Toward the End of Time

Although I have the Rabbit books, I haven't read them yet, so my only exposure to Updike so far has been this book and the Centaur. After reading both books I find I really like his style, hyperdetailed and flowing at the same time, his gift for description can carry even the most static scenes along. Which helps because this novel is all static scenes. It's the journal of Ben Turnbull who is growing old in the year 2020, in a US which has been devastated by war with China but doesn't seem all that much different, and uses his journal to meditate on all sorts of things, from his squabbles with his wife to (apparently) pretending he's different people during different periods of history. The charactization of Turnbull is excellent and throughout the book the reader really gets a feel for him, even as he keeps trying to slip away behind babbling about physics and being one of the guys who wrote the Gospel, his relationship with his wives and children are nicely sketched out and pull no punches, alternatively showing him in a good and bad light. The plot can best be described as episodic, things mostly happen and Turnbull comments on them . . . though Updike does a nice job of playing with the perceptions of the reader, since the novel is entirely subjective the reader only can go by what Turnbull tells them, leading to questions to how reliable he is. But then, since there's little rising action, the mystery makes little difference other as an academic exercise. Still kind of fun, though. Much like the Centaur, Updike loves to pull those oh so literary tricks of having his wife vanish, some other woman replace her with a sort of muffled explanation and then have his wife reappear with an equally muffled explanation, along with having the narrative mostly stop completely to incorporate vaguely relevant asides. The historical asides are nice as well, though they can surprising because some of the journal entries slide right into them without warning . . . I'm not sure what the purpose of those are, though they are entertaining and different. Perhaps Updike wanted to spice the novel up a bit. In the end though it's both Updike's at times stunningly beautiful descriptions (especially of landscape and weather) and his detailing of Ben Turnbull and his relationships to the various people he knows that form the core of the novel and ultimately decide how much you'll enjoy it. For the most part it's a book you experience more than decipher, one that poses more questions than it answers and when it ends, you'll find yourself a bit older (unless you read really fast, I guess) with perhaps a few more thoughts to ponder. Not a pulse pounding page turner, but gripping in its own way nonetheless.

The main character is a man who spent most of his adult chasing women, pursuing his career and playing golf is now faced with his own mortality. He speculates over the missed opportunities that life presented him and to some extent wonders what he should have done differently; but he continues to chase young girls and play golf while he does this speculating. Yet this lecherous old man is extremely likeable and very entertaining as he ponders not only his own demise but also the end of all things, including the universe itself.

There is great irony in the title, because the world it portrays is not dying, but returning to life. The imagined Sino-American War has destroyed neither life nor civilization -- it has disrupted the old patterns of both, and new ones are emerging in their place, like vegetation through the cracks in a cement sidewalk.The narrative voice is a wonderfully cynical but perceptive observer of this reawakening. I heartily recommend this book.Having said all that I might add that I really don't understand the "reader from Greece." He seems to think that the mere fact that a woman has five children implies that she sees herself as a mechanical "breeder". I am one of my mother's five, and cannot agree.

Toward The End of Time made the New York Times's "Notable Books" list for '97, but never really got the attention it deserves. Although set in the near future (the year 2020 should be a tip-off that Updike is having some fun with this device) the book is focused very much on the here-and-now as experienced by Ben Turnbull, an aging investment adviser whose wife may be trying to kill him, or may herself be dead; who may or may not be having an interesting and oddly touching affair with a local prostitute; and who seems to be advising a group of local hoodlums on how best to shake down the neighbors. What Ben is certainly doing is confronting his own mortality: from the opening lines, in which winter comes far too early to the north shore of Massachusetts, to the closing moments, in which, one year later, a sudden burst of warm weather stirs a midwinter flurry of insect life, Ben immerses himself in a sensual awareness of the physical world even as his thoughts seem to travel back through time, lighting on the defining moments of an unusual cast of characters. Whether a reader is jarred by these sudden digressions to ancient Egypt, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere will depend in large part on whether he or she enters into the spirit of the novel, which is ultimately impressionistic, despite its surfeit of detail. In my view Updike works wonders--who else will see the world for us this clearly and render it into such perfect prose? Add to that his subtle but resonant sense of humor (the prevailing unit of currency is dubbed the "welder," after Massachusetts governor Bill Weld; in the absence of a strong central government following a brief nuclear war with China, Federal Express has begun to assert order) and his evermore masterful chronicling of the tensions between men and women, and this novel emerges as one of his very best. Although in many respects Ben Turnbull's life closely resembles Updike's, let's hope that the author is not near the end of his time; clearly, miraculously, his powers continue to bloom.

i am stunned that the so-called critics of modern literature read this book as it was some sort of science fiction fantasy about the year 2020; calling for more detail and not understanding the relationship between its parts. When are we to learn that consciousness is best understood by weaving together our dreams and our "waking" moments. The descriptions of life in the garden, live in the cave, life on the highway and life on the run all form a continuous string through one man's understanding of the temporality and confusion that is our lives. Splendid!