Word: marshfield
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...picture of Rabbit Angstrom, and it is not really a picture of the Reverend Thomas Marshfield, the hero of this new book. But Marshfield has more of John Updike in him--the Updike who doesn't long for an animal existence and doesn't mind living in New York City--than the mute heroes of half a dozen of his previous novels...
Whose poetry is that? Piet Hanema doesn't have it in him, and Updike is supposed to be minding his own business in the background. In A Month of Sundays, Marshfield is the poet...
UPDIKE APPARENTLY feels obligated to justify a first-person narration with some explanation of how the words got onto the paper. This kind of feeling has afflicted other 20th century writers, and sometimes it leads to contrived situations. Take this one, for example: The Reverend Marshfield suffers from "distraction." As a cure, his bishop orders him to spend a month in the desert, atoning. But this being truly the latter age, ascetism is not what it once was, and Marshfield gets to expiate his sins in fairly comfortable surroundings--a motel, actually. He is forbidden serious "intrapersonal or doctrinal" conversation...
...born preacher. Marshfield comes to his writing role out there in the desert as an amateur, but with the sensibilities of someone who has been working with words for a long time. It doesn't take him long, telling his own story, to discover the joys of writing fiction...
...story is familiar enough. Marshfield's "distraction," as Updike fans have already guessed, took the form of a too-enthusiastic ministering to the sheep of his flock. And if Marshfield's wife and mistresses are puppets, at least they are well-carved, and skillfully handled...