The colossal ambition of John Updike

Last weekend I wrote about the new collection of early stories by John Updike and suggested that the usual tributes to Updike’s gifts with the language do not do justice to his literary achievement. Sam Tanenhaus is also unsatisfied with the conventional assessment of Updike; Slate has posted his outstanding piece on Updike’s ambition and accomplishment as seen through the prism of the collection, with a sidelong glance at Updike’s four-and-a-half novels about Rabbit Angstrom: “Rabbit, race.”

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