The Modern Novel

Biography

This site has a few writers who, frankly, should not be here but are here because they have a reputation which well exceeds their literary abilities. John Updike is definitely one of these. Critic James Wood described him as A writer of harmless, puffy lyricism, which puts it better than I could. Gore Vidal, justifiably, said that he had never taken him seriously as a writer and condemned him as a reactionary, two spot-on judgements. John Gardner likened his work to sermons and said that his work would die of fakery. Tom Wolfe, a man pretty well devoid of literary talent himself, called Updike and Mailer two piles of bones and those two and John Irving the Three Stooges. Salman Rushdie famously said of him Somewhere in Las Vegas there’s probably a male prostitute called ‘John Updike’… He should stay in his parochial neighbourhood and write about wife-swapping, because it’s what he can do. In short, bad sex is what he does best.

Unlike, I suspect, most of his readers, I started at the beginning with The Poorhouse Fair. It struck me as the sort of exercise that a ninth grade English composition class might be asked to produce and then turn out. Not bad but hardly great literature. As I read my way (chronologically) through his work, I saw very quickly that he was very, very good at jumping on bandwagons. Peyton Place sex in the suburbs? Give ’em Rabbit. Ponderous Greek allegory? Gotta be Centaur. Porn? Then it’s Couples. Children’s books, witchcraft, a Jewish novelist, an African dictator, golf, terrorism, even science fiction and an attempt at postmodernism, Updike was there with a book for it. And, of course, the mid-brow American reading public lapped it up. They love sex and sleaze (though pretend not to) but they particularly like it when it is disguised as art, sorry as ART. Witchcraft and terrorism and Jewish novelists, all were carefully timed to appeal to these same mid-brow readers and Updike made a very good career out of it. Fortunately, in fifty years, he will be as well-known as those other former literary superstars, Christopher Morley and Mrs. Henry Wood.

John Updike was born in 1932, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father was a high school science teacher. He received a scholarship to Harvard where he majored in English. After graduation, he and his wife spent a year in England and, when he returned, he worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker for two years, before becoming a full-time writer. He achieved a breakthrough with his second novel, Rabbit, Run. He has continued to publish a series of novels and stories which pander to the American reading public, with liberal doses of naughty sex and little original writing. He died in 2009.

Other links

John Updike
John Updike
John Updike
John Updike (1932-2009)
Life & Times: John Updike
John Updike’s life and work
Featured Author: John Updike
The essential Updike
Updike remembered
On John Updike (by Ian McEwan)
The John Updike Society
Picked-Up Pieces (samples of his writings from New Yorker)
John Updike’s Dead: Do We Still Have To Pretend To Like His Books?
Whisper it: you don’t need to have read John Updike
John Updike and the Politics of Literary Reputation
Obituary
Obituary
Obituary
Obituary
Obituary
Obituary
Interview
Interview
Interview