Toward the End of Time

Toward the End of Time
Story details
Protagonist	Ben Turnbull
Setting	Boston, 2020
Real world details
Author	John Updike
Publisher	Knopf
Page length	334 pages
Release date	September 23rd 1997

Toward the End of Time is a novel written by John Updike. Released in 1997, it tells of a world in which the American government has been destroyed in nuclear war and Boston is ran by corporations. It is largely remembered for David Foster Wallace's negative review of the novel (entitled John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?) which was reprinted in Wallace's essay collection Consider the Lobster.

Characters

• Ben Turnbull - the main character of the novel, a retired investment counselor and a science buff
• Gloria Turnbull - Ben's wife

rest to be added

Publisher's summary

Ben Turnbull, the hero of John Updike’s eighteenth novel, is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben’s life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the “many-worlds” hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time.

See also

Title	Author	Release date	Significance
Alas, Babylon	Pat Frank	1959	Another novel set in a post-nuclear world
Infinite Jest	David Foster Wallace	1996	Another novel set in a corporate-ruled America
I am Legend	Richard Matheson	1954	Another novel set in a post-nuclear world

Sources

• Goodreads
• Wikipedia

Works of John Updike

Rabbit Angstrom novels Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest, Rabbit Redux Bech trilogy Bech, a Book, Bech is Back, Bech at Bay Novels The Poorhouse Fair, The Centaur, Of the Farm, Couples, A Month of Sundays, Marry Me, The Coup, The Witches of Eastwick, Roger's Version, S., Memories of the Ford Administration, Brazil, In the Beauty of the Lillies, Toward the End of Time, Gertrude and Claudius, Seek My Face, Villages, Terrorist, The Widows of Eastwick Short story collections The Same Door, Pigeon Feathers, Olinger Stories, Music School, Museums and Women and Other Stories, Problems and Other Stories, Too Far to Go, Your Lover Just Called, Trust Me, The Afterlife and Other Stories, Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, The Early Stories: 1953-1973, Three Trips, My Father's Tears and Other Stories Major and recurring characters Rabbit Angstrom, Henry Bech, Alf Clayton, Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart, Sukie Rougemont, Darryl Van Horne, Roger Lambert, George Caldwell, Joey Robinson, Hakim Felix Ellellou, Ben Turnbull, Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy