{"id":6844,"date":"2026-01-26T18:47:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T00:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6844"},"modified":"2026-01-26T18:47:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T00:47:32","slug":"book-reviewer-references-updike-and-roth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/01\/26\/book-reviewer-references-updike-and-roth\/","title":{"rendered":"Book reviewer references Updike and Roth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/01\/26\/book-reviewer-references-updike-and-roth\/screenshot-2026-01-26-at-6-45-12-pm\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6845\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6845\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-26-at-6.45.12-PM-196x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-26-at-6.45.12-PM-196x300.png 196w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-26-at-6.45.12-PM.png 520w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><\/a>Andrew Gelman, in reviewing <em>The Ten Year Affair<\/em> by Erin Somers for <em>The Future of Statistical Modeling<\/em> (Substack), relies on John Updike and Philip Roth for a core comparison:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Going back a bit in literary time, <em>The Ten Year Affair<\/em> is a lot like the novels of <a href=\"https:\/\/statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu\/2010\/08\/01\/literature_and\/\" rel=\"\">John Updike<\/a>: various suburban married couples having affairs. The writing style is different\u2013Updike is famously lyrical, whereas Somers uses a Millennial flat writing style: This happens, then This happens, then That happens, etc. Kind of like Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver if they had a sense of humor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think Somers does a much better job than Updike in conveying what it feels like to be a parent. To me, Updike, like <a href=\"https:\/\/statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu\/2021\/05\/22\/philip-roth-biographies-and-literary-biographies-in-general\/\" rel=\"\">Philip Roth<\/a>, was to the end of his life always a son, never a father. Updike did have four kids, but I guess his wife did most of the parenting. Updike\u2019s characters often have children but always seem to be thinking only about themselves. Not so much that his adult characters are self-centered\u2013I mean, yeah, they are, but that\u2019s kind of the point\u2013but more that their children don\u2019t seem to exist at all, except to the extent that they sometimes have to be dealt with as obstacles when they get in the way of the parents. In contrast, the adults in <em>The Ten Year Affair<\/em> are very aware of their kids. In some ways this is similar to\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu\/2008\/11\/17\/for_teaching_a\/\" rel=\"\">Little Children<\/a><\/em> by Tom Perotta, a book whose entire theme is that these adults are thinking only of themselves and are not shouldering the responsibilities of parenthood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/statmodeling.substack.com\/p\/the-ten-year-affair?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email\">Read the whole article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andrew Gelman, in reviewing The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers for The Future of Statistical Modeling (Substack), relies on John Updike and Philip Roth for a core comparison: &#8220;Going back a bit in literary time, The Ten Year Affair &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/01\/26\/book-reviewer-references-updike-and-roth\/\">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":[6,11,53,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-reviews","category-updike-in-context","category-updikes-life-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6844","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=6844"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6847,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6844\/revisions\/6847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}