ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Physics and Literature: The Physical Sciences as Reflected in the Works of John Updike

• In Event: Science and Literature

English Abstract

The famous American novelist and poet John Updike (1932-2009) lived through a period when physics, chemistry and astronomy changed significantly. Many of these changes can be followed through his poems, novels and short stories. Evidently, Updike was not only interested in science and its history, he was also very well informed. From where did he get his information? How did the scientists respond to his literary science-related works, if at all? At the age of 28, Updike wrote a short story on entropy which he also dealt with in a piece of poetry. Some years later he contributed to Scientific American with an insightful poem on the physics and chemistry of the solid state of matter. Another of his early poems focused on photons and the shadowy neutrinos. Updike seems to have been fascinated by recent developments in cosmology in particular. He incorporated some of the developments, including the controversial anthropic principle, in his novels Roger’s Version (1986) and Toward the End of Time (1997). Moreover, in 2004 he wrote a short story on the accelerating universe, before the groundbreaking discovery was rewarded with a Nobel Prize. The talk will present an overview of Updike’s continual use of science themes and compare it with how other poets and novelists in the period dealt with the same themes. It will also locate his work in the much older science-literature tradition.

Author

• Helge Stjernholm Kragh, University of Copenhagen