John Updike’s Human Comedy

The Author: Brian Keener is Chair of the English Department at New York City College of Technology of The City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in American literature at the Graduate School and University Center of the City of New York.

«This book, on the comic morality in John Updike’s novels, is a piece of truly first-rate and original scholarship. Keener’s work demonstrates nicely how in Updike – and by implication in other writers – comedy, broadly understood, provides more than fun and entertainment: it can bring man to mature self-understanding; it can help him find his place in the world. Keener’s scholarship is smart and sophisticated, and, as I have said, also highly original, one could even say ground-breaking, because not much scholarly work on this aspect of comic fiction has been done (writers on literary comedy usually concentrate on drama).» (N. John Hall, Distinguished Professor, Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (and Anthony Trollope scholar))