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THE LIBERAL ORIGINS OF JOHN UPDIKE’S LITERARY IMAGINATION*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2015

YOAV FROMER
YOAV FROMER*
Affiliation:
American Studies Program and Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article, through a close engagement with John Updike's work, explores the manner in which the postwar liberal temper shaped American fiction. By contextualizing the novelist's early writings within the changing intellectual climate of the period, it demonstrates how his liberal sensibilities deeply informed his literary imagination. The essay employs new archival material about Updike's Harvard education and sketches his political biography—the first of its kind—to offer a fresh and more nuanced understanding of Updike as not only a gifted writer but also a political thinker. Although he chose the less traveled road of fiction to do so, Updike expressed a particular temperament pervasive among many liberal intellectuals at the time. By challenging the widely held view of him as an apolitical writer, the article also enriches our understanding of the meanings and complexities of postwar liberalism while illuminating the often overlooked link between literature and politics.

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Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 187 - 216
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Charles Capper and to the anonymous reviewers of Modern Intellectual History for their patience and productive commentary, which significantly improved this article. I would like to thank Jim Miller, David Plotke, Oz Frankel, Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Robert Boyers, Brian Steele, Michael Kimmage, Jack De Bellis, and Jim Plath for their guidance and advice. I also appreciate the cooperation of Christopher Buckley, William Massa, Sam Tanenhaus, John Bethell, the John Updike Literary Trust, and the Wylie Agency. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Leslie Morris and her staff at Houghton Library for all their assistance and support.

References

1 William F. Buckley Jr to John Updike, 15 March 1978, Box 262, Folder 2258, William F. Buckley Jr Papers, MS 576 S01, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

2 John Updike, “One Writer's Testimony,” National Review, 26 May 1978, 641.

3 Buckley to Updike, 12 Sept. 1978, 25 Sept. 1978, Buckley Papers, Box 262, Folder 2258, original emphasis.

4 Updike to Buckley, 15 Sept. 1978, Box 262, Folder 2258, Buckley Papers. Copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

5 See Kimmage, Michael, The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whitaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-communism (Cambridge, MA, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 John Everett to Updike, 28 Jan. 1972, and Gerald Heeger to Updike, 14 Aug. 1990, JUP, Folder 5368.

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9 For more on this see Broer, Lawrence, ed., Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit Novels (Tuscaloosa, 1998), 1–7 Google Scholar.

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46 Donaldson, Scott, Archibald MacLeish: An American Life (Boston, 1992), 413–14Google Scholar. John Bethell, who is the secretary of the Harvard Class of 1954 and Updike's former classmate, told me that they took MacLeish's poetry course together. The original email is in the possession of the author. MacLeish to Updike, 14 May and 4 July (year unknown), JUP, Folder 4937.

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52 Updike, “English 99 Paper,” JUP, Folder 418, 10. 1953–4 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC. Updike, Letters to Plowville, 2 March 1952.

53 Kimmage, The Conservative Turn, 99.

54 Trilling, Matthew Arnold, 127, 137. On the book's American reception see Mazzeno, Laurence W., Matthew Arnold: The Critical Legacy (Rochester, 1999), 21–52 Google Scholar.

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64 Updike, “Criticism and Inspiration,” 7, 10. 1952–3 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

65 Updike, Letters to Plowville, 27 Sept. and 2 Nov. 1953; Plath, Conversations with Updike, 32.

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70 Updike, Letters to Plowville, 9 Nov. 1950, 12 Jan. and 22 Jan. 1951. For more on the course see Philip Boffey, “Best in the System,” Harvard Crimson, 8 Nov. 1956, available at www.thecrimson.com/article/1956/11/8/best-in-the-system-pa-house.

71 John Updike, “Marx: Man of Mission,” JUP, Folder 416.

72 Ibid., 9. 1951 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

73 Ibid., 20–21. 1951 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

74 John Updike, “An Exposition of the Morality in the Communist Manifesto,” JUP, Folder 431.

75 John Updike, “Just Ruler, Pious Saint, Chivalrous Knight,” JUP, Folder 414, 4. 1950–51 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

76 John Updike, “The Tragedy of Peter Abelard,” JUP, Folder 445, 14–16, original emphasis. 1950–51 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

77 John Updike, “The Decline of Moral Stability Since The Divine Comedy,” JUP, Folder 397, 19–20. 1952 copyright © by John Updike, used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

78 Updike, John, “Apologies to Harvard,” in Updike, , Tossing and Turning (New York, 1977), 34 Google Scholar. Both excerpts from Updike's entry to the class of 1954 reports were generously provided to me by John Bethell.

79 Plath, Conversations with Updike, 11, 45. For more on “middleness” see Miller, D. Quentin, “Updike, Middles, and the Spell of ‘Subjective Geography’,” in Olster, Stacey, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Updike (New York, 2006), 15–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Regan, Robert, “Updike's Symbol of the Center,” Modern Fiction Studies, 20 (Spring 1974), 77–96 Google Scholar.

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87 Rather than endorse the war efforts—about which he was skeptical—Updike adamantly opposed the antiwar movement, which he considered too radical and dangerous. In his novel The Coup (1978) Updike actually demonstrated a clear distaste for America's foreign interventions. For more on this see Updike, John, Self-Consciousness (New York, 1989), chap. 4Google Scholar; Quentin Miller, D., John Updike and the Cold War: Drawing the Iron Curtain (Columbia, MO, 2001)Google Scholar.

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95 Ibid., 17, 87, 116.

96 Updike, John, Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy (New York, 1995), xv–xvi Google Scholar; on the novel's politics and Updike's reaction to the 1960s see Begley, Updike, 295–342; Boswell, Mastered Irony, chap. 2; Miller, Updike and the Cold War, 90–96; Ristoff, Dilvo I., Updike's America: The Presence of Contemporary American History in John Updike's Rabbit Trilogy (New York, 1988), chap. 3Google Scholar.

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101 Ibid., 45.

102 Ibid., 131, 245.

103 Ibid., 295–6, 349. On Rabbit's ambivalence see Matthew Wilson, “From Solitude to Society to Solitude Again,” in Broer, Rabbit Tales, 96.

104 Updike, Rabbit Redux, 330.

105 Ibid., 82.

106 For more on this see Kloppenberg, James T., “In Retrospect: Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America ,” Reviews in American History, 29/3 (Sept. 2001), 460–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerstle, Gary, “Race and the Myth of the Liberal Consensus,” Journal of American History, 82/2 (Sept. 1995), 579–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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