| The novels of John Updike have suffered from criticism alleging them to be too heavily reliant on autobiography and limited by an "outdated" realistic mode. While these charges may apply to Updike's "Olinger" novels (The Centaur, Of the Farm, and even The Poorhouse Fair), those novels set outside Olinger (Rabbit, Run, Couples, Rabbit Redux, Marry Me, A Month of Sundays, The Coup, Rabbit Is Rich) reveal Updike's expanding social and political awareness, as well as a formal inventiveness often overlooked by his critics.;If Updike's focus has shifted dramatically from his originally autobiographical subject matter, so too his fictional approach continues to be formally inventive. While still realistic, Updike's novels contain elements of allegory, comic stereotypes, mixtures of topical events and fictional constructs, quasi-mythical journeys, and surrealistic settings. In A Month of Sundays, in particular, Updike exploits the formal devices of fiction to make a statement about art and the artist in a post-literate culture.;With an accurate eye for detail, a sensitive ear for the cadences of contemporary America, and a lyrical gift of expression, John Updike deserves a place in literary history as social historian of post-World War II America.;Updike's view of what it means to be middle-class and American during the latter half of the twentieth century is often reflected in the personality and situation of his male protagonists. In the character of Harry Angstrom of Rabbit, Run, Updike creates his prototypical hero. Sensitive but inarticulate, frustrated in his marriage and his job, a disappointed seeker after religious meanings, Harry is both rebel and victim of American society. Harry's development from thwarted rebel in Rabbit, Run, to passive victim-observer in Rabbit Redux, and finally to a type of latter-day Babbitt in Rabbit Is Rich is emblematic of the changing temper of American society through three successive decades. The protagonists of Updike's other non-autobiographical novels--Piet Hanema, Jerry Conant, Tom Marshfield, and Felix Ellellou share several of Harry Angstrom's central character traits and prove themselves to be appropriate foils for reflecting Updike's vision of twentieth-century America. |
