{"id":6655,"date":"2025-06-10T10:35:56","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T15:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6655"},"modified":"2025-06-10T10:35:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T15:35:56","slug":"was-updike-partly-responsible-for-tim-obriens-literary-ascent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/06\/10\/was-updike-partly-responsible-for-tim-obriens-literary-ascent\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Updike partly responsible for Tim O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s literary ascent?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>LitHub<\/strong> recently published a fascinating piece by Alex Vernon, <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/bringing-the-war-home-how-tim-obrien-approached-the-art-of-moral-consequence\/\">&#8220;Bringing the War Home: How Tim O&#8217;Brien Approached the Art of Moral Consequence&#8221;<\/a> (May 27, 2025), in which John Updike featured prominently.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6656\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2025\/06\/81u-ZV5ve8L._SY522_-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2025\/06\/81u-ZV5ve8L._SY522_-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2025\/06\/81u-ZV5ve8L._SY522_.jpg 338w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/>The issue was negative versus positive reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt&#8217;s\u00a0<em>New York Times\u00a0<\/em>review was cited as an example of the former, with Lehmann-Haupt arguing that &#8220;by repeatedly invoking <em>Catch-22<\/em> Mr. O&#8217;Brien reminds us that Mr. Heller caught the madness of war better, if only because the logic of <em>Catch-22<\/em> is consistently surrealistic and doesn&#8217;t try to mix in fantasies that depend on their believability to sustain. I can even imagine it being said that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Going-After-Cacciato-Tim-OBrien\/dp\/0767904427\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3F2AV959CQWVZ&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.yZThDZ-W1-0i9eo3i5f4Z_rGU8GXFj928JitOsY-HUkNDCKiBxphZmICBShXuu-qWj7VRnFdyKPOzdO5LnXCwjLVNJgyAqKDcU7-d_6o87QmDnROiwI4SewDbzAaYiXTnUixZp5Eq5lZ3lfIdYKECmIES0Y5vVHlnhXBsjVTUrVZ4bwO_mcfuwK0_KaPMXsrVZKdVXiGW39bySwzNIpiH50fSDDMhrQwJrx0-9cpEEo._rsjaR0Km3vncFFNImAv8rtxkJwYjrk4qRkGfqNWXL0&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=going+after+cacciato+by+tim+o%27brien&amp;qid=1749569573&amp;sprefix=going+after+c%2Caps%2C124&amp;sr=8-1\"><em>Going After Cacciato<\/em><\/a> is the <em>Catch-22<\/em> of Vietnam. The trouble is, <em>Catch-22<\/em> is the <em>Catch-22<\/em> of Vietnam.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Vernon wrote, &#8220;Not to worry, as <em>The New York Times Book Review\u00a0<\/em>lauded the novel on its front page and didn\u2019t cite Heller. It did bring in Hemingway, as did John Updike\u2019s review in\u00a0<em>The New Yorker,\u00a0<\/em>which struck the opposite note as Lehmann-Haupt\u2019s: &#8216;As a fictional portrait of this war, <em>Going After Cac\u00adciato<\/em> is hard to fault, and will be hard to better.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Cacciato <\/em>enjoyed plenty of glowing reviews, yet Updike\u2019s review had a huge impact on its success and helped convince the reading world to pay attention to the literature of O\u2019Brien\u2019s war. As O\u2019Brien\u2019s agent\u2019s office wrote to Lawrence, \u201cThe John Updike review in\u00a0<em>The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0seemed to be the word that tipped the scales against resistance to a Viet Nam novel, and now all the scouts are asking for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/bringing-the-war-home-how-tim-obrien-approached-the-art-of-moral-consequence\/\">Read the entire article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LitHub recently published a fascinating piece by Alex Vernon, &#8220;Bringing the War Home: How Tim O&#8217;Brien Approached the Art of Moral Consequence&#8221; (May 27, 2025), in which John Updike featured prominently. The issue was negative versus positive reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt&#8217;s\u00a0New &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/06\/10\/was-updike-partly-responsible-for-tim-obriens-literary-ascent\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,53,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship-analysis","category-updike-in-context","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6655","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\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6657,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6655\/revisions\/6657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}