Authors

Benjamin Musachio¹;  ¹ Princeton University, United States

Discussion

This paper examines John Updike’s writings about and travels to Soviet Russia and other Eastern European socialist states in 1964. Some of Updike’s short stories, which star his alter ego, the fictional writer Henry Bech, imaginatively recast the author’s experiences abroad. These Bech stories are full of humor, topical references to 60s literary culture, and insights into Updike’s impressions about life behind the Iron Curtain. I focus specifically on how Updike through Bech ambivalently treated the theme of “literary diplomacy.” Updike’s and Bech’s experiences as literary diplomats reveal the strategies by which Western writers in the Cold War navigated a complex landscape of economic, aesthetic, and ideological interests, a landscape marked by polar oppositions as well as cultural connections between geopolitical superpowers. These stories present a hermeneutic challenge, as it is difficult to fix the author’s position in relation to his protagonist, owing to Updike’s postmodern play with paratextual materials. Close readings of Updike’s prose are supplemented by an analysis of primary source documents that describe the author’s travels in Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria.