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Toward the End of Time: A Novel
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Toward the End of Time: A Novel Paperback - 1998

by Updike, John

  • Used
  • Paperback

Description

Random House Trade Paperbacks. Used - Very Good. Very Good condition. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner’s name, short gifter’s inscription or light stamp. Bundled media such as CDs, DVDs, floppy disks or access codes may not be included.
Used - Very Good
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Details

  • Title Toward the End of Time: A Novel
  • Author Updike, John
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition First Thus
  • Condition Used - Very Good
  • Pages 352
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Random House Trade Paperbacks, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
  • Date 1998-08-25
  • Bookseller's Inventory # E14I-00220
  • ISBN 9780449000410 / 0449000419
  • Weight 0.64 lbs (0.29 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.02 x 5.32 x 0.93 in (20.37 x 13.51 x 2.36 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, Science fiction
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 98096345
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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Summary

Ben Turnbull, the hero of John Updike's eighteenth novel, is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time.From the Hardcover edition.

From the publisher

John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.

From the rear cover

Ben Turnbull, the hero of John Updike's eighteenth novel, is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds" hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time.

Media reviews

“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
 
“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
 
Toward the End of Time has a force that gets under your skin.”—Robert Stone, The New York Review of Books

Citations

  • New York Times, 09/27/1998, Page 32

About the author

John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.