LOUIS MENAND ON JOHN UPDIKE (New Yorker April 28, 2014)

Like so many New Yorker book reviews, Menand's review of Adam Begley's UPDIKE (Harper) is more an essay on the subject than an actual review of the book — which is a good thing since Menand is a deeply thoughtful, engaging writer. (His 2002 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY: A STORY OF IDEAS IN AMERICA is a daunting analysis of late nineteenth and early twentieth century thought which won the Pulitzer Prize in History.) Full disclosure: as a slow reader, I am unlikely plough through 756 pages on John Updike.

Updike's four Rabbit novels (which I have read) capture the sweep of middle class / upper middle class protestant American life in the twentieth century, and it is for these he will be remembered. According to Menard, he remained grounded in his boyhood life in Shillington, PA, and in spite of a Harvard education (summa cum laude), a year at Oxford studying art, and an experience in New York as a New Yorker staff writer he never felt comfortable with the persona of writer / intellectual. He preferred to live the suburban life of golf, dinner parties, and adultery, which are the stuff of much of his fiction. Updike had trouble writing about what he did not experience or see — a problem, which has led people to (mistakenly) identify him with his characters and ultimately limited his range. Besides novels he wrote poems, short stories, essays, and criticism — and, in the wry quip of David Foster Wallace, published every thought he ever had.