‘Villages’ doesn’t quite measure up to Updike’s earlier works
When it comes to illustrating the innocence of 1930s boyhood in eastern Pennsylvania, the sexually charged atmosphere of WASPy 1960s New England dinner parties or the self-centeredness of male protagonists who feel trapped by their own choices in life, nobody does it better than John Updike.
In “Villages,” the author of “Rabbit, Run” and “Marry Me” revisits the themes and settings that for decades have been his forte, with predictably successful results. Still, it is hard to ignore the nagging feeling that Updike has written this same story before.
The title of Updike’s 21st novel refers to the places that have most shaped Owen Mackenzie, the product of a quaint childhood, an adulterous adulthood and a comfortable retirement in the Massachusetts hamlet of Haskells Crossing, where he has settled into a quiet routine with his second wife.
In retirement, Owen has ample time to reflect. It is through his flashbacks that Updike – who like Owen was born in eastern Pennsylvania and raised a family in New England – again reveals his great talent for describing ordinary life with extraordinary prose.
From childhood to the beginning of his first marriage, Owen is the image of wide-eyed naivete. Then a fumbled affair with a neighbor in Middle Falls, the Connecticut town where Owen and his first wife have settled, initiates him into a pattern of infidelity. From here, “Villages” abandons its focus on Owen’s efforts to build a career and family and turns its attention almost exclusively to the sexual relationships that define his middle years.
The numerous bedroom scenes – and motel room scenes and front seat make-out scenes and secluded park scenes – contain breathless descriptions of body parts and physical acts, each adding a new element to Owen’s sexual awakening.
But even more powerful are the beautifully worded passages following the demise of one affair or another. In one, Owen remembers how his parents’ quarreling usually elicited his sympathy for his father: “Men understand men, mechanisms with very few levers – a few earthy appetites, an atavistic warrior pride and stoicism. Women are shining moon-creatures, who hurt us when they withhold themselves, and again when they don’t.”
For all of the keen observations and rich details of Owen’s life, we never fully grasp the motivation for his infidelity. Was it his repressed childhood? Had his wife become frigid? Did he feel empty for unexplained reasons and try to use the affairs to fill up what was missing?
Updike never says; nor does he explain what it was about Owen’s second wife that put an end to the escapades. Perhaps, after reading about tryst after tryst, we are to infer that even Owen eventually tired of it all.
In classic Updike fashion, women are central to Owen’s life, but their roles in the book remain peripheral. They are baby machines or sex kittens who, either way, are endowed with great breasts and sharp tongues.
If you are looking for well-developed female characters (in the more literary sense), pick up “Seek My Face,” the 2002 novel in which Updike finally gives women their due. To see just how well Updike can dissect an unfulfilling relationship, try his 1976 novel, “Marry Me.” And for more insight into the geographical settings to which the author is so attached, savor the short works in “The Early Stories: 1953-1975,” a collection published last year.
Between beautiful writing and interesting character study, “Villages” still brings something to the literary table. But the familiarity of it all is more of a frustration than a comfort. This is the problem with setting the bar so high with decades of great work. It is difficult for newer books to measure up.