Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "witchfinders"

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The 21st Century Witchfinders will have a field day with this novel. The identity politics brigade will excoriate Updike for presenting characters who express casual racism without a second thought or apparent disastrous consequences, whereas the Creative Writing graduates will be horrified by his breaking of Mr King's commandments: all those adjectives and adverbs, as though they added meaning, as though they were a valuable part of the English language! Like the witches of old, he will be found guilty where there is no guilt, no witchcraft. In this age of new, improved puritanism, it is the devil's own job to have satire understood, never mind appreciated. If only there were an afterlife, so that we might catch the sound of the author's spirit cackling fiendishly.



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