Volume 37, Number 1 · February 1, 1990
Rereading 'Indian Summer'
By John Updike
Though it presents not so broad and conscientiously loaded a canvas as such important Howells novels as A Modern Instance, The Rise of Silas Lapham, and A Hazard of New Fortunes, Indian Summer has faded less than most of this author's immense and once immensely admired oeuvre. It was completed by March of 1884, when the impressions of an extended European trip with his family were fresh in his mind, but was held for sixteen months while The Rise of Silas Lapham, composed after Indian Summer, ran as a serial in Century magazine; accordingly, Howells had more time to polish this novel than he usually allowed himself and in its text as serialized in Harper's Monthly from July 1885 through February 1886 he found little to improve for book publication. In one inscribed copy of the book, Howells called it 'the one I like best.' His determined—nay, doctrinaire—fidelity to the inconclusive texture of quotidian life, which can leave his novels diffuse and tepid, here attaches to a colorful locale and a classic situation.
Feature, 2766 words
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