The Reception of John Updike’s Couples in Serbia and Montenegro

Ivana and Zoran Paunović, Sergej Macura etc.) as well as critical texts
(authored by: Vladislava Gordić Petković, Biljana Dojčinović, Mirjana
Daničić, Aleksandra Vukotić, Milica Abramović...) which represent
an enormous contribution towards enabling the reading audience to
follow what is going on in this area. American Literature has been
studied through the introduction of new courses on the most contem-
porary periods, and master and doctoral thesis, which are most often
published later on.

Montenegro and American Literature in XIX and XX century
The second half of XX century followed earlier tendencies (expression-
ism, surrealism and social literature) which were trying to find their
way after the WW2. At the beginning of the century (1918), like Serbia,
Montenegro became a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Montenegro
was quite underdeveloped with high rates of illiteracy, and without any
institutions of higher education. Many young people, most of them
from the court, typically went to Serbia, Pest, Kotor, Russia or Istanbul
to continue their education, and consequently to return home and
work hard on developing educational and cultural institutions. Soon,
the first school for girls, The Girls’ Institute, established at Cetinje, was
sponsored by Russia (1869-1913). (See: Jovanović 1948) The elite who
constituted ‘educated readers’ in 1897 could follow what was going on in
the world of literature, (Shakespeare, Zola, Byron, Hugo, Chekhov...)
arts and culture in four journals (Luča, Srpski magazin, Grlica and
Glas Crnogorca) which stopped being published in 1902. English was
not studied in Montenegro until 1960, and all translations from world
literature came from Russian. The sole example of this from American
literature is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pendalum and the Pit”, which was
published in three sequels in 1884. (Crnogorka 1884: 295-6, 311-2, 320-
2) It illustrates Slavenophilia of Montenegrin leanings of Montenegrin
editors and society. The very beginning of the XX century (1909)
brought a translation of Mark Twain’s story “Bura” in Cetinjski vjesnik.
American literature could find its place in journals and be translat-
ed and published in Montenegro only after the break of Montenegro
with Russia in 1948. This was also the time when American classics
were slowly entering school curriculums at different levels of educa-
tion. This practice gave good results in the second half of the XX cen-
tury when many works of American fiction were published either in
translation from English or enlightened through essays by American,
Serbian and Montenegrin critics most often in literary journals Ovdje
and Stvaranje, and recently in daily papers Vijesti and Pobjeda. 1)
The end of XX century and the first two decades of XXI century
witness American literature being represented most of all when com-
pared with other foreign literatures. Previous reception of American
literature also illustrates the domination of literary movements start-
ing from Romanticism, then Socio-realism and finally Modernism
with the first glimpses of Postmodernism. However, American liter-
ature was not as frequently received for a long time. This changed in
the thirties with the period of “Engaged” literature which meant an in-
crease in the reception of writers such as Jack London, Upton Sinclair
and Sinclair Lewis. Their texts were published in the journals: Zeta,
Razvršje i Slobodna Misao. The journals whose publication followed
WW1 and WW2 had a special task to perform (patriotic and ideo-
logical), which meant that there was a unique space for the reception
of American literature. As aforementioned, the break with the Soviet
Union contributed to its reception especially in the journals Stvaranje
and Susreti. Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allan Poe took a prom-
inent position, standing out amongst others (who include James and
Whitman). William Faulkner followed alongside Ezra Pound. This is
not to say that earlier authors and criticism were abandoned. Eugene
O’Neill and Arthur Miller were also well received which led to their
plays being brought to life on the stage. Currently, Thomas Pynchon
takes the throne, in being a favorite amongst critics, and whose works
on different works and genres have been translated.
The reception of American Literature in Montenegro started to
be studied at the University of Montenegro in 1995 through students’
diploma works, however, it was only in 2008 that one M.A. thesis on
this topic was defended by Ana Kuljanin. (See: Kuljanin 2008) Goran
Radonjić, coming from the same University, defended an outstanding
thesis at the University of Belgrade, which Zoran Konstatinović would
have most probably singled out as exceptional, as it identifies connec-
tions in narrative procedures in Serbian and American novels of the
1960/70s. In this way, Radonjić joins the ranks of the very best critics
he evaluated. (See: Radonjić 2016)

The Reception of John Updike’s Couples in Serbia
Let me just start with the fact that the academic contribution on the re-
ception of John Updike’s fiction in Serbia was not very significant until
Biljana Dojčinović did her dissertation on the narrative strategies in
his works which she published as a monograph in 2007, and continued
publishing on many aspects of his fiction. Still, a few reviews and critics
followed Updike’s rich production, focusing on his other works. Rado-
van Mirković reviewed his novel S. in a text “The Unbearable Lightness
of Falling Apart” (“Nepodnošljiva lakoća raspadanja”) (Mirković 1990:
25) in 1989, claiming that in this novel Updike establishes himself as an
ethical writer. Three years later Vasa Pavković analyzes Updike's novel
Rabbit is Rich in the light of the American Dream in his essay “Harry
the Rabbit is Still Running” (“Još trči Hari zec”). (Pavković 1991: 98-113)
Five years later (2004) Anđelko Erdeljanin discusses in his review “A
Man is not all Alone” (“Čovek nije sasvim sam”) the context of Art.
(Edreljanin 2004) One more review appears the same year, written by
Dejan Milutinović on Updike's novel Gertrude and Claudius, claim-
ing it as not a very successful novel when compared with Shakespeare's
Hamlet. (Milutinović 2004) A collection of eight of Updike’s stories,
published by “Filip Višnjić”, Belgrade, 2004, inspired Branislava Vasić-
Rakočević’s review “Vivisection of the Human“ in which she points
out that this collection represents a synthesis of his narrative achieve-
ments. (Branislava Vasić-Rakočević: 1238-1241) Three years later Lju-
biša Jeremić publishes his review on two Updike's novels (Run Rabbit
Run; Rabbit Redux) pointing out that after his success with Couples,
both of them define his mature phase which presents him as a moralist
writer, echoing Mirković’s aforementioned conclusion. (Jeremić 1993:
92-97) The year 2008 witnesses a dwindle in the reception of Updike's
works which parallels his reception in Serbia. Thus, let me conclude
this introduction of the reception of Couples in Teofil Pančić's words:
“John Updike has studied in the most persistent and profound way,
and (re) defined the spirit and soul of North America and its people,
during the second half of the XX century”. (Pančić 2008)
The reception of John Updike’s Couples in Serbia has been circ-
ling around the name of an outstanding scholar, the aforementioned
Biljana Dojčinović and her considerable contribution to the reception
of all his works including Couples. Dojčinović further contributes to
this topic through the mentorship of her students’ research, and I am
going to start this survey with one such work: Sanja Sudar's 2017 re-
search paper “Updike in Belgrade (Until) 1978”. It was published as a
blog by John Updike's Society translated by Milica Abramović (https://
blogs.iwu.edu/johnupdikesociety/flies/2017/Updike-in-Belgrade.pdf).
She points out that the XV International Writers October Summit held
in Belgrade in 1978 and Updike's popularity are results of “his novel
Couples, the fourth edition of which had been published that year,
staying on the top of best-seller lists for months.” (Ibid.) Apart from
the novel Couples, Updike has been known to the Serbian reading
audience through a few translations published by 1978: a collection of
short stories Pigeon Feathers, and one more novel (The Centaur); while
the novel Rabbit, Run was one step from publication. Sudar analyz-
es the interviews he gave on the popularity of Couples in Yugoslavia,
and quotes the following “It appears the information on the number of
readers in the emergence of sexual revolution are not solely an Amer-
ican theme”, and makes a shrewd comment that Yugoslavia “kept pace
with the 'American Trends' in this regard.” (Ibid.) Sanja Sudar presents
Stevan Stanić’s very positive comment on the reception of Updike’s
Couples. Sudar concludes that Stanić, in his analysis of the style of
Couples, in a “indirect and subtle” (Ibid.) manner gives special credit
to Aleksandar Petrović and his translation of the work.
Additionally, Sanja Sudar compares Updike’s popularity among
the wider audience of readers with the modest academic reception of
Couples. She singles out Ljiljana Šop’s Eros Rampant review published
in Književne novine in 1970 as an outstanding academic contribution.
Another ode to Updike’s popularity, as Sudar mentions, is the poem “A
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1) The best received authors in this period include: Harriet Beecher Stowe,Mark
Twain, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, O’ Henry, Walt
Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Theodor Dreiser, Sherwood
Anderson, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Francis Scot Fitz-
gerald, Doss Passoss, Erskine Caldwell, David Salinger, Bernard Malamud,
James T. Farrell, Vladimir Nabokov, James Thurber, Saul Bellow, William
Saroyan, Theodor Sturgeon, Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac, Thomas
Pynchon, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Grace Paley, Raymond Carver, Su-
san Sontag, Philip Roth, Maxine Hong Kingstone, John Irving, Paul Auster,
Stephen King, Michael Walsh, Lawrence Sterling...