An antic riff on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, in which a latter-day Arthur Dimmesdale is sent west from his Midwestern parish in sexual disgrace—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.
“Updike may be America’s finest novelist and [this] is quintessential Updike.”—The Washington Post
At a desert retreat dedicated to rest, recreation, and spiritual renewal, this fortyish serial fornicator is required to keep a journal whose thirty-one weekly entries constitute the book you now hold in your hand. In his wonderfully overwrought style he lays bare his soul and his past—his marriage to the daughter of his ethics professor, his affair with his organist, his antipathetic conversations with his senile father and his bisexual curate, his golf scores, his poker hands, his Biblical exegeses, and his smoldering desire for the directress of the retreat, the impregnable Ms. Prynne. A testament for our times.
- ISBN10 0449912205
- ISBN13 9780449912201
- Publish Date 27 August 1996 (first published 12 October 1980)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Random House USA Inc
- Imprint Random House Trade Paperbacks
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 224
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780449912201