Suburbia as failed erotic utopia: John Updike's 'Couples'

John Updike's novel Couples met a rather controversial reception when it ca me out in 1968. Many critics and readers blamed it for its frankness or eve n permissiveness in sexual matters, others praised it as an accurate depict ion of suburbia during the Kennedy years. Moreover, the novel seems to proj ect and erotic utopia with ten suburbanite couples trying to escape from th eir existential malaise into adulterous affairs. Gradually, however, the em phasis shifts from the sociological and psychological close-up of an essent ially hedonistic way of life towards a more differentiated probing into a m oral and - in the last analysis - theological crisis, exemplified by the ma in character Piet Hanema. The underlying message of the novel in this sense refers to Karl Barth's stern Protestant rejection of natural theology, whi ch rules out erotics as a possible solution to spiritual problems.