Old Master in a Brave New World

John Updike has appeared on the cover of this magazine twice, once in 1968 and again in 1982. The first time was for Couples, his then scandalous, still shocking novel of suburban partner swapping. The headline read THE ADULTEROUS SOCIETY. When he made the cover again, having just won nearly every literary award in existence for Rabbit Is Rich, the third in his four-volume Rabbit saga, he rated a somewhat tamer caption: GOING GREAT AT 50.

Updike is fond of that second cover. "It made me look smooth and kind of enigmatic," he says with a wry, twinkly smile. "All the things I want to be." And if he were on the cover today, what would the headline be? "STILL ALIVE, AMAZINGLY!" he suggests, getting even wryer and twinklier. "STILL ALIVE--AND WHY?"

With his 22nd novel, Terrorist (Knopf; 320 pages), Updike answers his own question. Terrorist is the startlingly contemporary story of Ahmad, a high school student in a crumbling New Jersey town whose zealous Islamic faith and disaffection with modern life make him a pawn in the larger, fitfully violent conflict between Muslim and Christian, East and West. They also make him a powerful voice for Updike's abiding, ongoing critique of American civilization, as well as a uniquely tragic individual in his own right.

At 74, Updike remains one of America's great stylists--his prose is the literary equivalent of high-definition television--and one of its most pitiless observers. As Terrorist demonstrates, his gaze hasn't wavered, even though his feelings have never been more mixed.

TIME: WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT AN 18- YEAR-OLD ISLAMIC EXTREMIST?

UPDIKE: I think it was the sense that I could see why Muslims would hate the West, and the U.S. in particular, because so much of what we take pride in and enjoy tends to militate against a simple, ardent faith. I felt I could express this idea, that I had some insight. I don't know why I felt that. I wasn't an especially pious youth.

YOU MANAGE TO MAKE A REAL CONNECTION WITH AHMAD, A YOUNG MAN WITH WHOM YOU DON'T OBVIOUSLY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON. I got very much into him and liked him, sympathized with him, even admired him. He's in some ways like me as I remember myself. But he's more pious and more cool, more composed. Not this disheveled, eager-to-please, puppyish adolescent, which is my image of myself. He's not so puppyish. He has a deadly streak too.

PEOPLE FEEL VERY PROPRIETARY ABOUT THEIR ETHNICITIES THESE DAYS. ARE YOU WORRIED THAT PEOPLE WON'T ACCEPT A BOOK ABOUT AN ARAB AMERICAN COMING FROM YOU? It's a question of whether or not you're going to be scared by all this ethnic awareness and possessiveness into writing about nothing but septuagenarian, Eastern-born Lutherans. You get boxed in by your own fear of making a misstep. I'd rather risk having various minorities complain. You have to risk it. It's part of the fun of it. Unless you're willing to stretch, you're going to limit yourself to a kind of self-parody in the end. No, you have to take that risk. And you do it cheerfully, because it's liberating to try to imagine an Arab American. He's not a very average Arab American, in any case. He's sort of one of a kind.