Though The John Updike Society was formed fewer than seven months ago and launched with only 35 members, we’ve hit the 100 mark with the addition of Liliana Naydan, a doctoral candidate at SUNY-Stony Brook.<\/p>\n
“I became interested in Updike a few years ago,” Naydan writes, “after studying his work with my now dissertation director, Prof. Stacey Olster (editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Updike<\/em>). My dissertation, titled Fictions of Faith: American Literature, Religion, and the Millenium<\/em>, includes a chapter on Updike (as well as Philip Roth and Don DeLillo).”<\/p>\n Her chapter on Updike considers “how Updike’s understanding of faith transforms on the eve of the second millennium. I argue that in In the Beauty of the Lillies <\/em>Updike attempts to bridge\u00a0apparent divide that fanatical believers, especially early fundamentalists, created between believing in God and embracing the developments of the 20th century as fruitful, not mere signs that an increasingly immoral American nation is rapidly devolving in the face of a fast-approaching, apocalyptic end. \u00a0I consider Updike’s earlier works, especially the Rabbit tetralogy, proposing that Updike\u2019s focus in it is on the distinction between faith and good works as means by which to attain salvation. \u00a0In the Rabbit novels, only true faith appears to have the power to redeem man. \u00a0But in In the Beauty of the Lilies<\/em>, Updike comes to distinguish between different kinds of faith, and he critiques religious fanaticism, specifically as it has emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. \u00a0Even though a fanatic\u2019s faith is true, the intensity of that true belief creates the potential to transcend the bounds of what Updike views as characteristically good. Ultimately, I suggest that Updike comes to advocate for justification through temperance by way of his allusions to biblical and cinematic narratives. \u00a0He makes reference to the biblical Book of Esther, which suggests that God exists in the world even in the absence of clear evidence of His existence. \u00a0More to the point, he turns to Frank Capra\u2019s Lost Horizon<\/em> (1937) for his key message of temperance in all things.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Though The John Updike Society was formed fewer than seven months ago and launched with only 35 members, we’ve hit the 100 mark with the addition of Liliana Naydan, a doctoral candidate at SUNY-Stony Brook. “I became interested in Updike … Continue reading