The John Updike Character Quiz

Rest in peace, John Updike.  You could have written more, but you wrote enough.  As an affectionate tribute, here’s a useful quiz to help you determine if you’re a John Updike character.

Are you a character in a John Updike novel?  Take this quiz and know the truth!

[From the May, 1973 issue of Fictional Character Quizzes Monthly]

1. How much, if any, adultery do you commit on a daily basis?
2. Have you ever thought to yourself, “All the world’s a novel, and all the men and women merely players, and it sounds really Updikey in points.”
3. Is your spouse having an affair?  If no, consider the possibility that you just haven’t heard about it yet, because you’re not that far into the book.
4. Would you describe your life as “entirely bleak” or merely “suffocating?”
5. When having a conversation or performing an activity, do you sometimes become distracted by ordinary … oh, hey, what’s that?  A gas station, a lone elm on a deserted street, and some children playing next to a half-painted barn?  Let’s describe that as much as possible.
6. Look, let’s just say your spouse is having an affair, so you should have one, too.  Now, they’re probably seeing another married person, which is sure to devastate that person’s spouse, when they find out, later in the book, so you should get in on that.  It’d be just so perfect for both of these families to become inextricably linked by lust, regret, and secrets.  See if you can get the pets to hook up, too.
7. That last one wasn’t really a question.  Sorry.  Sometimes life is very disappointing.  Do you agree, or strongly agree?
8. Speaking of life, how often have you rebelled against your mundane existence, filled with unhappy people who don’t understand your unhappiness (because they’re unhappy for slightly different reasons), and lashed out (slowly, passively) at the people around you?  Let’s say, hypothetically, “always.”  Would you compare your lashing out process to that of a) a rabbit, b) the same rabbit, slightly older, c) same rabbit, older still, d) a dying rabbit, or e) the dead rabbit’s relatives?
9. Do you currently, or have you ever, wanted to get it on with a grad student, excluding any point at which you were a grad student yourself?  (This doesn’t prove you’re from an Updike novel, but you may be a character from fully 78% of all New Yorker short stories, including Updike’s.)
10. Are you a centaur but not really?  Are you, like, looking for God using computers or something?  (I don’t even remember what that one was called.  I think it was Updike.  Maybe it was Philip Roth?)
11. Are you getting older?  Yes, we all are, but are you really, really getting older?  As in, you spend all your time doing it?  Yes, we all do, but – never mind.
12. Do you, as an Updike character, like cupcakes?

If you answered “Yes” to Question 12, you are an Updike character.  You’ve just admitted it.  Don’t feel bad that you never figured it out, because Updike characters are notoriously oblivious to their own motivations.  You should, however, feel bad that by the end of your story, someone will die, everyone’s affairs will be revealed, and the rest of your life will become one long, relentless sad-stravaganza.  Good luck with that.

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