Roth, for instance, wouldn’t address the era directly until American Pastoral, which responds to this novel in fascinating ways.
It’s remarkable to look back at the high sixties, as John Barth called them, and see how few of Updike’s contemporaries were truly taking the pulse of the times. Replete, lyrical, full of big themes, and yet gossipy and sexy as well, this is the brightest of all his books, I think, and the ur-text of his later adultery novels. The prose in this book was in 5.1 Surround Sound. As I told my students recently, before I’d read these stories, all the writing I had experienced had been in stereo. This is the one that started it for me, and might be the single book that prompted my career. Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1962).
Professor of English, Rhodes College (Tennessee)Īuthor, John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion
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