7 - America and Updike, Growing Old Together (1996–1999)

Summary

Any thought that Updike, approaching sixty-five, might slow down as the century moved toward its close was quickly dispelled by the publication in 1996 of what some have come to regard as his finest single novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies. That work was followed in succeeding years by another novel, a new collection about Henry Bech, and a fourth compendium of nonfiction. At the same time, however, a new generation of reviewers, raised after the post-war years of American prosperity and the angst-ridden years of the Cold War, was beginning to describe Updike as a literary dinosaur. Throughout the last decade of the century but even more pronounced in the final five years, these newcomers—critics and authors alike—found Updike's style mannerist without being provocative and his focus on everyday Americans of limited use as a subject for literary art. His brand of literary realism was considered old-fashioned and his emphasis on sex no longer shocking, only quaint. It fell to a group of admirers among reviewers and academics—some of longstanding, others newly come to Updike's writing—to advocate for him as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.