TOWARD THE END OF TIME, by John Updike
1997. Rating: 8
John Updike is almost always a challenging author to read, but that is
just one of reasons his books can be so fascinating.
Toward the End of Time is one man's struggle in a chaotic world to
define both himself and his place in history. The novel's protagonist
is 68-year-old Ben Turnbull, a man contending with both a failing body
and the breakdown of the society he was born with, raised with, and lived
most of his adult life with. The year is 2020, ten years after the United
States suffered through a long and bitter war with China that ravaged the
country as we knew it. But the war is only the historical backdrop for
a man contending to discover some order and continuity, both for
himself and the world, out of multiple layers of chaos.
Seen through the pages of one year of Ben's diary, we watch him
adjusting to a new social order, where some amenities remain (including
roadtrips, beach holidays, and golf games) but U.S. currency has
been replaced by local Massachusetts scrip, Washington D.C. is full of empty
monuments, and "police" protection is provided at no small cost
by young local gang members. His health is breaking down, as is his marriage;
and yet through all the turmoil, Ben manages to let his mind wander back and
forth through the history of a humanity he realizes himself more and more to
be a part of.
Updike deftly weaves us through a past that includes ancient
Egypt to a roadtrip with Saints Paul and Luke, to Ben's own personal past,
events showing how both humanity and Ben both got to where they are by the time
of the novel. Little by little, through personal vignettes and mental time
traveling, Ben somehow becomes grander by realizing the small scope of
where he is in that human epic. The little details of his life--growing
more distant from his wife, falling in love with a young female gang member,
fighting a deer, slowly turning the gang members into something a little
above themselves, and the aches and pains of old age--tie him inextricably with
every other human being who ever came before and will come after him.
And assuring him with the knowledge that humanity will go on--as the title
puts it, toward the end of time.
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