Toward the End of Time

“ANOTHER EXCELLENTLY WRITTEN NOVEL
BY AN EXCELLENT NOVELIST.”
—Margaret Atwood
The New York Times Book Review

“In the midst of life we are in death.
Toward the End of Time
, surely Mr. Updike’s most death-haunted work of fiction, is by that same token folly in the midst of life, especially the life of language, so strongly evident on each of its pages.”

—
The Wall Street Journal

“Updike’s prose, as always, is distinguished by passages of lyric beauty.”

—
The New Yorker

“Another brilliant offering in what is already the most accomplished oeuvre in contemporary American letters.”

—
The Cincinnati Enquirer

“A wonderful book, easily one of his best.”

—
The New York Post

“Scintillating… Its lyricism, the insights it provides into its narrator’s psyche, and the sincerity of its concern over where America is heading all argue cogently that it will outlive its author.”

—
St Louis Post-Dispatch

“Brilliant… There are steamy but ironic sex scenes; meditations on the bitter tenderness of long marriage; [and] reflections, flippantly profound, on the maddening ambiguities of physics and the tantalizing silence of God.”

—
San Jose Mercury News

“Every page holds some magic.”

—
Ft. Worth Morning Star-Telegram

“PROFOUND … ENTERTAINING …
WONDERFULLY WRITTEN…
THIS IS UPDIKE’S BEST BOOK SINCE
RABBIT AT REST.”
—Newark Star-Ledger

“Updike strings out sentences as gorgeously as veteran fly-fishers string out a line.”

—
San Diego Reader

“Toward the End of Time
re-creates a universe that is beautiful, awesome, and mysterious.”

—
Raleigh News & Observer

“One of the most moving books I have read this year.”

—Fredric Koeppel
The Commercial Appeal
(Memphis, TN)

“A beautifully written and fascinating book … Lyrical, nostalgic, indeed elegiac, aspects of
Toward the End of Time
intimate that Updike may have reached the end of his fictional journey. Let’s hope not.”

—
Book Page

“Updike’s prose is lush, lyrical, and yet poetically precise…. A book that has all the hallmarks of a classic.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Powerful.”

—
Time Out

By John Updike

POEMS

The Carpentered Hen
(1958) •
Telephone Poles
(1963) •
Midpoint
(1969) •
Tossing and Turning
(1977) •
Facing Nature
(1985) •
Collected Poems 1953-1993
(1993) •
Americana
(2001)

NOVELS

The Poorhouse Fair
(1959) •
Rabbit, Run
(i960) •
The Centaur
(1963) •
Of the Farm
(1965) •
Couples
(1968) •
Rabbit Redux
(1971) •
A Month of Sundays
(1975) •
Marry Me
(1976) •
The Coup
(1978) •
Rabbit Is Rich
(1981) •
The Witches of Eastwick
(1984) •
Roger’s Version
(1986) •
S
. (1988) •
Rabbit at Rest
(1990) •
Memories of the Ford Administration
(1992) •
Brazil
(1994) •
In tne Beauty of the Lilies
(1996) •
Toward the End of Time
(1997) •
Gertrude and Claudius
(2000) •
Seek My Face
(2002) •
Villages
(2005)

SHORT STORIES

The Same Door
(1959) •
Pigeon Feathers
(1962) •
Olinger Stories
(a selection, 1964) •
The Music School
(1966) •
Bech: A Book
(1970) •
Museums and Women
(1972) •
Problems and Other Stories
(1979) •
Too Far to Go
(a selection, 1979) •
Bech Is Back
(1982)
’Trust Me
(1987) •
The Afterlife
(1994) •
Bech at Bay
(1998) •
Licks of Love
(2000)
*The Complete Henry Bech
(2001)
*The Early Stories: 1953-1975
(2003)

ESSAYS AND CRITICISM

Assorted Prose
(1965) •
Picked-Up Pieces
(1975) •
Hugging the Shore
(!983)
oJust Looking
(1989) •
Odd Jobs
(1991) •
Golf Dreams Writings on Golf
(1996) •
More Matter
(1999)

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The Magic Flute
(1962) •
The Ring
(1964) •
A Child’s Calendar
(1965) •
Bottom’s Dream
(1969) •
A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects
(1995)

              
familiar only with God,
We yearn to be pierced by that
Occasional void through which the supernatural flows
.

—
CHARLES WRIGHT
,
“Lives of the Saints”

We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains
.

—
MARTIN GARDNER,
“Wap, Sap, Pap, and Fap”

Chapters