrations of middle-class life, often mingling the joys and sorrows of suburban life with a current of existential dread. The classic novel Rabbit Run (1961), set in Pennsylvania in the 1950s, concerns a young man who yearns for his days as a high school athlete and deserts his wife and child. In Rabbit Redux (1971), the same hero confronts racial tension, job obsolescence, sexual freedom, drugs, violence, and the alienation of the young. The quartet continues with Rabbit Is Rich (1981; Pulitzer Prize) and ends with Rabbit at Rest (1990; Pulitzer Prize). The Rabbit characters are brought up to date in Rabbit Remembered, a novella-sequel included in the volume Licks of Love (2000).

The remarkably prolific author's other works include the novels The Poorhouse Fair (1959), The Centaur (1962), Couples (1968), The Coup (1978), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), In the Beauty of the Lilies (1995), Toward the End of Time (1997), and Seek My Face (2002) and volumes of poetry such as The Carpentered Hen (1958), Facing Nature (1985), and Americana (2001). Among his many short-story collections are Pigeon Feathers (1962), Museums and Women and Other Stories (1972), Problems (1979), The Afterlife and Other Stories (1994), and the linked stories that feature Updike's Jewish alter ego, Henry Bech: Bech: A Book (1970), Bech Is Back (1982), and Bech at Bay (1998). The Early Stories: 1953–1975, a compilation, was published in 2003. Updike has also written the play Buchanan Dying (1974) and literary criticism, including Hugging the Shore (1983), Odd Jobs (1991), and More Matter (1999).

See his memoirs, Self-Consciousness (1989); studies by J. Detweiler (1972, rev. ed. 1984), J. Newman (1988), and W. H. Pritchard (2000).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: John Updike

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

John Updike's Novels (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Donald J. Greiner. 240 pgs.

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...JOHN UPDIKES NOVELS BY DONALD J. GREINER The Notebook...through Zukofsky editor The Other John Updike: Poems/Short Stories/Prose/Play John Updikes Novels JOHN UPDIKES...
2.

The Other John Updike: Poems, Short Stories, Prose, Play (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Donald J. Greiner. 320 pgs.

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...THE OTHER JOHN UPDIKE ALSO BY DONALD J. GREINER The Notebook...through Zukofsky Editor THE OTHER JOHN UPDIKE Poems/Short Stories/Prose/Play...Data Greiner, Donald J. The...
3.

Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories » Read Now
by John Updike. 288 pgs.

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...ALSO BY John Updike THE CARPENTERED HEN , poems...PIGEON FEATHERS and Other Stories John Updike PIGEON FEATHERS and Other Stories...Copyrigbt 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962 by...
4.

The John Updike Encyclopedia » Read Now
by Jack De Bellis. 545 pgs.

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John Updike is one of the most seminal American writers of the 20th century and one of the most prolific as well. His writing consistently reveals stylistic brilliance, and through his engagement with America's moral and spiritual problems, his works chronicle America's hopes and dreams, failures...
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John Updike is one of the most seminal American writers of the 20th century and one of the most prolific as well. His writing consistently reveals stylistic brilliance, and through his engagement with America's moral and spiritual problems, his works chronicle America's hopes and dreams, failures and disappointments. Though an enormously popular writer, the complexity and elegance of his works have elicited much scholarly attention. Through several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, this book provides an exceptional resource for both casual and serious readers. Whether seeking a novel summary, an authoritative analysis of subjects, elucidation of an allusion, or a point about Updike's life and manner of composition, the encyclopedia is indispensable. Extensive cross-referencing, numerous bibliographies, and a thorough index enhance its usefulness.
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5.

Something and Nothingness: The Fiction of John Updike & John Fowles » Read Now
by John Neary. 235 pgs.

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...Nothingness The Fiction of John Updike John Fowles John Neary...and nothingness: the fiction of John Updike and John Fowles / John Neary...bibliographical references and...
6.

John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion » Read Now
by Marshall Boswell. 254 pgs.

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Early in his career, John Updike's announced his affinity with the Christian existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and others. Because of this, many of Updike's critics have interpreted his work from within a Christian existentialist context. Yet Kierkegaard and Barth...
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Early in his career, John Updike's announced his affinity with the Christian existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and others. Because of this, many of Updike's critics have interpreted his work from within a Christian existentialist context. Yet Kierkegaard and Barth provide Updike with much more than a mere context, for their dialectical thinking serves as the springboard for Updike's own unique dialectical vision, a complex matrix of ethical precepts, theological beliefs, and aesthetic principles that governs nearly all of his literary output. Nowhere else in his immense corpus is this vision more clearly and thoroughly expressed than in his four Rabbit novels, which were gathered into the single volume Rabbit Angstrom in 1995. However, because Updike's critics have chosen to read the Rabbit novels as discrete, freestanding texts, they have by and large failed to extract the precepts of this private vision.
In John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy, Marshall Boswell redresses this imbalance by treating the Rabbit tetralogy as a single, unified "meganovel". He demonstrates that, taken together as a single work, the four discrete sections of the tetralogy not only provide a coherent and complete articulation of Updike's unique existential vision but also compose a unified work of remarkable formal complexity. Boswell brings to Updike's work the concept of "mastered irony", a term coined by Kierkegaard to describe the presentation of two legitimate but contradictory sides of an issue. In the Rabbit novels, these issues range from adultery to drug addiction, from race to redemption, with each issue examined through the refracting lens of Updike's own ironic method.Boswell shows that although each of the four individual Rabbit novels confirms this dialectical strategy in a unique way, the completed tetralogy comprises an additional series of dialectical pairs that sustain, rather than res
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7.

Updike and the Patriarchal Dilemma: Masculinity in the Rabbit Novels » Read Now
by Mary O'Connell. 270 pgs.

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O'Connell examines the role of socially constructed masculinity in Updike's Rabbit tetralogy - Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest - convincingly arguing that the four novels comprise the longest and most comprehensive representation of masculinity in American literature and...
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O'Connell examines the role of socially constructed masculinity in Updike's Rabbit tetralogy - Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest - convincingly arguing that the four novels comprise the longest and most comprehensive representation of masculinity in American literature and place Updike firmly with the precursors of the contemporary movement among men to reevaluate their cultural inheritance. A disturbing element exists, O'Connell determines, in both the texts of the Rabbit novels and in the critical community that examines them. In the novels, O'Connell finds substantial evidence to demonstrate patterns of psychological and physical abuse toward women, citing as the culminating example the mounting toll of literally or metaphorically dead women in the texts. Critics who view Updike as a nonviolent writer and strangely overlook Rabbit's repressive and violent behaviors avoid a discomforting but crucial aspect of the characterization. Although she examines negative aspects of Rabbit's behavior, O'Connell avoids the oversimplification of labeling Updike a misogynist. Instead, she looks closely at the forces shaping Rabbit's gender identity as well as at the ways he experiences masculinity and the ways his gender identity affects his personal and spiritual development, his relationships, and, ultimately, his society. As she discusses these issues, O'Connell uses the term patriarchy in its broadest sense to refer to the practice of centralizing the male and marginalizing the female in all areas of human life. Patriarchal ideology - the assumptions, values, ideas, and patterns of thought that perpetuate the arrangement - is written as hidden text, permeating everyaspect of culture, particularly language, from which it spreads to other signifying systems. Contrary to conventional critical wisdom, the Rabbit tetralogy is not a straightforward chronicle; the novels create meaning by chal
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8.

Reconstructing the Family in Contemporary American Fiction (Chap. 3 "Harry Angstrom's Flights from the Family") » Read Now
by Horst S. Daemmrich, Desmond F. McCarthy. 176 pgs.

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...A. Knopf, Inc. From Rabbit Redux , by John Updike. Copyright c 1971 by John Updike. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. From Rabbit, Run , by John Updike...
9.

The Art of John Updike's "A & P," in Studies in Short Fiction » Read Now
by Toni Saldivar. 13 pgs.

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...The Art of John Updikes "A P". by Toni Saldivar John Updikes best known, most anthologized and most...in Manhattan in the late 1950s that John Updike found his "own courage...
10.

Epistolary Responses: The Letter in 20th-Century American Fiction and Criticism (Chap. 6 "John Updike's S.: Gender Play") » Read Now
by Anne Bower. 226 pgs.

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Letters - a most traditional and old-fashioned form of discourse - continue to offer special opportunities for writers and readers in the postmodern era. Bower explores the way letters shape the act of writing and writing as act. Epistolary Responses uses a variety of theoretical approaches (chiefly...
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Letters - a most traditional and old-fashioned form of discourse - continue to offer special opportunities for writers and readers in the postmodern era. Bower explores the way letters shape the act of writing and writing as act. Epistolary Responses uses a variety of theoretical approaches (chiefly feminist and reader response) to analyze seven novels, all featuring women letter writers: Ana Castillo's The Mixquiahuala Letters, Upton Sinclair's Another Pamela, John Updike's S., Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, and John Barth's LETTERS (in which six men also write letters, but the central and most original epistolarian is female). Punctuated with various letters - from novel authors and critics - Epistolary Responses enacts some of the give and take of the subject matter and provides some sense of the collective or composite textuality.
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11.

In Desire's Grip: Gender, Politics, and Intertextual Games in Updike's Gertrude and Claudius, in Papers on Language & Literature » Read Now
by Laura Elena Savu. 27 pgs.

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...Rev. of Gertrude and Claudius, by John Updike. Library Journal 125.3 (2000): ...Faith, Morality, and the Novels of John Updike." Twentieth Century Literature...New York:...
12.

Updike: America's Man of Letters » Read Now
by William H. Pritchard. 351 pgs.

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Billed as the first authoritative look at the work and career of John Updike, this book covers the life of the influential literary figure, including his voluminous work.
13.

Pastoral and Anti-Pastoral Patterns in John Updike's Fiction » Read Now
by Larry E. Taylor. 180 pgs.

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...and Anti-Pastoral Patterns in JOHN UPDIKES Fiction Larry E. Taylor WITH...Larry E. Taylor s book on John Updike states that Updike is beyond...also shows how skillfully...
14.

Contemporary American Novelists ("John Updike and William Styron: The Burden of Talent" begins on p. 205) » Read Now
by Harry T. Moore. 238 pgs.

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...writes on William Styron and John Updike, is the author of two volumes in...and others; James Purdy and John Updike are regarded as too "new" to be...enthusiastic about...
15.

Readings from the New Book on Nature: Physics and Metaphysics in the Modern Novel (Chap. 5 "John Updike") » Read Now
by Robert Nadeau. 228 pgs.

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...Fowles 65 John Barth 77 John Updike 95 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 121...the new physics provided by either novelist to date. Updike is a somewhat special case in that he derives...
16.

Literary Subversions: New American Fiction and the Practice of Criticism ("John Updike's America" begins on p. 59) » Read Now
by Jerome Klinkowitz. 203 pgs.

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...II.The Essay as Lyric John Updikes America 59 Grace...artistic creation. Instead, as John Updike puts it when titling his own collected...so much of Joyce Carol Oates...