John Updike, página 2 de 10

Library of America launches its definitive multi-volume edition of John Updike''s novels with the four early works that signaled the arrival of one of the most gifted young novelists of the 1960s.John Updike had already made a name as a contributor of stories and poems to The New Yorker when, in January 1959, at the age of twenty-six, he published his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, launching one of the most extraordinary literary careers in American letters. Now, Library of America inaugurates a multi-volume edition of Updike''s novels with this volume gathering his first four novels, including the landmark Rabbit, Run, chosen in 2010 by TIME Magazine one of the best 100 novels published in English since 1923. Set in the near future of 1978, The Poorhouse Fair stages a conflict between John Hook, a rebellious ninety-four-year-old former schoolteacher now a resident of a rural poorhouse, and young Mr. Conner, the utilitarian humanist who runs the facility, as an allegory of resistance in a world of systems and efficiencies. Updike''s legendary rejoinder to Jack Kerouac''s On the Road, Rabbit, Run (1960) introduces us to the author''s most enduring protagonist, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who, on an impulse, deserts his wife and son, with tragic consequences. The Centaur, a comic-tragic father-son novel that mixes memory and myth, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1964. The novella Of the Farm (1965) is one of Updike''s loveliest performances, a kind of chamber music for four voices set during a single memorable weekend.

On a spring day in Vermont, seventy-nine-year-old painter Hope Chafetz tells the story of her life to Kathryn, a young interviewer from New York. Questions send Hope back to her youth, to the heady postwar days of American art and her relationships with the artists who defined their times. As the day wears on, Kathryn and Hope interviewer and interviewee try to understand one another across the gulf of age, experience and time that lies between them. And subtly, as each comes to know the other, their relationship changes . . .

More than three decades have passed since the events described in The Witches of Eastwick and the three divorcees Alexandra, Jane and Sukie have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world to exotic lands such as Canada, China and Egypt and renew old acquaintances. And then, one summer, they decide to go back to Eastwick. The old Rhode Island seaside town where they once indulged in sensuous mischief still holds enchantment for the three, but it also holds memories, and there are those who remember them and wish them ill . . .

New York advertising man brings his new family to visit the farm of his youth, thereby encountering ghosts of the past.

.Parece ya muy antigua la leyenda del hombre que sale un día de casa a buscar tabaco y decide no volver. Pues bien, se remonta tan sólo a 1960, año en que, gracias a John Updike, el mundo conoció al inefable Harry Conejo Angstrom, cuyas peripecias empiezan a contarse aqui en el momento en que, sin razon aparente, abandona mujer e hijo, su modesta condicion de vendedor de MagiPeels y el recuerdo de cuando fue un as del baloncesto. A partir de entonces, Conejo Angstrom seguira su camino sin rumbo, a la vez esquivando y buscando quien sabe que. Ni siquiera el lector mas sabio podria decirlo, porque ¿quien alguna vez, obedeciendo a un impulso inexplicable, no ha salido (o deseado salir) huyendo como un vulgar conejo antes que enfrentarse al mundo, o a si mismo ? De ahi que este supuesto hombre libre, como cualquiera de nosotros tal vez, caiga constante y torpemente atrapado en la enmarañada existencia con la que debe cargar inexsorablemente todo ser humano.

John Updike has written a brilliant novel that ranks among the most provocative of his distinguished career. Terrorist is the story of Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, an alienated American-born teenager who spurns the materialistic, hedonistic life he witnesses in the slumping New Jersey factory town he calls home. Turning to the words of the Holy Quran as expounded to him by the pedantic imam of a local mosque, Ahmad devotes himself fervently to God. Neither the world-weary guidance counselor at his high school nor Ahmads mischievously seductive classmate Joryleen succeeds in deflecting him from his course, as the threads of an insidious plot gather around him. One compelling and surprising ride.USA Today The startlingly contemporary story of a high school student . . . whose zealous Islamic faith and disaffection with modern life make him a pawn in the larger conflict between Muslim and Christian, East and West. They also make him a powerful voice for Updikes ongoing critique of American civilization.

Estamos en 1962. La vida discurre con aparente tranquilidad en Greenwood, un suburbio de Connecticut que es la viva imagen del sueno americano: familias unidas, prosperas y felices, paseos por la playa y fiestas regadas de alcohol en bonitos jardines. Jerry Conant y Sally Mathias inician una relacion adultera y fantasean con contraer matrimonio, sin saber que sus respectivos conyuges, Ruth y Richard, tambien tienen una aventura.A lo largo de cinco capitulos simetricos, la prosa luminosa y mordaz de Updike narra los vaivenes de este cuadrado amoroso y hurga en la conciencia desgarrada de unos personajes atrapados entre el orden y el caos, la culpa y la redencion, el ideal de la paz familiar y el deseo sexual: Tal vez nuestro problema es que vivimos en el ocaso de la vieja moral, de modo que aun queda la suficiente moral para atormentarnos, pero no la suficiente para mantenernos presos.

A la provinciana Eastwick, una població petita de Rhode Island, tres dones, en divorciar-se, descobreixen no només que tenen aptituds artístiques, sinó també que tenen poders. Les tres bruixes malbaraten els seus dons en ximpleries o maldats fins que arriba el misterios Darryl van Horne, que les sedueix -metaforicament i literalment- a totes. Aquest, pero, acaba casant-se amb una innocent amiga de les tres, i les bruixes opten per venjar-se provocant-li una malaltia terminal a la incauta. Aquesta es la primera novel·la en que Updike va fixar la seva mirada, gens indulgent, en les dones. El resultat es una obra que traspua vitalitat, bona dosi dhumor, un pessic de luxuria i una suau olor de sofre. Lobra, convertida en un classic amb el pas del temps, es va adaptar al cinema amb molt dexit amb Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Cher i Michelle Pfeiffer com a protagonistes.

"Rabbit" Angstrom has not outgrown his adolescent triumphs as a school-games hero. Stuck with an alcoholic wife, a child, and a futile job in a banal town, he bounces between a despairing wife and a demanding mistress, and anyone - except "Rabbit" - can see where it will end.