Одноэтажная Америка” в произведениях Джона Апдайка. Этнические истоки многонациональной литературы США: Сол Беллоу, Джеймс Болдуин, Марио Пьюзо, Владимир Набоков, Тони Моррисон

Updike, John (1932- ), American author, known for his writings about the American suburban scene. Updike is noted for well-crafted prose that explores the hidden tensions of middle-class American life. His characters frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations, and marital infidelity.

John Hoyer Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, and educated at Harvard University and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford (England). Updike's first book, The Carpentered Hen (1958), was a collection of verse. His first novel, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), is about the inhabitants of a home for the aged, and it received a great deal of critical praise. One of Updike’s best-known works, Rabbit, Run (1960), tells the story of the character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a young man reluctant to confront the responsibilities of life. The sequels Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981; Pulitzer Prize, 1982), and Rabbit at Rest (1990; Pulitzer Prize, 1991) follow Rabbit as he navigates through middle-class life in the changing America of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

In The Centaur, which won the 1963 National Book Award for fiction, Updike adapted characters from Greek legend as a Pennsylvania schoolteacher and his adolescent son. Of the Farm ( 1965) is a short, intense look at a man torn between past and present, as represented by his mother and his wife. Couples (1968) probes the world of suburban married couples in the mid-1960s. Bech: A Book (1970) is a collection of seven interrelated stories about a writer. Updike followed it with Bech Is Back (1982) and Bech at Bay (1998).

Updike's other works include The Witches of Eastwick (1984; motion picture, 1987), which drew sharp criticism for what was considered an antifeminist stance; Brazil (1994); the short-story collection The Afterlife (1994); and In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996). Updike displayed his perceptive literary criticism in the essay collection Hugging the Shore (1983).

Bellow, Saul (1915- ), American novelist, whose Nobel Prize citation read, “For the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.”

Born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada, Bellow was educated at Northwestern University and later taught at the University of Chicago. Bellow’s first novel, Dangling Man (1944), deals with the anxiety and discomfort of a young man waiting to be drafted in wartime. His next book was The Victim (1947). After winning a Guggenheim fellowship, Bellow lived for a time in Europe, where he wrote most of his novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953, National Book Award, 1954). A long, loosely structured narrative with a picaresque hero, the novel gives a vivid, often humorous picture of Jewish life in Chicago and of a young man’s search for identity. Modern humanity, threatened with loss of identity but not destroyed in spirit, is the theme of Bellow’s later works Seize the Day (1956) and Henderson the Rain King (1959). Herzog (1964, National Book Award, 1965) and Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970, National Book Award, 1971) portray Jewish intellectuals fighting the spiritual malaise around them.

Bellow received the 1976 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975), which concerns the relationship between an author and a poet. Three months later he was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in literature. Bellow’s subsequent works included The Dean’s December (1982), in which he continued his analysis of contemporary culture; To Jerusalem and Back (1976), a reflective study of a visit Bellow made to Israel; More Die of Heartbreak (1987), a novel in which Bellow returned to a Midwestern setting; It All Adds Up (1994), an essay collection; and The Actual (1997), a novella about a high school relationship taken up again after many years.

Asimov, Isaac (1920-1992), Russian-born American writer, esteemed for his science fiction and for his popular works in all branches of science.

Asimov was born in Petrovichi. His family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old and settled in Brooklyn, New York. Asimov's encounters with science-fiction magazines led him to follow the dual careers of writing and science. He entered Columbia University at the age of 15, and at the age of 18 he sold his first story, to Amazing Stories.

After serving in World War II (1939-1945), Asimov earned a Ph.D. degree at Columbia University in 1948; from 1949 to 1958 he taught biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. His first science-fiction novel, Pebble in the Sky, appeared in 1950 and his first science book, a biochemistry text written with two colleagues, was published in 1953. Asimov turned to writing full time in 1958. He authored more than 400 books for young and adult readers, extending beyond science and science fiction to include mystery stories, humor, history, and several volumes on the Bible and English playwright William Shakespeare. His best-known science-fiction works include I, Robot (1950); The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), to which he wrote a sequel 30 years later, Foundation's Edge (1982); The Naked Sun (1957); and The Gods Themselves (1972). Asimov's major science books include the Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964; revised 1982) and Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984), a revision of his widely acclaimed Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960).

Puzo, Mario (1920-1999), chronicled a fictional Mafia family, the Corleones, in The Godfather (1969), which became one of the most successful novels ever--selling some 21 million copies worldwide, spawning three critically and financially successful motion pictures, and placing its characters into the contemporary American cultural mythology.

Puzo grew up in New York City's Hell's Kitchen and dropped out of school to get a job after his father deserted the family. He became a railroad clerk but already was harbouring dreams of being a writer. After his military service in Germany during World War II, he returned to New York City and studied at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University. While working as a civil servant, Puzo began writing pulp stories for men's magazines. His first two novels, The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964), attracted good reviews but few buyers.

It was then that Puzo decided to write something that would make enough money for him to support his family. Although he had no personal knowledge of organized crime, thorough research gave him the details he needed, and The Godfather (1969 ), which depicted the family's strong bonds as well as its criminal activities, was a phenomenal success. Puzo collaborated with director Francis Ford Coppola on the screenplay of The Godfather (1972) and its two sequels (1974 and 1990). The first two won nine Academy Awards, including best picture and best screenplay Oscars for each. Puzo also contributed to the screenplays of such motion pictures as the first two Superman films (1978 and 1980) and The Cotton Club (1984). His other novels include Fools Die (1978), The Sicilian (1984; filmed, 1987), and The Last Don (1996; television miniseries, 1997). Puzo's last book, Omerta, was scheduled to be published in 2000; he considered it, along with The Godfather and The Last Don, part of his Mafia trilogy.

Baldwin, James (1924-1987), American writer, whose focus on issues of racial discrimination made him a prominent spokesperson for racial equality, especially during the civil rights movements of the 1960s. He is best known for his semiautobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and for The Fire Next Time (1963), a powerful collection of essays in which he expressed his belief that racial discrimination is a disease of white society, curable only by white society’s acknowledgement of the illness.

James Arthur Baldwin was born in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City to a single mother, Emma Birdis Jones. When he was still young, his mother married a preacher, David Baldwin, who adopted James. The family was poor, and James and his adopted father had a difficult relationship. Baldwin attended the prestigious De Witt Clinton Public High School in New York. At the age of 14 he joined the Pentecostal Church and became a Pentecostal preacher. When he was 17 years old, Baldwin turned away from religion and moved to Greenwich Village, a New York City neighborhood famous for its freethinking artists and writers. Supporting himself with odd jobs, he began to write short stories, essays, and book reviews. During this time Baldwin began to recognize his own homosexuality. In 1948, disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and homosexuals, Baldwin left the United States for Paris, France. He would live in Paris for most of his later life.

In Paris, with the support of fellowship grants and literary supporters, Baldwin wrote his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. The book describes a boy’s religious conversion, and Baldwin tells the story through a series of prayers that serve as flashbacks. He weaves the history of the boy’s family and community into the novel’s narrative. While in France, Baldwin came to accept his homosexuality and began work on Giovanni’s Room (1956), a novel about a man exploring his sexual identity. In 1957, impressed by the growing strength of the civil rights movement in the United States, Baldwin returned to the country briefly in order to participate. He published his observations of the United States in the essay collections Nobody Knows My Name (1961) and The Fire Next Time. The latter, a study of the Black Muslim movement led by Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, predicted violence and political upheaval if American whites did not face up to the country’s racial problems. The success of The Fire Next Time made Baldwin a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. He spoke out in interviews and gave impassioned speeches about racial justice.

Baldwin continued to address racial issues in his novels as well. Another Country (1962) describes the tortured relationships within a group of black and white friends. If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) depicts the struggles of a young African American couple hemmed in by racism and an unsympathetic legal system. In Baldwin’s last novel, Just Above My Head (1979), the brother of a dead gospel singer reflects on his brother’s life.

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