John Updike (1932-2009)

A selective list of online literary criticism for John Updike, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in peer reviewed or editor reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the Modern Language Association Guidelines for Web Pages

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literary criticism

Bawer, Bruce. On John Updike's More Matter: Essays and Criticism."For Updike, seemliness is paramount. And this, to my mind, is his distinctive failing as a writer: that he has exalted charm and mannerliness above all else." In the Hudson Review, Spring 2000

Bawer, Bruce. On John Updike's Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism. "The more one reads this book, the more one wonders: What passions rule this man? What makes him fume? Do any young novelists knock his socks off?" In the Wall Street Journal

Bawer, Bruce. On John Updike's Self-Consciousness. "Updike has made clear, in various places, his enthusiasm for Karl Barth's view of God as 'Wholly Other'; his coolly clinical approach to character gives one the impression that he considers his fellow man, too, to be Wholly Other." In the Wall Street Journal

Bawer, Bruce. On John Updike's Memories of the Ford Administration"...Alf s gripes about American decline and his sophomoric outlook...make him sound very much like an academic version of Updike's late, lamented alter ego, Harry Angstrom." In the Washington Post

Boswell, Marshall. On John Updike, from the Literary Encyclopedia, 18 March 2004

Boswell, Marshall. John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion (Univ. of Missouri Press, 2001). Publisher's blurb

De Bellis, Jack. John Updike: The Critical Responses to the "Rabbit" Saga (Praeger, 2005). Publisher's web site

Greiner, Donald J. "Don DeLillo, John Updike, and the Sustaining Power of Myth." On DeLillo's treatment of the hero and baseball during 1950s, compared to John Updike. In UnderWords: Perspectives on Don DeLillo's Underworld (Univ. of Delaware Press, 2002) Preview at Google Books.

Green, Daniel. Green, an author and former academic, works his way through the stories in The Early Stories, 1953 -1975, and passes on his insights, in his blog, 2004

Oates, J. Updike's notable interest in the visual world, his early study of art, and his story "Museums and Women" are discussed by novelist Oates in her essay "John Updike's American Comedies." Modern Fiction Studies, Fall 1975

Olster, Stacey, ed. The Cambridge Companion to John Updike. Publisher's site. Includes chapters'A sort of helplessly 50's guy'; Updike, middles, and the spell of 'subjective geography';'Nakedness' or realism in Updike's early short stories; Updike, religion, and the novel of moral debate; Updike, women, and mythologized sexuality; Updike, race, and the postcolonial project; Updike, ethnicity, and Jewish-American drag; Updike, American history, and historical methodology; Updike, Hawthorne, and American literary history; Updike, film, and American popular culture; John Updike, Rabbit Angstrom, and the myth of American exceptionalism; Conclusion: U(pdike) & P(ostmodernism); Select bibliography

Pritchard, William H. Pritchard defends Updike from the criticism of self-absorption leveled in "Twilight of the Phallocrats" (New York Observer, 1997) by the critic Sven Birkerts and the novelist David Foster Wallace. "Updike's Way," in New England Review, Summer 2000

Saldivar, Toni. The Art of John Updike's "A & P." "Experiencing the dramatic irony of Sammy's narrative by enjoying Updike's allusions to Botticelli's art and to Pater's aestheticism enables the reader to see a romantic sensibility becoming modern by arriving at a certain form of consciousness." Studies in Short Fiction, Spring 1997

Vargo, Edward P. first page of article and abstract. PMLA, Vol. 88, No. 3 (May, 1973)

Wells, Walter. John Updike's "A & P": a return visit to Araby. Author contends that Updike’s "A & P" was influenced by James Joyce’s "Araby." Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1993

Introduction & Lighter Reading

Wolcott, James. "Caretaker/Pallbearer." Wolcott says of Updike, "In his native land he blends the roles of novelist, historian, social critic, civics teacher, randy theologian, anthropologist, dermatologist, photorealist illuminator of drugstore aisle and automobile showroom (every shiny accent in place), and caretaker/pallbearer of the New Yorker tradition of scrupulous observation salted with a proper measure of irony, acerbity, dismay and regret, depending on the circumstance or site under inspection." London Review of Books 31 (Jan. 2009).

Oates, J. "John Updike's choice of Rabbit Angstrom, in Rabbit, Run, was inspired, one of those happy, instinctive accidents that so often shape a literary career," writes Oates, in "John Updike's Rabbit at Rest." NYTimes Book Review, 9/30/90

Pritchard, William H. The first chapter of Updike: America's Man of Letters is reprinted at NYTimes. Also, Prichard's book is reviewed "Iron John: William Pritchard assesses Updike's vast literary accomplishments." Jonathan Wilson, NYTimes, 9/24/00

Introduction to John Updike from the Poetry Foundation: "Most critics familiar with Updike have strong opinions about the author's work. As Joseph Kanon explained in Saturday Review: 'The debate . . . has long since divided itself into two pretty firmly entrenched camps: those who admire the work consider him one of the keepers of the language; those who don't say he writes beautifully about nothing very much.'"

An interview with John Updike focuses on the "Rabbit" novels and Updike's longstanding interest in chronicling the terrors and pleasures of sex, marriage, adultery, parenthood and religion that ordinary Americans have experienced over the past 30 years. From the National Book Award Foundation

A 1964 article on Updike in Time Magazine, which begins "John Updike is a brilliant writer who has so far failed to write a brilliant book." The review cites "The Crow in the Woods" as a specific example that Updike "says very little, and says it very well."

"John Updike’s Last Word on Sex." On Licks of Love. "It is this that women dislike in Updike, not his bent for unflattering portrayal, but the way in which he confers upon women the doomed, static density of material things. The male sensibility takes from the female the momentum of flight, as if from a diving board trodden underfoot and left to stupidly reverberate." By Rachel Cusk in the London Evening Standard, 3/19/01

"John Updike's literary via negativa." Brief article on Updike's message of religious hope in the short stories "Short Easter" and "Dentistry and Doubt." Christian Century, May 24, 1995

A discussion guide for John Updike, focusing on questions of whether his work is too limited in its concern with the WASP or yuppie environment, and whether his work proceeds from a too exclusively male perspective. From Heath

Article from the Harvard Univ. Gazette about Updike's years at Harvard, as "the confident president of the Harvard Lampoon." "The Early Days of John Updike '54," by Roberta Gordon, April 30, 1998

'Hub fans bid Kid Adieu' by John Updike, 7/7/2002. Inspired by Williams's home run in his last at-bat, published in the New Yorker magazine Oct. 22, 1960.

On John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." Salon.com, 1/27/09

A discussion about baseball with John Updike, Garrison Keillor, and George Plimpton on the Charlie Rose Show, 6/6/01

John Updike's essay "Golf," NY Times, June 10, 1973

"Rabbit Holes Out," a review of Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf, by John Updike (Knopf, 1996) at CNN, 9/9/96

How One Small Ball Holds the Whole Universe, a profile of John Updike as golfer and review of Golf Dreams. NY Times, 9/19/96

Brief article in salon.com about literary feuds, "Tom Wolfe calls Irving, Mailer and Updike 'The Three Stooges,'" by Craig Offman, 1/21/2000 (removed)

reviews, interviews, web sites

The NY Times has made extensive Updike materials available at its web site, including articles by Updike, interviews, and reviews of Updike's novels, short stories, and poetry, from The Poorhouse Fair to the present. Articles include Updike Completes a Sequel to 'Rabbit, Run' (1971); Golf (1973); Updike's Latest Novel, 'Bech' Sequel, Draws on Himself (1982); The Origin of the Universe, Time and John Updike (1985); Updike's Long Struggle to Portray Women (1988);In 'S.,' Updike Tries The Woman's Viewpoint (1988) and reviews of The Poorhouse Fair (Jan. 11, 1959); The Poorhouse Fair (Jan. 12, 1959); Pigeon Feathers (Mar. 18, 1962); Pigeon Feathers (Mar. 24, 1962); Telephone Poles and Other Poems (1963); The Centaur (1963); Couples (1968); Bech: A Book (1970); Rabbit Redux (1971); A Month of Sundays (1975); Picked-Up Pieces (1975); Rabbit is Rich, reviewed by John Leonard (1981); Bech is Back, reviewed by Edward Hoagland (1982); Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism (1983); The Witches of Eastwick, reviewed by Margaret Atwood (1984); Roger's Version (1986); Trust Me: Short Stories (1987); Just Looking: Essays on Art (1989); Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989); Rabbit At Rest (1990); Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism, reviewed by Martin Amis (1991); Memories of the Ford Administration (1992); The Afterlife and Other Stories (1994); Brazil, reviewed by Barbara Kingsolver (1994); Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf (1996); In the Beauty of the Lilies, reviewed by Julian Barnes (1996); Toward the End of Time, reviewed by Margaret Atwood (1997)

"Writer Run: Early Years Of the Updike Marathon." A review of The Early Stories: 1953-1975 (Knopf). By Michiko Kakutani, NYTimes, 11/21/03

Updike talks about his novel In the Beauty of the Lilies, the current state of New Yorker fiction, Bill Clinton's sexual and political conundrums, and his feelings about the decline of reading in America, in a salon.com interview, by Dwight Garner, August 1999

A review of Updike's Toward the End of Time, "the closest he's come to writing science fiction," writes reviewer Dwight Garner. In the novel, a devastated post-nuclear-war America still "feels like a typical suburban Updike novel." Salon.com, Oct. 1997

A review of Updike's novel, Gertrude and Claudius, by John Freeman in salon.com, Feb. 2000

Yerkes, J. The Centaurian, a web site created by Updike scholar James Yerkes, contains links to many newspaper reviews of John Updike’s writing, a bibliography, Updike news, and more

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