{"id":3736,"date":"2017-03-07T10:09:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T16:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3736"},"modified":"2017-03-07T10:09:56","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T16:09:56","slug":"review-imagination-and-idealism-in-john-updikes-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2017\/03\/07\/review-imagination-and-idealism-in-john-updikes-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Imagination and Idealism in John Updike’s Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Updike criticism over the past several decades has gravitated toward the Rabbit tetralogy. In Imagination and Idealism in John Updike\u2019s Fiction<\/em><\/strong> (Camden House, 2017, cloth, 228pp.), Michial Farmer<\/strong> bucks that trend, leaving Rabbit out of his discussion entirely. Given Updike\u2019s exhaustive (and exhausting) oeuvre, it\u2019s no surprise that, despite the broad title, only a handful of\u00a0novels make the cut for Farmer\u2019s exploration of Updike and the imagination.<\/p>\n

As the back cover note summarizes, Farmer \u201cargues that, while the imagination is for Updike a means of human survival and a necessary component of human flourishing, it also has a destructive, darker side, in which it shades into something like philosophical idealism. Here the mind constructs the world around it and then, unhelpfully, imposes this created world between itself and the \u2018real world.\u2019 In other words, Updike is not himself an idealist but sees idealism as a persistent temptation for the artistic imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a first chapter, \u201cJohn Updike and the Existentialist Imagination,\u201d Farmer posits\u00a0that while Updike \u201ccannot endorse Sartre\u2019s atheism or the nihilism that lurks just beyond his celebration of humanity\u2019s radical freedom,\u201d he nonetheless \u201cuses Sartrean metaphysics as a jumping-off point for his own, more Kierkegaardian, reflections.\u201d The fullest discussion of the latter remains David Crowe\u2019s recent study, but for the intended purpose of this volume Farmer does a nice job of setting the stage for a study of the imaginative nature of Updike\u2019s work, weighing Sartre\u2019s suggestion that the human imagination, \u201cand in particular the aesthetic imagination\u2014can be a way to fight against meaninglessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Farmer, Updike\u2019s \u201cjob as a fiction writer\u201d is to \u201cuse his powerful imagination, and the language that makes up its currency, to falsify the material world\u201d that exists in opposition to the self and \u201cbestow on it an order that does not properly speaking belong to it, but in bestowing that order to preserve and re-present it. The imagination thus counts among the highest and most important human faculties,\u201d Farmer writes.<\/p>\n

In the 15 chapters that follow, Farmer treats Updike\u2019s works loosely\u00a0chronologically but also finds a way to order them topically with the aid of a five-part section structure:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The \u201cMythic Immensity\u201d of the Parental Imagination<\/li>\n
  2. Collective Hallucination in the Adulterous Society<\/li>\n
  3. Imaginative Lust in the Scarlet Letter<\/em> Trilogy<\/li>\n
  4. Female Power and the Female Imagination<\/li>\n
  5. The Remembering Imagination<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Regarding what he calls the \u201cparental imagination,\u201d Farmer argues, \u201cMothers, in Updike\u2019s early fiction, tend to create imaginative worlds for their sons to live in, and these worlds, when confronted with the world of mere things, tend to crush the sons for whom they were created.\u201d That\u2019s a big claim, and the chapters supporting it are probably the most enticing to consider, yet also the most elusive\u2014especially when Farmer at times seems to conflate \u201cforce of will\u201d with \u201cforce of imagination.\u201d Still, his analyses of \u201cFlight,\u201d \u201cHis Mother Inside Him,\u201d \u201cAce in the Hole,\u201d \u201cA Sandstone Farmhouse,\u201d \u201cThe Cats,\u201d The Centaur<\/em>, and Of the Farm<\/em> are engaging.<\/p>\n

    The chapters themselves read like brief imaginative essays: a combination of scholarship and readability that\u2019s well reasoned and written in such a way as to anticipate reader questions. As a result, the author, while discussing texts that would be familiar to most Updike scholars and aficionados, confidently proceeds without feeling the need to cite a tremendous amount of secondary sources\u2014only those that seem necessary to him. Some scholars may see that as a negative. Nowhere near all of the secondary sources for Updike\u2019s Scarlet Letter <\/em>trilogy, for example, are cited. Yet, underlying his arguments, Farmer demonstrates an awareness of the range of Updike scholarship throughout his chapter discussions, quoting from both the very first monograph (the Hamiltons) and the most recent one (Crowe).<\/p>\n

    Some of Farmer\u2019s arguments have an \u201cof course\u201d feel to them, perhaps because the chapters\u2019 arguments are compressed and proceed so methodically\u2014with just enough theoretical grounding, contextual references, and examples from Updike\u2019s works to lead readers to what feels like a foregone conclusion. Sometimes it\u2019s a slightly new twist on familiar theory. For example, Updike\u2019s oft-stated intent \u201c\u2019to transcribe middleness with all its grits, bumps, and anonymities, in its fullness of satisfaction and mystery,\u2019 is,\u201d Farmer writes, \u201cin part a method of keeping the human imagination honest: we may not be able to have perfect access to the material world, but the material world periodically, perhaps even constantly, makes itself known by tearing down the imagination constructions we build on its back. The author\u2019s fidelity to the world is thus held in dialectical tension with his imaginative project; the two are always in dialogue, and the human self is always moving between the two of them\u2014forever building, forever destroying.\u201d Mostly, it\u2019s the attention paid to works that are too often ignored by other scholars that\u2019s refreshing.<\/p>\n

    In the \u201cadulterous society\u201d section Farmer discusses \u201cMan and Daughter in the Cold,\u201d \u201cGiving Blood,\u201d \u201cThe Taste of Metal,\u201d \u201cAvec la B\u00e9b\u00e9-Sitter,\u201d \u201cThe Hillies,\u201d Marry Me,<\/em> and Couples<\/em>; in addition to The Witches of Eastwick<\/em>, for the section on female power he considers \u201cMarching through Boston,\u201d \u201cThe Stare,\u201d \u201cReport of Health,\u201d \u201cLiving with a Wife,\u201d and \u201cSlippage\u201d; and in the final section he draws on examples from Memories of the Ford Administration<\/em>, \u201cIn Football Season,\u201d \u201cFirst Wives and Trolley Cars,\u201d \u201cThe Day of the Dying Rabbit,\u201d \u201cLeaving Church Early,\u201d and \u201cThe Egg Race,\u201d in addition to the more frequently discussed \u201cThe Dogwood Tree,\u201d \u201cA Soft Spring Night in Shillington,\u201d and \u201cOn Being a Self Forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

    One of this book\u2019s strengths is that does<\/em> manage to reconsider\u00a0old concepts in the pursuit of new, and to\u00a0explore a satisfying range of critical, theoretical, and philosophical arguments without insulting the intelligence of those readers who might already know the terms and their meanings. That\u00a0kind of writing is hard to pull off, yet the author manages to do so with grace. As a result,\u00a0Imagination and Idealism in John Updike\u2019s Fiction<\/em> is an easy read\u2014one of the more engaging and accessible monographs on an author that I\u2019ve encountered in recent years. It holds appeal not only for Updike scholars, but also for readers with more than a casual interest in Updike. This book helps readers to appreciate the sometimes erratic or unexplainable behavior of many of Updike\u2019s characters, who live in worlds partially created by their own vivid and often conflicted imaginations.<\/p>\n

    Reviewed by<\/em> James Plath<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Updike criticism over the past several decades has gravitated toward the Rabbit tetralogy. In Imagination and Idealism in John Updike\u2019s Fiction (Camden House, 2017, cloth, 228pp.), Michial Farmer bucks that trend, leaving Rabbit out of his discussion entirely. Given Updike\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3738,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions\/3738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}