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

Dream for John Updike” written by Ljiljana Đurđić. Couples, as we all
now know, demonstrated its popularity by showing up on the top ten
most read novels in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Zagreb and Titograd (Podgor-
ica) from March to October 1978. Despite this evident popularity, there
is still the fact that Gordana Todorović “omitted the writer of one of
the most read American novels in the Serbo-Croatian region.” (Ibid.)
Sudar’s insightful and witty paper includes many more interesting de-
tails concerning his stay in Belgrade and his humorous opinions on the
role of the artist who has become a popular figure in America.
In 1977 Ljiljana Šop wrote a review of Couples in Književne novine
(Шоп: 1977) where she points out that it is an interesting and pro-
vocative book which can lead to various understandings. Moreover,
Šop highlights that Updike definitely succeeded in creating a rich
and multi-meaningful saga about America in the 1960s. He created
a unique picture of American society as a whole. The attention is on
moral values and their disintegration as a result of human hypocrisy.
This moral stance, as argued by Šop, is maintained throughout Up-
dike’s use of erotic scenes, as they never slip into the pornographic.
Moreover, Ljiljana Šop gives a special credit to some scenes (in the
moment of Kennedy’s assassination; church in the fire) that have inter-
textual relations she recognizes in the Bible, once again echoing the
moral nature of Updike’s writing. Much like Stanić, she also praises
Aleksandar Petrović’s translation and concludes that it was only after
the publication of Couples that Updike became popular in Yugoslavia
in spite of the fact that he had been previously published, which speaks
in favour of Petrović’s translation. Petrović was not only praised for
his translation but also for his preface to Couples. In this preface he
explores the ethics of the novel, its style and composition, and idioms
and metaphors. (Петровић 1977: 10-20). I cannot resist singling out
the very end of Petrović conclusion in which he ironically points out
that in “enlightened society only women are endangered.” (Ibid.)
A year later Risto Trifković published a comparative essay “Read-
ing of Updike, Bellow, Jong...” (Trifković 1978: 24-25) (Couples, Mr.
Sammler's Planet, Fear of Flying) in which he analyzes these authors’
responses to the reality of America of the 1960-70. He concludes that
Couples could take the leading position especially when the depth
of the projected, described and experienced is concerned. An inter-
view with John Updike for the daily paper Politika, titled “Where
the Couples are Today”, (Политика 1978: 19.10.) must be mentioned.
It enlightens the writer’s position and the strong interest of the read-
ing audience. Updike gave the interview to the daily Politika while he
was in Belgrade in October 1978, and it was published on the 19th. The
interview was translated, recently, by Jasna Todorović, a doctoral stu-
dent. Following this, the interview was republished in two parts, on
May 26 and June 2, 2018, in Politika.
Notably, 1978 will be remembered by Gvozden Eror’s book Aspects
of Works, Manners of Interpretation (Vidovi dela, vidovi tumačenja),
and his most illuminating chapter on Updike’s Couples, titled “In-
tentions and Interpretations, Updike: Eros – Tanatos, Old and New
Myths.” (Eror: 1978) Eror makes in-depth analysis of the previous
evaluations and interpretations of Updike’s Couples in the broader
European and American context, and opens up a dialogue to be con-
cluded with tendencies of different approaches (archetypical-mythical
and Christian) to which he adds socio-ethical interpretation. He pays
special attention to the richness of Updike’s ambivalent language,
his figures of speech, the power of Updike’s visual imagination and
poetic atmosphere, the mixture of the real and fictional world, and
other aspects of the novel which he denotes as “literary ambivalence
of Couples.” (Ibid. 285) This is an erotic novel, not a social one, Eror
concludes, contradicting Šop’s previously mentioned conclusions.
Supporting his conclusion Eror claims that in Couples the relation-
ship between a man and a woman, in all its complexity, dominates the
novel. This essay dominates the reception of Couples in 1978, and we
believe that it is worth translating into English and presenting to the
English-speaking community.
As we previously pointed out it was Biljana Dojčinović who kept
maintaining the academic exploration and reception of Updike in
Serbia. She started publishing on Updike’s work with her text “The
World of John Updike” as early as 1985 in the literary journal Kn-
jiževna kritika. (107-115) She analyzes his novel Couples while identi-
fying its complex meaning through unraveling layer after layer of his
work taking into account Saša Petrović’s “Preface” to his extraordinary
translation of Couples. She plays the role of an archeologist through
her combination of approaches to the novel, and thus acquaints us
with the novel’s archetypal meanings, psychological interplays, done
through binary oppositions (Eros/Thanatos; Love/Death; Man/
Woman; Immorality/Amorality; The Old/the New; Religion/Modern;
Hedonism/Fatalism); symbolic meanings – best illustrated through
the names of the characters which, as she says, “often define them,”
(112); narrative procedures; and then through linguistic and sound
interplays of different variations which enlighten both characters and
the world they belong to. A circling is constantly present in his work,
as noticed by Dojčinović, and it functions at all levels of his ironic
narration. This circling allows Updike’s Couples to be compared with
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Criseyde. This comparison enables her to
raise a rhetorical question of “whether the characters escape from their
closed world and whether addressing the reader in a more personal
way is just a coincidence, or maybe, proof of the timelessness and tra-
gedy of the trivial, hidden behind Shakespeare’s ancient and Updike’s
contemporary stories?” (113)
Biljana Dojčinović’s book on Updike (Cartographer of the Modern
World: the Novels of John Updike) has been acknowledged as one of
the most outstanding academic contributions concerning his works.
A review was written by the author of this text who wanted to point
out the relevance of her methods, the precision in her analysis of
Updike’s narrative procedures, themes and characters, and her focus
on the role of the reader, all which illustrate her to be a scrupulous
reader and interpreter of Updike’s poetics. Couples is one of the many
books Dojčinović analyzes in her exceptional study. She pushes the
limits of the interpretation of his texts significantly, and suggests how
narratology, when applied in the way she does, could be a complement-
ary and complex perspective as well, which can be an excellent example
of a dialogue between literary theory and literary text. (Vukčević 2008:
172-76) All this definitely qualify Dojčinović's book for translation
into English, which will, I am sure, do a lot to complete the map of
Updike’s reception.
This exploration of the reception of John Updike in Serbia would be
incomplete without highlighting Biljana Dojčinović’s ceaseless contri-
bution to John Updike, not only by publishing the most illuminating
essays on his poetics in domestic academic journals, such as Zbornik
Matice srpske za književnost i jezik, ProFemina and Književna kri-
tika but also in international ones, such as European Perspectives on
John Updike (“Signs of Omission?: Socialist Erasure in John Updike's
Work”), published as recently as 2018.

The Reception of John Updike’s Couples in Montenegro
The reception of John Updike in Montenegro started in Pobjeda with
the review “Unnecessary People” (Izlišni ljudi) of his novel Couples,
published by Prosveta in 1977, written by Vojislav Nikčević. Nikčević
claims that Updike and his Couples belong to the American realistic
tendencies. (Pobjeda 1978: No. 4386, p. 12) However, he also claims that
this is not one of his great novels as it serves more as a sociological
essay than literature. He also gives a negative comment on the char-
acters who are not satisfied with their lives and not ready to fight for
better lives. Vojislav Nikčević developed the mentioned review of
Couples into an essay “The Truthfulness of a Sociological Essay” (“Ver-
izam sociološkog eseja”), published by a literary journal Stvaranje. He
insists on his interpretation of this novel more as a discussion on the
spirit and consciousness of the age than a story about a man and the
moment he found himself in. The novel illustrates the general condi-
tion of the American middle class, however, it does not always achieve
this successfully due to its underdeveloped characters. Nikčevic fur-
ther claims that Couples lacks artistic value, because of its overly ob-
vious documentary moments in spite of Updike’s efforts to make up
for it by “poetic softening of the naturalistic” (Stvaranje 1978: 674) ele-
ments of the stream of consciousness and symbols.
Almost two decades later a text “Rabbit at Rest” published in the
same newspaper, describes Updike’s literary activities in London and
the author’s opinions on his novel Rabbit, Run from 1960, mentioning
the popularity of Updike’s novel Couples. (Pobjeda 1995: No 10668, p.12)
A few more articles: the review of the novel Brazil by Biljana Dojčin-
ović-Nešić; and reviews of the novels Toward the End of Time (Prema
kraju vremena) and Rabbit Remembered and a translation of the story
Playing with Dynamite (Igra dinamitom) with Ljubica Bajer’s com-
ments on his biography, were published by the end of the XX century.