John Updike and Why Libs'll Never 'Get' the War on Terror

Newsbusters.org ^ | 6/5/06 | Warner Todd Huston

[Mobile Vulgus]

Those terrorists are really just misunderstood.

The New York Times recently conducted an interview with author John Updike about his newest novel. This interview was revealing of why liberals will never understand this age in which we live. It is indicative of how they just don’t understand the evil we face in Islamofacism. (See story - Click here)

Updike, as obsessed with fallen Christianity as he is with prurient sex scenes, must have seen the writing on the wall while in the midst of penning his newest novel, a sort of Thriller titled ”Terrorist”.

The plot of Updike’s new novel revolves around a young man of mixed parentage who is radicalized into the Islamofascist world. He is given the assignment of exploding a bomb in New York’s Lincoln tunnel. According to the interview we will find the book’s main character, 18 year-old Ahmad, a “lovable” sort of fellow.

In this day when we are faced with Islamofascists who have announced their desire to use nuclear bombs to destroy major US cities -- and other cities in the West -- John Updike wants to make a “lovable” terrorist for us to read along with!

This is the typically convoluted response to this era that the left has so descended into. But, this isn’t the only example of the Left’s confusion evidenced in Mr. Updike’s thought process.

Mr. Updike seems only to have come to his protagonist’s background recently:

“Originally, though, he imagined the protagonist as a young Christian, an extension of the troubled teenage character in his early story "Pigeon Feathers," who comes to feel betrayed by a clergyman. "I imagined a young seminarian who sees everyone around him as a devil trying to take away his faith," he said. "The 21st century does look like that, I think, to a great many people in the Arab world.'"

Imagine that. In this day when murderous, radicalized Muslims throughout the world are blowing people up, cutting off innocent’s heads and making pronouncements of mass destruction, Mr. Updike initially wanted his “terrorist” to be a Christian!

The interview went on to say…

“When Mr. Updike switched the protagonist's religion to Islam, he explained, it was because he ‘thought he had something to say from the standpoint of a terrorist.’”

This rings hollow. More likely, Updike realized that the average American to whom he wished to sell his book would not find a Christian terrorist believable, so he switched religions merely for salability!

Updike still wished to base his novel on his own hatred for western society and his feeling of the failing of Christian thinking, so his character switch makes little difference to his message.

"I think I felt I could understand the animosity and hatred which an Islamic believer would have for our system. Nobody's trying to see it from that point of view."

Updike cannot help but show his disdain for his own world. He gives us a lovable rogue who wishes to cleanse this nation of those rotten westerners, and Updike just couldn’t love him for it more.

And, like a 19 year-old college student who falls in love with Marxism because it just sounds so cool, Updike has fallen in love with the radicalized enemy we face.

"Arabic is very twisting, very beautiful. The call to prayer is quite haunting; it almost makes you a believer on the spot. My feeling was, 'This is God's language, and the fact that you don't understand it means you don't know enough about God.'"

With friends like Mr. Updike, who needs enemies?

It is no wonder that most critiques imagine Mr. Updike past his prime. The world has passed by his internalized disdain for Christianity and is now faced with an enemy that perverts religion to its own, murderous ends. Westerners have something outside their self-loathing to focus on and Updike is not lending his writing skills to help us with that issue. Instead here he is again saying it’s really all Christianity’s fault at its root.

Someone should whisper in Updike’s ear that we don’t have time for self-loathing at this point. Not to worry, John, the day will come again when we have the time for intense, even fanatical, introspection. But it is not this day. The flagellation we experienced post WWII is not something we have the luxury of indulging in at present as terrorists, REAL terrorists as opposed to Updike’s original errant Christian version, are plotting mass destruction.

But, neither Updike, nor his fans on the left are capable of seeing the abyss they are pushing us ever faster towards.

Like I said. With friends like this who needs enemies?

[Valin]

(For what it's worth)
My take on John Updike


"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy."
John Updike

[livius]

Actually, I read the book and I didn't get that out of it at all. The protagonist is a Muslim convert who is a very unhappy young man; his liberal artist-underemployed mother (a fallen away Catholic) sleeps with a variety of guys, his Egyptian dad having run off years ago, and the kids in his school are ghetto thugs who think of nothing but sex and drugs, which is all they ever see on TV. Essentially he is reacting by joining the cult of Islam, which tells him everything to do with his life and directs him on a submissive, downward path that makes him reject learning and culture, but also makes him feel superior because he believes he is rejecting Western "corruption."

Updike is a theological writer, but not that much of a liberal in many ways. The character opposing the Muslim misfit is a Jewish athiest with a fallen-away Protestant wife. His own life is not great, perhaps, but he loves life and yearns for the idea of a good God who loves life (unlike the Islamic "god") even if he does not believe in this God.

I didn't think Updike got the tone 100% right, but I certainly didn't feel it was a pro-terrorist or pro-Islamic book. It was an analysis of people like Johnny Taliban, for example, young Americans from unstable, faith-free backgrounds who convert to Islam because it offers them certainty and a feeling of superiority, like any cult.

[Jane Austen]

I haven’t read “Terrorist” but my understanding is that Updike was NOT pro Muslim, that he was quite critical of the Muslim world. I did enjoy several of his short stories. I read them quite a long time ago and no longer recall the details but would have remembered if there was a liberal bias.