John Updike, Midpoint

Laurence Mazzeno (Alvernia College)

Ed. by Sofia Ahlberg, Uppsala University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1969

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

Published in 1969, John Updike’s

Midpoint and Other Poems

consists of the title poem, a lengthy collage that occupies nearly half the volume, and numerous shorter lyrics and witty verse. While numerous pieces are reprinted from various magazines,

Midpoint

appears for the first time and is clearly the most important poem in the collection. It is Updike’s longest and most ambitious poem. Updike’s biographer Adam Begley describes it as a “searching look back over [Updike’s] thirty-six years, a summing-up after a prolific decade as a professional author and an excavation of his identity as a son, a lover, a husband, a father” (295). The poem is highly autobiographical. In it Updike assesses his own life as he has grown from a small boy in a suburb of a Pennsylvania manufacturing…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

978 words

Citation: Mazzeno, Laurence. "Midpoint". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 April 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3589, accessed 03 May 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article