Don Greiner

Myth and Gospel in the Fiction of John Updike

Arts & Literature

“John Updike was an American treasure. In the second half of the twentieth century, Updike and Saul Bellow inherited the mantle of 'literary giant' that William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway wore in the first half. A master of the elegantly lyrical sentence and the precisely observed detail, Updike used these gifts to probe the yearnings, both spiritual and mundane, of ordinary Americans. John McTavish is an ideal reader of Updike's explorations of the complex relationship between the sacred and the profane.”