{"id":6993,"date":"2026-05-31T10:11:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6993"},"modified":"2026-05-31T10:11:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:11:25","slug":"rogers-version-leaves-blogger-with-mixed-feelings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/05\/31\/rogers-version-leaves-blogger-with-mixed-feelings\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger’s Version leaves blogger with mixed feelings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Bevilacqua, a Ph.D. who teaches high school English at The Maclay School in Florida, recently posted his reaction to John Updike’s Roger’s Version\u00a0<\/em>on his Substack blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“It’s pretty clear to me why Roger’s Version\u00a0<\/em>is frequently pointed to as one of Updike’s best novels. You see some of the recurring themes from the Rabbit novels\u2014sex, theology, relationships, America\u2014but it’s presented in a more direct or less ponderous way. The two Rabbit novels I’ve read (Rabbit, Run<\/em> and Rabbit Redux<\/em>) are a bit more ground in their historical moment . . . while Roger’s Version<\/em> is a bit removed from that, though it is obviously and quite pointedly set in the Reagan moment,” Bevilacqua wrote.<\/p>\n

The problem, for Bevilacqua, was Updike’s “engagement with, well, sex, to put it bluntly. I don’t think I’m terribly prudish when it comes to what I can read, but I always find how Updike writes about these things to be somewhat strange. Perhaps because they feel so alien relative to everything else he’s writing while someone like Philip Roth makes it feel more central. . . . The entanglements of Roger and Verna as well as Dale and Esther feel shocking, not just because of what is being depicted or considered by how it feels . . . dropped in. I don’t think Updike puts these things in just to shock us, but it feels that way and it drags me as a reader out of the narrative he’s crafted.”<\/p>\n

Bevilacqua concluded, “Roger’s Version<\/em> fits very much in my experience of Updike’s writing\u2014both engrossing but also frustrating, and yet I feel compelled to read more.”<\/p>\n

If that compulsion holds, perhaps Bevilacqua might try the other two novels in Updike’s Scarlet Letter<\/em> trilogy, in which Updike updated and retold Hawthorne’s story of an adulterous triangle from perspective of each of the main characters, starting with the Dimmesdale character (A Month of Sundays<\/em>, 1975) and ending with the Hester character (S.<\/em>, 1988), with the voyeuristic Roger’s Version<\/em> falling in the middle (1986).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Bevilacqua, a Ph.D. who teaches high school English at The Maclay School in Florida, recently posted his reaction to John Updike’s Roger’s Version\u00a0on his Substack blog: “It’s pretty clear to me why Roger’s Version\u00a0is frequently pointed to as one … Continue reading →<\/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":[6,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6993","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=6993"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6994,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6993\/revisions\/6994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}