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 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. ( )

JOHN UPDIKE IS "A STYLIST OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, capable of illuminating the sublime in the mundane, thereby elevating all of human experience." --Chicago Tribune

Toward the End of Time "is the journal of a 66-year-old man, Ben Turnbull . . . [which] reveals not only the world but the wanderings of his wits. . . . So what if he jumps from a United States in the next century, disintegrating after a war with China, to ancient Egypt, or to virtual reality? So what if characters appear and disappear like phantoms in a dream? . . . Turnbull's journal is like Walden gone haywire. . . . If Ben's ruthlessness is evenhanded, so is his alarming intelligence; it falls on every scene, person, object, and thought in the book, giving it an eerie ambiance."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A BOOK AIMED NOT TO RESOLVE BUT TO AROUSE A READER'S WONDER . . . Vintage Updike: marital angst worked out against the chilly backdrop of privilege, rendered with a lyricism and insight and eye for detail reminiscent of the work of Jane Austen."
--The Miami Herald

"WONDERFUL RUSHES OF NEAR-MELVILLEAN PROSE . . . Toward the End of Time has a force that gets under your skin."
--New York Review of Books

un rare chef-d'oeuvre ! ( )

A nice exercise in Chaos theory. The main character is an old man who is very preoccupied with his private parts, but other than that, I found this riveting read.

Updike is a fabulous writer, but I have not been altogether comfortable in the universe that he is conjuring. Possibly it's his age, but the undiluted "masculinity" (polite word for sexism or misogyny) of this character has been a bit of a shock to me! In many ways, I imagine that reading this book has been an experience akin to what readers of horror experience! Are all old guys obsessed with their genitals and failing potency, and do they really think that a 14 year old who is not being paid would consent to being touched by them and apparently enjoy it? Well, it is a work of fiction, I must remind myself. It's easy to forget, particularly as Updike is the same age, race and inhabits the same geographical area as the protagonist.

Still, the novel is quite engrossing, in a car crash sort of way. ( )