早年生活

Early Life

约翰‧厄普代克(John_Updike)出生于美国宾夕法尼亚州瑞丁市（Reading），父亲韦斯利（Wesley R. Updike）在高中任数学教师，母亲琳达‧格雷斯‧霍耶（Linda Grace Hoyer）以作家为业，厄普代克是家中独子。一九四五年，厄普代克举家迁往瑞丁市近郊的席林顿（Shillington），一家三口在大农庄里生活。厄普代克年少时得过牛皮癣，又有口吃毛病，童年不免蒙上一层阴影，母亲鼓吹他写作抒发心情，厄普代克得以逃遁进入神秘的小说世界中，饱览推理小说家厄尔‧史坦利‧贾德纳（Erle Stanley Gardner，1889～1970年）、艾勒里．昆恩（Ellery Queen，1905～1982年）、阿嘉莎‧克莉丝蒂（Agatha Christie，1890～1976年）以及约翰‧狄克森．卡尔（John Dickson Carr，1906～1977年）等人作品。

  John Updike was born inReading,Pennsylvania, the only child of Wesley R. Updike, a high-school mathematics teacher, and Linda Grace Hoyer, a writer. In 1945, his family moved to a large farm outside of town in Shillington, a smaller city nearReading. Updike’s childhood was shadowed by psoriasis and stammering, but his mother encouraged him to write. Escaping to the world of mystery novels, he consumed books by Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr.

厄普代克高中毕业后获得奖学金，一九五○年就读哈佛大学（Harvard University）英文系，他在研究艺术之余，还编纂哈佛大学刊物《讽刺》（Lampoon，以创刊最早的幽默杂志闻名）。厄普代克靠画漫画起家，而后转型写诗和散文，一九五三年娶第一唯一教会（First Unitarian Church）牧师女儿玛丽‧潘宁顿（Mary Pennington）为妻，翌年拿到文学学位，来年获得诺克斯奖学金（Knox Fellowship），赴英国牛津大学拉斯金美术学校（Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art）研习艺术。

In 1950, Updike received a scholarship to study atHarvardUniversitywhere he studied art and edited the Harvard Lampoon, the world’s oldest humor magazine. He started as a cartoonist, but then shifted to poetry and prose. In 1953, Updike married Mary Pennington, the daughter of a minister of theFirstUnitarianChurch. In 1954, he graduated with a B.A. in English and a year later received a Knox Fellowship to attend the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art inOxford,England.

作家生涯起点：《纽约客》杂志

Literary Career: The New Yorkere

厄普代克在英国待满一年后返美，成为《纽约客》杂志（The New Yorker）“城中话题”（Talk of the Town）专栏作者，同年在《纽约客》刊登短篇小说处女作〈费城友人〉（“Friends from Philadelphia”），他陆续发表了社论、诗作、小说及书评迄一九五七年为止，随后举家迁至麻州易普威治镇（Ipswich）。厄普代克自二十三岁起靠写作维生，辞去《纽约客》工作后专事写作，定居易普威治镇长达十七年之久，该镇也成为小说《夫妇们》（Couples，1968年）中虚构的塔巴斯镇（Tarbox）场景，书中描述几对年轻乡下夫妻的性爱生活，被抨击为《冷暖人间》（Peyton Place）“小镇版”。一九五八年，厄普代克出版诗集《木匠母鸡和其它驯兽》（The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures），初以诗人之姿崭露头角，他的第一部长篇小说《贫民院义卖会》（The Poorhouse Fair，1959年）则以老人之家居民作为故事主轴。

After a year inEngland, Updike returned toAmerica, having been offered a job writing for the “Talk of the Town” section at The New Yorker; this magazine published his first short story “Friends fromPhiladelphia” in 1954. Updike wrote editorials, poetry, stories and criticism for the magazine until 1957, when he moved with his family toIpswich,Massachusetts, to pursue writing full-time. From the age of 23, Updike supported himself by writing. He moved toIpswichwhere he lived for seventeen years. The small town became the model for Tarbox in his novel Couples (1968). The portrait of sexual passion among a group of young suburban married couples was criticized as merely an “uptownPeyton Place.” In 1958, Updike made his debut as a poet with the volume The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures. Updike's first novel, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), was about the residents of an old people's home. Basically Updike was trying to write a novel, as he once confessed, “which would serve, in its breadth, as a base for further novels.”

“兔子四部曲”

Rabbit Tetralogy

批评家咸认《兔子，快跑》（Rabbit, Run，1960年）一书出版，是厄普代克在文学生涯上的重大突破。《兔子，快跑》是厄普代克“兔子”四部曲中的第一部，其它三部曲有《兔子归来》（Rabbit Redux，1971年）、《兔子富了》（Rabbit Is Rich，1981年）以及《兔子安息》（Rabbit at Rest，1990年），故事情节以昵称「兔子」的主角哈利‧安斯特龙姆（Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom）生平为主。在《兔子，快跑》中，“兔子”是瑞典人后裔，长得高帅潇洒，是高中篮球校队明星，不过“兔子”婚后却陷入人生困境，想奔走逃避，首部曲便以“奔跑”（Runs）一词作为结尾。值得一提的是，厄普代克用英文现在式写作，小说情节充斥弥漫某种电影氛围；《兔子归来》的“归来”（Redux）在拉丁文意即“复活”（brought back），“兔子”此时已是步入中年的中产阶级商人，老婆不贞打乱了他整个人生，故事结尾“好吧”（O.K.?）余下的问题，留给读者思考的空间；《兔子富了》的结尾“他的”（His）也是一绝；《兔子安息》场景设定在一九八○年代末期，时值美国社会凋零衰敝、爱滋噩梦笼罩，老“兔子”身材发福，不时胸痛难抑，自觉“身体内里除了黑暗仍是黑暗……”；“兔子”四部曲不仅描述年轻“兔子”从高中篮球明星进入婚姻生活，历经婚外情和中年致富，直到他过世为止，同时呈现出美国战后四十年来社会历史的全貌。到了二○○○年，厄普代克又意犹未尽地写下中篇小说〈兔子回忆〉（Rabbit Remembered），收录于短篇小说集《爱的插曲》（Licks of Love），交代“兔子”去世的后续情节；“兔子”的遗族参加感恩节家族聚会，晚餐桌上的气氛剑拔弩张。

Critics view Rabbit, Run (1960) as Updike’s literary breakthrough, marking the first of four novels—including Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981)and Rabbit at Rest (1990)—which detail the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. The first book about Updike’s famous hero, Harry Angstrom, the natural athlete, a sexually magnetic, blue-eyed Swede, ended with the verb “Runs.” Updike wrote the book in the present tense, giving it a sort of cinematic quality. In Rabbit, Redux—Redux is Latin for brought back—Harry is a middle-aged bourgeois, who finds his life shattered by the infidelity of his wife. Updike leaves the reader with a question—O.K.? The last word in Rabbit Is Rich was ‘His.’ Rabbit at Rest, set in the late 1980s, paralleled the decay of society, AIDS-plaguedAmerica, and Rabbit's swollen body, his chest pains and his feeling that there is “nothing under you but black space...” Tracing Rabbit’s experiences as a high-school basketball star on through marriage, frequent infidelities, financial prosperity, and his death in the 1980s, Updike's tetralogy chronicles four decades of postwar American social history. The novella Rabbit Remembered, from the short fiction collection Licks of Love (2000), serves as an epilogue in which Rabbit's surviving family gathers for an emotionally volatile Thanksgiving dinner.

其它主要作品

Other Works

长篇小说《半人马》（The Centaur，1963年）采用神话表现手法，探讨校长父亲和儿子的关系，一举摘下美国国家图书奖小说奖（National Book Award for fiction）。《半人马》内容是中年画家儿子对父亲的回忆，揉合了希腊罗马神话中天神宙斯宠爱的半人马齐伦（Chiron）的传说，画家把父亲想象成现代齐伦，高贵地活在冷漠的世上，听从自身命运的摆布。《夫妇们》（Couples，1968年）是厄普代克最受欢迎、也是最具争议性的小说，检视现代人过度轻率的性行为，「情欲」这个主题也普遍出现在厄普代克的作品中。《嫁给我》（Marry Me，1976年）叙述杰瑞（Jerry）和莎莉（Sally）夫妻二人婚姻不睦、外遇背叛的故事，值得一提的是，作者透过错综复杂的修辞系统，包括隐喻、典故以及意象等，呈现主角精神不稳定的状态。《政变》（The Coup，1979年）采取第一人称观点，描述一个非洲虚构国家前独裁者充满异国情调的故事。

The Centaur (1963) used a mythological framework to explore the relationship of a schoolmaster father and his son. Winner of the National Book Award for fiction, The Centaur consists of a middle-aged painter’s memories of his father coupled with an adaptation of the mythical story of Chiron, the centaur beloved by Zeus. The painter imagines his father as a modern-day Chiron, nobly enduring his fate in an indifferent world. Couples (1968) is one of Updike’s most popular and controversial examinations of the sexual indiscretions, a prevalent theme throughout his work. Marry Me (1976) illuminates themes of spousal incompatibility and betrayal in the adulterous love story of Jerry and Sally. This novel is notable for the complex system of metaphors, allusions and imagery used to represent the protagonist’s fluctuating mental health. The Coup (1979) was an exotic first-person narration by an ex-dictator of a fictitious African state.

一九七○年，厄普代克的短篇小说集《贝克》（Bech，1970年）出现另一名要角亨利‧贝克（Henry Bech），其在文坛重要性不亚于“兔子”。贝克是犹太裔美籍作家，在诡谲多变的学术圈中打滚，饱受文坛盛名负累；《贝克归来》（Bech is Back，1982年）和《海湾的贝克》（Bech at Bay，1998年）叙述主角在诺贝尔颁奖典礼上“反高潮”（anti-climactic）的行径。另一本短篇小说集《遥不可及》（Too Far to Go，1979年）中，理察（Richard）和乔安妮（Joan）夫妇俩既酗酒又婚姻出轨，二人纵欲享乐的生活方式，突显一九七○年代传统的价值观已荡然无存。《罗杰教授的版本》（Roger's Version，1986年）则有意模仿美国作家纳撒尼尔‧霍桑（Nathaniel Hawthorne，1804～1864年）小说《红字》（The Scarlet Letter）中人物性格以及神学的探讨，冀望透过计算机程序来理解上帝存在的可能性。

In 1970, Updike introduced another noted recurring character, Henry Bech. The short stories in Bech (1970) follow the life of the Jewish-American author as he endures the rigors of literary celebrity and the fickle nature of the academic world. Bech is Back (1982) and Bech at Bay (1998) follow the character’s career up through his anti-climactic Nobel Prize award ceremony. Too Far to Go (1979), another collection of stories, focuses on an alcoholic couple named Richard and Joan Maple whose infidelities and hedonistic lifestyle highlight the breakdown of traditional values in the 1970s. Borrowing from the characterizations and theological considerations ofHawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Roger's Version (1986) ponders the possibility of understanding God via computer programming.

二○○○年，厄普代克出版莎翁悲剧《哈姆雷特》（Hamlet）前传《葛楚德与克劳狄斯》（Gertrude and Claudius），戏分不再偏重王子复仇，主角换成哈姆雷特的母后葛楚德以及她的国王丈夫，还有国王胞弟克劳狄斯。二○○三年，厄普代克以短篇小说集《早期故事》（The Early Stories: 1953-1975）抱走普利策奖（Pulitzer Prize），他首度采用故事集锦，追溯美国过去二十年来文化上的演进，同时回顾自身创作主题和风格上的转变。《恐怖分子》（Terrorist，2006年）是厄普代克第二十二本小说，藉由一名十八岁伊斯兰恐怖分子观点，严词批判美国文化。 

In 2000 appeared Updike’s prequel Gertrude and Claudius to Hamlet, in which the moody prince is not the central character but the story focuses on his mother Queen Gertrude, her husband, and Claudius, her husband’s younger brother. Updike received Pulitzer Prize for The Early Stories: 1953-1975 (2003). Presented in one volume for the first time, these stories trace the progression of American culture over twenty years as well as Updike’s thematic and stylistic development. Terrorist (2006), Updike's 22nd novel, was about an 18-year-old Islamic extremist, whose critique of American culture is literally deadly.

作品主题

Critical Reception

厄普代克长年定居麻州新英格兰区（New England），距波士顿（Boston）仅二十哩之遥，小说背景也多设定在此。批评家咸认厄普代克的作品批判美国人的道德观和社会结构，厄普代克是性情温和的讽刺作家，喜欢戏谑美式生活习惯，却鲜少出现眼界狭窄的怀疑言论。他缜密观察日常生活，经常要求读者承认并反省自身偏见，短篇小说〈破产者〉（” The Bankrupt Man”，1983年）即是一例，全盘颠覆一般人对破产者的看法，证明他们依然可以过得很好。

Updike has lived in New England, where most of his fiction is set, and inMassachusetts, about twenty miles fromBoston. Critics widely view his work as a commentary on the moral and social fabric of American life. Updike is a gentle satirist, poking fun at American life and customs, without any mean-spirited nihilism. He observes the ordinary life, and frequently asks the reader to recognize and reconsider preconceptions. In “The Bankrupt Man” (1983), Updike turns upside-down the common views of a bankrupt and proves that there is an afterlife: “The bankrupt man buys himself a motorcycle.

在厄普代克看来，性（sex）、艺术（art）以及宗教（religion）是人类经验里面“三项伟大而神秘的事物”。有批评家赞美厄普代克不断描写赤裸裸的性爱场面，是人性欲望的诚实表现，也有批评家认为纯属情色，不值一哂，几名卫道人士甚至表示，厄普代克笔下的女性专事剥削（exploitative）、擅于排挤同性（misogynistic）。尽管上述争论不断，许多学者仍肯定厄普代克的文学成就，他经常探讨基督教的道德观，作品坚定地审视现代人的精神层面，人类存在主题也恒常出现在他的作品中。厄普代克一直维持阅读神学书籍的习惯，定期上教堂做礼拜，方便作为日常生活的指引。

Updike called sex, art and religion “the three great secret things” in human experience. His recurring use of graphic sexuality has been praised by some reviewers as an honest celebration of human desire, but condemned by others as merely pornographic. Moreover, several critics have characterized Updike’s portrayal of women as exploitative and misogynistic. Despite such controversial subject matter, Updike is considered by many scholars as an author who often focuses on Christian mores, and his novels and stories are frequently lauded for their steadfast examination of modern man's spiritual condition. Existential questions have been in the center of Updike’s work from the beginning of his career. He has also read theologians for guidance and regularly attended church for worship.    

References

“John Updike,” in Contemporary Authors Online. (A profile of the author's life and works)

“John Updike,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 218: American Short-Story Writers Since World War II, Second Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Patrick Meanor,StateUniversityofNew Yorkat Oneonta, and Gwen Crane,StateUniversityofNew Yorkat Oneonta. Gale Group, 1999, pp. 311-335.

“John Updike,” in Contemporary Literary Criticism-Select. (A brief review of the author's life, works, and critical reception)

“John Updike,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 2: American Novelists Since World War II, First Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Jeffrey Helterman,UniversityofSouth Carolinaand Richard Layman,Columbia,South Carolina. The Gale Group, 1978, pp. 484-491.

“John Updike,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 143: American Novelists Since World War II, Third Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. The Gale Group, 1994, pp. 250-276.

“John Updike,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 5: American Poets Since World War II, First Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Donald J. Greiner,UniversityofSouth Carolina. The Gale Group, 1980, pp. 327-334.

“John Updike,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 227: American Novelists Since World War II, Sixth Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by James H. Giles, Northern Illinois University and Wanda R. Giles,Northern IllinoisUniversity. The Gale Group, 2000, pp. 295-323.

“John Updike” in American Writers

“John Updike,” in Contemporary Literary Criticism-Select. (A brief review of the author's life, works, and critical reception)

兔子系列英文小说下载：
http://www.en8848.com.cn/yingyu/87/9087-12004.html
http://www.en8848.com.cn/yingyu/87/9087-12010.html
http://www.en8848.com.cn/yingyu/87/9087-12003.html
http://www.en8848.com.cn/yingyu/87/9087-12005.html
http://www.en8848.com.cn/yingyu/87/9087-12018.html

其它英文小说下载：
http://bbs.en8848.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=6599&extra=page%3D2