The Fiction of Philip Roth and John Updike by George J. Searles (review)

Abstract

120Reviews into a problematical identification with the construct's shadowy existence. Wilson no less single-mindedly dispenses with much of the rich dimension of non-lexical meaning informing Bellow's language. Nowhere is this more evident than in the disregard for, and hence dismissal of, the notorious ambivalence of Bellow's endings as unearned, as contradictory of all that has preceded, as bleakly pessimistic in the depiction of the protagonist's capitulation to the comforting, but stifling, controls of order. One example will have to do. As evidence of Herzog's "parodie Romantic retreat" (p. 142) from life into "deep internal silence" at the end of the novel, Wilson cites Herzog's discovery that he has "no messages for anyone. Nothing. Not a single word." Wilson reads this statement as signaling the silencing of "vital intellectual Herzog" (p. 141): like "Bellow's other 'late' heroes," Herzog "give[s] up on trying to solve the insoluble problems of . . . existence" (p. 142). Gone is the ambiguous open-endedness so characteristic of Bellow's endings. Surely, "no messages for anyone" rings with a positive promise of Herzog's mental and emotional health and future actions as much as it possibly knells his subsidence into emotional and intellectual paralysis, as Wilson would solely have it. Perhaps that is the way of the reformer—to be over emphatic—and is the price we pay, and the allowance we must make, so that the intrepid voice challenging received opinion may have a hearing. University of Southern CaliforniaMax F. Schulz Searles, George J. The Fiction ofPhilip Roth andJohn Updike. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984. 197 pp. Cloth: $10.95. We tend to forget that a series of coincidences link Philip Roth and John Updike: they were born within a year of one another (Updike in 1932, Roth in 1933), and each published a first book of fiction in 1959 (Updike's Of the Farm; Roth's Goodbye, Columbus); their respective careers have been marked by enormous productivity, critical attention, and popular acclaim; terms like stylist, social realist, or novelist of manners can—indeed, are—applied to both writers. But that much said on behalf of similarity, the bald fact is that no two contemporary American writers seem more unlike one another. Trying to hold both writers in a single breath is rather like trying to imagine a chopped liver on raisin bread sandwich. Even casual readers would not confuse a paragraph by Roth with one by Updike. Roth's characters shout, they scream, they wave their hands; by contrast, Updike's characters are given to lyrical brooding, usually about sex or theology or some vaguely mystical combination of the two. More important, Philip Roth is as defined by his efforts to wriggle free from the unmanning constraints of American Jewishness as John Updike is obsessed by a vision of Protestantism gone seedy in the soul. The Fiction of Philip Roth and John Updike tries to balance the gains made by linking two of our most important contemporary American writers with the losses that come inevitably with such a comparison. In effect, Searles' study is an extended gloss of a savvy remark Robert Detweiler made some twenty-five years ago in a book entitled Four Spiritual Crises in Mid-Century American Fiction (1963): Updike writes of relationships (in the plural) and describes connections between individuals and natural and social institutions as symptomatic of the individual and societal search for God. Roth writes of relationship (in the singular) as both the method of and the place for finding ultimate meaning. Studies in American Fiction121 For better or worse, critics, Searles included, stilltalk about Roth and Updike in these terms. And while it is true that much of Searles' book is devoted to Roth and Updike seriatim, there are moments when he steps back to see them in tandem: The most truly significant difference between Roth and Updike is one of perspective. While Updike adopts a broad, almost sociological approach, Roth tends toward a more introspective handling of his material. His books are as much character studies of the protagonists as they are commentaries on the current scene. Accordingly, Roth's works are almost always written in the first...