Updike and Politics

Presenting the first interdisciplinary consideration of his political thought, Updike and Politics: New Considerations establishes a new scholarly foundation for assessing one of the most recognized and significant American writers of the post-1945 period. This book brings together a diverse group of American and international scholars, including contributors from Japan, India, Israel, and Europe. Like Updike himself, the collection canvases a wide range of topics, including Updike's too often overlooked poetry and his single play. Its essays deal with not only political themes such as the traditional aspects of power, rights, equality, justice, or violence but also the more divisive elements in Updike's work like race, gender, imperialism, hegemony, and technology. Ultimately, the book reveals how Updike's immense body of work illuminates the central political questions and problems that troubled American culture during the second half of the twentieth century as well as the opening decade of the new millennium.

Matthew Shipe is senior lecturer and the director of Advanced Writing in the English department at Washington University, Missouri.
Scott Dill is lecturer of English at Case Western Reserve University.

Chapter 1: Updike and the American Presidency
Chapter 2: "We're None of Us Perfect": Watergate and Adultery in John Updike's A Month of Sundays and Memories of the Ford Administration
Chapter 3: Presidential Politics as Sexual Politics: Memories of the Ford Administration
Chapter 4: Updike, Obama and the Poetics of Hope
Chapter 5: Updike on Demagoguery
Chapter 6: 'Love it or leave it': America in red, gray and blue in Rabbit Redux
Chapter 7: 'Mail' Chauvinism: John Updike's Postal Fetish and the Unrealizable Vision of American Democracy
Chapter 8: The Failure of Moderation in Buchanan Dying and Memories of the Ford Administration
Chapter 9: Inside Reagan's 'Placid, Uncluttered Head': Roger's Version and the Rise of Neoliberalism
Chapter 10: The Politics of Vulnerability in The Afterlife and Other Stories
Chapter 11: John Updike's Terrorist and the Politics of Hygiene
Chapter 12: Updike's Middle East: A Neoliberal Approach to Conflict Resolution
Chapter 13: Updike "Third-Worlds It": Staging The Coup as Political Satire
Chapter 14: The Three Mile Island Accident and the Man from Toyota: American Cold War Cultural Politics,Ressentiment, and the Uncanny Double in Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest
Chapter 15: John Updike and the World: The Politics of Identity in Brazil