Couples by John Updike
Couples is one of the iconic novels of the American 1960s. It shocked readers when it was first published with its literary depictions of people’s daily lives and serves as an engaging epitaph to the brief but blissful existence of the “post-Pill paradise” today. It follows the activities of ten young married couples who have created a cult around sex and themselves in a seashore New England hamlet. The group of friends creates a magical circle that includes ceremonial activities, false gods, a priest, and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). This utopia, like the majority of American utopias, is short-lived and unsustainable, but the “imaginative quest” that led to its birth is unending.
Couples by John Updike
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Couples narrates the tale of a certain well-known couple. It tells the story of a sizable (18-character) gang of upper-middle-class suburban New Englanders getting into sexual mischief. There are two sets of two married couples (a total of eight persons) in this incredibly close-knit group that switch partners. In addition, there are three lovers among the women whose husbands don’t participate, one character who has a quickie with a swapper, and more. Two of the husbands in this situation might be homosexual, while the third is a stiff, unlikable associate professor who, conveniently, isn’t around during the day. Couples by John Updike reveals all there is to know about this obsessive and incestuous community, whose members would be very ordinary and even tiresome if not for their sexual adventurism.
Updike was a terrific critic as well as a brilliant author and stylist. The love between the Dutch builder and his wife, as well as their numerous betrayals and adulteries, lies at the heart of Couples and is quite strong and self-destructive. I wonder if that was fueled by an autobiographical aspect of Updike’s own life. That’s what the book’s subsequent rereading made clear to me. It’s about this man’s desire to betray his attractive wife, not about wife-swapping or suburban sex. There is more going on there, but only time will tell now that Updike is no longer with us. I’m confident that as the biographies are written, we’ll discover a different driving force.
Even though the book is about well-to-do, middle-class America, I still believe it to be a tremendously perceptive and brilliantly well-observed picture of society. The human situation is really effectively captured.
