Customer Reviews

Roger's Version

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It was Ian McEwan's piece on John Upike in the New York Review of Books that made me finally take "Roger's Version" off the shelf. An Updike acolyte, I had yet to read this book, but as McEwan focused on Updike's vision of a `dead spot' at the center of America, a recurring theme in Updike that McEwan notes in "Roger's Version," I knew it was time to crack it. McEwan notes that in this book `that dead spot was the ruined inner city of `Roger's Version,' a spoiled landscape through which a divinity professor takes a thirty-page stroll - one of the great set pieces of the entire body of work...'

Indeed. "Roger's Version" is a book that is loaded with landmines - lines, sometimes paragraphs, that a casual reader might quickly gloss over (and there are so many). But it is here that Updike is really making his points.

His uncanny, unsparing and totally accurate rendering of the inner city `hood is certainly a Boston area locale, but Updike is eerily prescient in that his description of a place that is very similar to Lowell, Mass., down to a multi-level that has survived a fire: `On this same corner a building, its lower floor reshingled in stylish irregular shades, had survived a fire in its top floors, which had left charred window frames empty of sashes; but the bar downstairs continued open, and sounds from within - the synthetic concussions of a video game. . . indicated a thriving business, well before the Happy Hour though it was.'

This is an exact description of the Rainbow Café, (a Kerouac haunt) though the fire did not happen until years after "Roger's Version" was published.

Here are some other landmines:

On Christianity: `How did those Israelites get their hooks into us so deeply, sticking us with their frightful black Bible and it imprecations while their modern descendants treat the matter as a family joke, filling their own lives with violin music and clear-eyed, Godless science? L'Chaim! Compared with the Jews we protestants do indeed dwell in the valley of death.'

On racial relations in America in the `80s, as he describes the guests at a faculty cocktail party, noting an African-American couple in attendance: `... and the Vanderluytens, to give our gathering the factitious jolly racial mix of a Coca-Cola commercial on television...'

And Updike's rendering of a night spent crunching code in a (very 1980s) university computer lab is stunning. `Vague sounds from elsewhere in the building - elevator doors opening and closing, cables singing in the black shaft, surges of humming on the floor below - indicate the presence of either of other night workers or else of automated workings, of timers and thermostats inflexibly sending their signals.'

As was his habit, Updike populates this book with topical references to when it was composed (the mid-`80s). There is Cyndi Lauper's `Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' as well as President Reagan's `Bonzo Goes to Bitburg' moment. And here Updike's bedrock conservatism is laid bare (as well as a gift of prophesy): `And yet it seemed to me that we all existed inside Reagan's placid, uncluttered head as inside a giant bubble, and that the day might come when the bubble burst, and those of us who survived would look back upon this present America as a paradise.'

Most commentators have referred to "Roger's Version" as one of Updike's lesser accomplishments. But to this reader Updike is as on top of his game here as he is in the Rabbit books. There are so many gems, so many brilliant observations, in this book.

But ultimately "Roger's Version" is about God and about life and about death - and Updike is unsparing in his assessment of the Big Questions:
`There are few things which, contemplated, do not like flimsy trapdoors open under the weight of our attention into the bottomless pit below.'

And the clincher:

`What was this desolation in Dale's heart, I thought, but the longing for God - that longing which is, when all is said and done, our only evidence of His existence?'

I am an avid reader of John Updike, but I sometimes have trouble relating to some of his characters.

This novel centers around the theme of faith versus science in the world of divinity professor Roger Lambert, who is aging and questioning many things these days. When confronted by a faithful computer science student who believes he can use computers to prove the existence of God. Lambert is attracted to the idea and the debate but is, ultimately, intent on discouraging or discrediting the students efforts.

As is always the case, the book is about much more than the theme. Updike captures the mood of the Reagan era, the environment of a decaying Northeastern city, and the attitudes and changes that come with aging like no other author can. This book shows, yet again, why Updike is a modern master of fiction. It is intellectual and engaging.

Updike at his effortless best in this profound yet brilliantly flowing novel that explores the alkward relationship between religion and science...

The story is narrated by Roger, a morally dubious yet entertaining and witty doctor of divinity at an Eastern university. Roger is approached by a gangling, spotty computer scientist (who is also a born-again Christian) seeking a grant to "scientifically" prove the existance of god!

Things get complicated when the student begins having an affair with Esther, Roger's wife, while he himself begins an affair with a distant relative who lives across town in a housing project. Within this simple yet touching quadrangle of relationships come excepts from Roger's lectures on heretics, and comments on modern cosmology...

Add to this Updike's effortlessly telling descriptions, from the feel of cold streets to the elaborate rituals of academic board meetings and you have a very fine novel indeed.

One slight critisism - the computer technology so lovingly described is virtually obsolete already. This makes Roger's Version an unusally dated Updike work.

There is something not quite human about how much John Updike actually KNOWS. Roger's Version is a substantial novel about the relationship between a professor of divinity and an expert in computer science. Updike does not shy from - rather he wholeheartedly immerses himself in - the details of these spheres of interest, seesawing between the complexities of heretical sects in the early Christian Church and the voluminous realms of astrophysics. One minute we are reading long quotations in medieval Latin; the next we get - for example - 'Since z = 2.5 constitutes a plane, then by setting z equal to the transformed coordinates of the model carbon molecule atoms Dale creates a series of more complex intersections...'. The story is about the extent to which the two esoteric schools can be made to meet; basically, can one 'prove' the existence of God through science? In pursuing the argument Updike, naturally, does more than just thrash through the intellectual issues; he structures the whole affair with his typical artistry, so that the idea of, say, the binary opposition informs a raft of clever leitmotifs - most gorgeously: 'At her attack, the delicious flutter of ambiguity beat its wings, necessarily two, through all my suddenly feminized being.' This is a magisterial, monumental book. It's a fine, heavy book. In the scale of both its intellectual and artistic pretensions I honestly think one can call it Miltonic.

Reading this finally convinced me that Mr. Updike really is a true master of the language! It seems impossible to top this as purely imaginative, yet true to life commentary on 1984-85 America, written in 1986. When a 29 year old computer Grad Student approaches Roger, the ex Methodist Divine, now Theology Prof, about a Grant which the young man hopefully pursues to prove (?) the existence of the Deity through Computer Technology, we're off to a great start in world of Academia, Theology and Scepticism, Family History, Friendships, Race Relations, Medicine, Evolutionary Science, Computer Science (hard to follow, even if dated!), City Neighborhoods of all kinds, not to mention author's usual reflections on adultery and stale marriages. Note how Mr. Updike smoothly switches between 1st and 3rd Persons, which is probably Roger's dream version of his wife's seamy escapades. The very last sentence seems strange, but throws another loop into this fine and seamless story!

"A born-again computer whiz kid bent on proving the existence of God on his computer meets a middle-aged divinity professor, Roger Lambert, who'd just as soon leave faith a mystery. Soon the computer hacker begins an affair with professor Lambert's wife -- and Roger finds himself experiencing deep longings for a trashy teenage girl."

That's what the marketing department of Ballantine Books says Roger's Version is about. And, really, that description does summarize the high points. Surprisingly, they've left out the fact that the "trashy teenage girl" is the daughter of Roger's half-sister. Wouldn't that little taste of partial incest bring in a few more readers? At least, the ones who are already familiar with author John Updike's specialty: what I like to call "the dalliances of adulterous suburbanites."

Only this time, Updike also adds in discussions about religion, computers, and astrophysics culled from the best minds in these areas (check out the Acknowledgments page for credits). In addition, also talked about freely are politics, economics, and modern music (the book is practically soundtracked to Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual).

In this way, Roger's Version is like an undergraduate-level class on these subjects delivered with Updike's typically gorgeous prose -- and peppered with illicit trysts to keep the reader's interest. Reader Michael Prichard is the perfect audiobook reader for Updike's work. His nearly flat tone gives equal gravity both to lengthy passages on erudite subjects and to nearly pornographic sexual situations (including a description of one character's erect member so detailed that the listener could practically draw it from memory).

Which contemporary author would dare to wrestle in one novel with themes of science vs. faith; computer technology; theology; infidelity; doubt; pain; loss; family struggle? Updike masterfully takes on each of these themes and left this reader breathless in admiration. Perhaps one of Updike's more suspenseful novels (not an adjective often used of his prose), I found the last third of the novel unbelievably compelling reading--the characters are real and deeply flawed--just as we are. An ambitious book that makes one better after reading it than before.

This is the first John Updike book I ever read, and it's still one of my favorites. I've since read many, many more, but this is the one that really stays with me. Even though I initially picked it up because I heard that it explored the theme of technology intersecting with theology, I quickly discovered that that was a secondary issue at best. Any disappointment I may have felt was short lived, however, as I soon became engrossed in the writing, the story, the characters, and the attention to detail. Not only does Updike masterfully capture place, time, and mood, but he uses such expressive, artful language to do it that even now, years later, I'm still able to recall whole sentences and snatches of dialogue. This book taught me that great writers go beyond using language merely to tell a story; they use it, like all great artists, to reveal underlying truths about the world and to get us to see and experience things in a new way.

This is one of John Updike's very best books-and that's saying something.The first chapter alone has more substance than just about anything else you'll read this year. All of the familiar Updike themes are here: religon,modern relationships,class,sex,family,etc. Do yourself a favor and check this one out.

Updike for me is a very inconsistent writer. Loved his In the Beauty of Lilies, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest,
Witches of Eastwick but couldn't finish his Rabbit, Run and don't even want to start Rabbit Redux.
The problem with Updike is overwriting like in Rabbit, Run.
Roger's Version seems bit dated and argument seems trivial. Of course, there is always lots of sex in all his books but cringe-inducing quasi-incest ( sex with daughter-in-law or niece) is a turn-off. In this book, there is a sex scene that is best I've ever read. I own almost all his books but I don't think I'll or want to continue reading him. I rather reread Martin Amis's books.
I recommend a review of one his later books (forgot the title) by David Foster Wallace. Look it up. It pretty much sums up problem with Updike.