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5
out of 5
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one that got away,
October 21, 2008
By terrymarshallgibson
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"With Philip Roth's Everyman, Updike's Terrorist is one of two recent literary marvels from masters at the height of their creative powers. How Terrorist has escaped the attention and praise it deserves is baffling. It fulfills so many tasks of fiction so richly and rewardingly. It is absorbing as it is thick in its description of place and character, and these story elements are woven at times lyrically. Updike instructs and entertains in the same sentence. If readers are provoked or feel a need to read the volume, short as it is, a second time, then do. I read it last year and am about to again. Character portraits it feels on par with include Bellow's Moses Herzog, Tommy Wilhelm in the same author's Seize the Day; Mailer's Gary Gilmore in the Executioner's Song, Handke's Joseph Block in Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Jim Harrison's Farmer, and Updike's own marvelous Rabbit Angstrom and his son Nelson in Rabbit is Rich. The young protagonist, Ahmad, is actually a product of the adults who surround and claim responsibility for him. His idealism and needs are in direct proportion by Updike to the neglect, self-indulgence, and mystification of his teachers, counselors, and single mother. He is abandoned; and proves not all that diverse and complicated than his peers in the end, in fact, luckier and even outdistancing them because his zeal has given Ahmad a perceptive and intellectual clarity far surpassing others of his generation. Everyman and Terrorist are both flawed by sluggish editing, perhaps, but that is a minor criticism. Don't miss this one."
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