Cosmic Defiance : Updike's Kierkegaard and the Maples Stories / David Crowe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crowe, David, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Updike, John--Criticism and interpretation.

Updike, John.

Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855--Influence.

Kierkegaard, Søren.

Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855.

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

352 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Macon, Georgia : Mercer University Press, [2014]

Summary:

John Updike once wrote that many of his works are "illustrations of Kierkegaard," and yet no current study provides an extended, convincing reason why this is so, why Updike came to live by Søren Kierkegaard's ideas. This study does, telling the story of Updike's life-altering encounter with FEAR AND TREMBLING in his early career, and tracing the subsequent evolution of Updike's complex and coherent theology. Examining Updike's many claims about Kierkegaard's life and work, and casting those claims into debate with Kierkegaard's best scholars and critics, this book explains why Kierkegaard and his intellectual inheritors Karl Barth and Miguel de Unamuno provided Updike with a reason to live, and a vocation as an antinomian Christian writer. COSMIC DEFIANCE pursues the same question Updike did: how are identity and action bound up with faith in God? The eighteen intensely autobiographical Maples stories, chapters in the tale of a twenty-two-year marriage that begins hopefully but ends in divorce, epitomize the theological preoccupations Updike learned from Kierkegaard-becoming an authentic self and learning to love the neighbor creatively rather than compulsively. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Updike's Kierkegaard 21

2 The Neighbor-Love Problem for the Rather Antinomian Believer 52

3 Kierkegaard's Marital Ideality and Updike's Reality 78

4 Identity Transformation and the Maples Marriage 109

5 Oh But They Were Close 141

"Snowing in Greenwich Village"

"Wife-Wooing"

6 Fathoms Deep in the Wrong 162

"Giving Blood"

"Twin Beds in Rome"

"Marching Through Boston"

7 The Etiquette of Adultery 197

"The Taste of Metal"

"Your Lover Just Called"

"Waiting Up" "Eros Rampant"

8 Frightened People Discussing 240

"Plumbing"

"The Red-Herring Theory"

"Sublimating"

"Nakedness"

9 Consecrated Unhappiness 275

"Separating" "Gesturing"

"Divorcing: A Fragment"

10 Reality is Sacred 310

"Here Come the Maples"

"Grandparenting".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780881465020

088146502X

OCLC:

884616986