“I often think about how I will die, what disease or surgical procedure will have me in its tarantula grip, what indifferent hospital wall and weary night nurse will witness my last breath, my last second, the impossibly fine point to which my life will have been sharpened.”
Updike’s novel, based on Roger Lambert, a theology professor in his fifties whose grown complacent in his faith, serves as a meditation on Updike’s longstanding themes: reason versus faith; science versus religion; belief versus any of the forms of unbelief.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. First trade edition, first printing. Hardcover. Octavo. 329 pages. Dust jacket in very good condition with slight fading. Boards clean with some edge wear. Slight crushing at spine ends. Binding tight and square. Pages clear. Solid copy.
