John's Book Reviews: Updike

The Thumbnail Book Reviews

by John Q McDonald --- 11 May 2015

Updike

by Adam Begley

John Updike was a prolific author of stories for the New Yorker magazine over a career there of more than fifty years. He wrote a couple dozen novels, a number of non-fiction books of literary and artistic criticism, and, much less recognized, an array of poems for both magazine and book publication. Some of his books were very highly regarded, and he took home the National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes, among many other lesser-known prizes and honors. So, he could easily have been a real icon of American literature. Now, years after his death, his literary legacy is still unsettled. Updike's novels were criticized as much as they were praised. He was said to have been a bit of a one-trick-pony, with his highly autobiographical tales of suburban (read: Ipswich, Massachusetts) infidelities, explicit sexual imagery, and mid-range intellectual accomplishment. He was sharply criticized for an enduring image as a misogynist, with shallow and mistreated female characters in his novels. Indeed, as a male reader can attest, these moments are often cringeworthy in our modern era of sexual sensitivity. But Updike was a sharply honest writer. While his stories and novels are intensely male experiences, they brilliantly evoke landscape, place and time, as well as the inner workings of a certain kind of male thinking. As unlikable as his protagonists very often can be, they are honest and vivid depictions of an American type. Many of the critiques of Updike's work simply don't seem to grasp the depth of that honesty, as unsavory as it so often appears. But, does this mean Updike should rise to literary icon? He never did win, after all, the Nobel Prize that he coveted and that he bestowed on his literary creation, Henry Bech.

Adam Begley, who was at least briefly acquainted with Updike, and whose father attended Harvard with Updike, writes a powerfully sympathetic, but not unduly fawning, biography of the man. Updike, rising from obscure Pennsylvania backwaters, had an enviably smooth path in his career. Just out of Harvard, he was already being courted by the New Yorker, and very soon by book publishers. The ease with which he cruised into his literary career masks the incredibly dedicated hard work of the writer. He was determined, to a fault, to record the immediate experience of his American life. His stories were autobiographical, a point to which he admitted, but later in life tended to deny. Sometimes, they were written within days of the events they describe. This meant that people in Updike's life had to expect that they, too, would regularly appear in the pages of the New Yorker or any number of prize-winning novels. It also meant that Updike kept a cool distance from those nearest and dearest in his life. Everything, after all, was material. He exploited this fact to its fullest, and left a number of bruised relationships in his wake.

Perhaps Updike is remembered most for the Rabbit... series of novels. He is remembered for being sexually explicit in his work, and, by extension, sexually promiscuous in his life. He is seen as a guru of suburban infidelity, but he merely reflected what he saw and experienced, like any good novelist. Later in life, his work faded in brilliance, and perhaps that, too, contributed to a vague notion of his intellectual importance in American letters.

Begley's book is incredibly well written. He is deeply sympathetic to Updike, though he doesn't also let Updike off the hook for his failures, both literary and personal. Much of the text is a literary overview of the content, quality and value of Updike's better known works. Begley also endeavors to resurrect one or two works from obscurity. While Begley had a vast number of contacts of people who knew Updike and worked with him, a notable absence appears to be Martha Updike, John's second wife of thirty years. Indeed, Martha is something of a villain in this story. Begley tries to give her the benefit of the doubt when she is criticized by other people for her fierce protection of Updike and the distance he maintained from even his own children from his first marriage, as well as for the decline in the quality of his writing in the decades of their marriage. Martha doesn't get sufficient chance to defend herself, but she missed this golden opportunity for reasons that, for Begley, must remain obscure. In the end, perhaps we have a slightly incomplete picture of Updike, but this is true of all biographies. None can capture the true element of a person. In fact, fiction does it better, and Updike excelled at the honest depiction of the nature of certain types of characters; probably those closest to his own. Still and all, a very good biography, even if we're not sure we like the subject, as a person. Will it help to raise Updike's standing in American literature? Only time will tell.

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Also by Adam Begley: [The Great Nadar]

[Other Biography and History]