Toward the End of Time

Toward the End of Time is the second John Updike book I've read (The Centaur being the first). I didn't like this nearly as much. Updike is an intellectual read any way you cut it and maybe it's not best to read this book in drips and dribbles (yes...that's an allusion to one of the issues the main

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character has in the book).

Anyway, Updike jumps back and forth through time with his character - whether it's all in the character's head it's up to the reader to decide. The jumping back and forth can be disorientating - but perhaps that was part of the goal.

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In John Updike’s 18th novel, Toward the End of Time, retired investment counselor Ben Turnbull resides comfortably with his second wife Gloria in a sizable house on a luxurious suburban property. In his meditative journal entries, he describes the normal and largely mundane activities that

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consume his days: playing golf with friends, doctor appointments, visiting with his children and grandchildren, working in the garden, observing nature, retrieving the newspaper from the mailbox from the bottom of the driveway. But Ben’s normal is not our normal. The year is 2020. A recent war between China and the US has devastated the world economy, pushed civilization to the brink of collapse, and killed off roughly half the world’s population. The conflict has left the country fragmented, with local governments usurping federal authority, including issuing their own currency: in the American northeast where Ben and Gloria live, people make their daily purchases using “Massachusetts scrip.” Social services are in disarray. Instead of paying taxes, citizens pay thugs and hoodlums for “protection.” The tensions in Ben’s life are numerous. Gloria, who runs a gift shop and is often away on buying trips, passionately tends her lavish garden. She expects her husband to help, and her caustic reaction when Ben fails to shoot a deer that’s been eating her euonymus bush is enough to make him question his masculinity and his role in their relationship. In addition, Ben is feeling the weight of passing time and is ultra-conscious of the limits that age impose on physical activity. Like most if not all of Updike’s male protagonists, Ben is obsessed with his libido and his performance in the bedroom. While Gloria is away on an extended trip, he moves a young “whore” named Deirdre into the house. And while their sexual escapades are frequent and vigorous, Ben acknowledges that outside of the bedroom their connection is not a deep one and is probably not sustainable. Proving him right, just before Gloria returns, Deirdre decamps, taking with her a few minor household items and some heirlooms of modest value. The wistful tone of Ben’s journal derives in part from his age and declining health, and in part from the bleak outlook he foresees for humanity on a ruined planet spinning through an indifferent universe. Indeed, Ben’s narrative is reminiscent of Roger Lambert’s in Updike’s 1986 novel Roger’s Version, which fixates in a similar fashion on man’s relationship with god and looks for meaning in a nebulous philosophical arena where science and spirituality merge. The book makes ample display of John Updike’s astonishing erudition and a facility for language unmatched by any other writer of his generation. Though always entertaining, the novel does meander somewhat: Updike is not above indulging himself with extended asides and numerous digressions. But the story of Ben Turnbull’s struggle with mortality is also wise and prescient. As a glimpse into an imagined but all-too-persuasive “postwar, post-law-and-order twilight,” Toward the End of Time gives the reader a great deal to think about.

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Too dark, too depressing. I couldn't finish it. Gave it up about 120 pages in. TOWARD THE END OF TIME (1997) was Updike's contribution to dystopian fiction (which is very fashionable these days), a subgenre I care little about. I was for many years a devotee of all things Updike, but not this one.

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Nope. Maybe it's me that's changed, because he was still the master painter with words. Gone a dozen years now,and I miss him as one of the great writers from my youth and midlife years. But his subject here was just unlikeable, unrelatable. Life's too short. Nope.

- Tim Bazzett author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

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