John Updike has long been a major figure in American literature. More than fifty volumes of criticism on his writings exist, which translates to more than one volume per year since 1970. Yet during the early years of the new century critical interest was declining. Updike's final nine novels, stretching from Memories of the Ford Administration (1992) to The Widows of Eastwick (2008), did not inspire the same enthusiasm as earlier works, and his legacy increasingly became linked to identity politics, where Updike was viewed by some as a self-indulgent, privileged, white male.

Much changed with the author's death in 2009. An astonishing range of tributes poured forth, many claiming Updike to be the major writer of his generation and one of the significant figures of American literary history. A surge of activity followed. The John Updike Review, a biannual academic journal, was launched. Updike's literary estate published several posthumous works and announced that a selection of the author's letters would be forthcoming. Updike's oeuvre began to reappear in attractive new paperback editions and in volumes from the Library of America and Everyman's Library. Commensurate with all this activity, critical interest in Updike accelerated: between 2012 and 2017 a dozen new volumes appeared.

Among these recent studies are biographies: Adam Begley's Updike (2014) and Jack De Bellis's John Updike's Early Years (2013); as well as James Plath's collection John Updike's Pennsylvania Interviews (2016). Other volumes are dedicated to a single work, for example David Crowe's theological study of The Maples Stories, and Farouq Rezq's books on The Coup and Terrorist.Footnote ¹ Still others survey the history of Updike criticism (Laurence W. Mazzeno), collect prominent essays (Bernard Rodgers), address the spiritual and mythical depths beneath Updike's surfaces (John McTavish), or provide longer views (Bob Batchelor).Footnote ²

The most recently published volume is Michial Farmer's Imagination and Idealism in John Updike's Fiction, a very good monograph that comes from a new, young critic. At first glance Farmer's book, which depends upon Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, and Martin Heidegger, and explores such topics as adultery and the dominant mother, may sound like other Updike studies. Yet Farmer's book, as it turns out, is both original and useful. Building his argument on the metaphysics of Jean-Paul Sartre, Farmer makes a strong case for the prominence of the imagination in Updike's writings.

Given that Updike is widely considered a realist who writes autobiographically, imagination is seldom a focus of his work, certainly not in the way it would be in studies of, say, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, or Margaret Atwood. Yet imagination is the operative word here as Farmer constructs a theory of imagination that focusses not only on the author but also on his characters. Updike's characters, Farmer argues, often use their imaginations to construct a dream world or “falsified universe” that is clearly at odds with reality, which of course leads to conflict (4).

Part I of Farmer's study explores the powerful, dominant dreams of the mother in such stories as “Flight” (1959) and “His Mother Inside Him” (1992), and in novels like The Centaur (1963) and Of the Farm (1965). The “mythic immensity” of the mother's dreams is so overwhelming that “genuine escape” for the son is “ultimately impossible” (40, 62). In Part III Farmer turns to Updike's Scarlet Letter trilogy and the destructive power of “an unchecked masculine imagination” in such figures as Thomas Marshfield and Roger Lambert. In these novels “women are forced into the powerful fantasy lives of the men they love,” with Updike “keenly aware of the damage that men inflict on women” (5). Part IV examines the imaginative speculations of the three empowered witches from The Witches of Eastwick, whose magic functions “as a particularly potent form of imagination” that leads to “disastrous and tragic results” (6). As demonstrated throughout the book, imagination can be a powerful and liberating force, but it can also lead to destruction and solipsism.

In some respects, what Farmer means by “imagination” is what others would call interiority, a state of existence that figures significantly in Updike's writing, particularly the Rabbit novels where much of the action takes place in Harry's head (Farmer opts not to discuss the Rabbit novels for fear they would require a volume of their own). The same degree of interiority is present in A Month of Sundays (1973) and Roger's Version (1986), where we are subject almost entirely to the musings and sexual fantasies of Marshfield and Lambert. By making us more aware of how Updike's characters employ their imaginative power to control and subdue others, Farmer contributes substantively to our understanding of Updike.

An additional contribution comes through Farmer's attention to the short fiction. Though an accomplished novelist, Updike was an even better short-story writer. Unfortunately, that work, like most short fiction, has received relatively little attention. By providing perceptive and detailed readings of more than twenty-five Updike stories, Farmer fills an important gap. In addition, by weaving together his readings of the novels and stories within chapters, rather than placing them in separate silos, Farmer generates a book that feels more harmonious and seamless in its attention to Updike's work in multiple genres (he also studies Updike's personal essays). Further, Farmer does an excellent job of engaging in dialogue with most of Updike's critics, no small feat, and proves knowledgeable and adept in addressing work from all stages of Updike's career.

This is a first-rate study, an immensely readable and intelligent critical argument that both widens our understanding of Updike's narrative powers and complicates, via the imagination, his status as a realist whose objective is simple fidelity to reality. Attention to Updike is clearly on the rise, and Farmer provides us with additional substantive reasons for why Updike's writings reward careful scrutiny.