Here is Buchanan, I am rid of him, and this book, a mosaic with more tesserae than matrix, constitutes, I trust, my volume of homage to my native state, whose misty doughy middleness, between immoderate norths and souths, remains for me, being my first taste of life, the authentic taste.¹

A reviewer in Newsweek recognizes Updike's insecurity about this play suggested in this Afterword. "John Updike presents his new book to us much as a father would introduce an ill-formed child: affectionately, and with a parent's committment, but a little nervous, too, about how it looks to us."² Acknowledging the challenge Updike faced in writing about a little-known and not well-regarded President, the reviewer notes,"Updike's portrait of the man is sympathetic, intelligent, concerned."³

In a review, "Doughy Middleness," the title a reference to Updike's own words, for the National Review⁴, D. Keith Mano opens by asserting,"Updike's characters don't deserve a form letter obituary, let alone a novel. They are pathetic folk; even the pathos is undistinguished. Great issues aren't at issue in Updike's fiction. When ignorant armies clash by night, his people are somewhere else on the beach, skinny dipping perhaps."⁵ Mano's remarks do not seem entirely fair to Updike's characters, who seem far more complicated than Mano acknowledges. Certainly, though, Mano's frustrations can be understood. The genre and style of Buchanan Dying limit its accessibility, and the reader, who relishes the free-spirited sexual romps elsewhere in Updike's oeuvre, will be disappointed by the restrained and tense relationship between Buchanan and Anne.

Comparing Buchanan to other Updike characters, Mano states,"Buchanan is Updike's kind of people. The well-intentioned, middling man, hung up in a rundown between North and South, abolitionist and slaveholder. Despite presidential prerogatives, he's hardly more decisive than Rabbit Angstrom, vegetating between moonwalkers and militant blacks."⁶ Mano's assertion that Updike doesn't address "great issues" seems wrong. The Rabbit novels can be seen as looking at how a changing culture affects the typical American male. Like other critics, Mano found Updike's afterword most impressive. He writes,"Updike plays the historian: his 80-page afterword is deadpan, footnoted, scholarly, and more entertaining by far than the play."⁷

The review in The New Statesman is among the most harsh. The reviewer asserts,"Updike's closet drama about James Buchanan is, I think, a full-scale literary disaster, phony and dull as sliced white bread."⁸
Stanley Weintraub presents a much more favorable review, but recognizes the potential problems the closet drama can present some readers.⁹ "This obvious labor of love is nevertheless only an indulgence for which Updike must be forgiven. His talents give him the right to test them; and whatever the failure of Buchanan Dying to come to life as a drama, it is an absorbing piece of writing by a contemporary master." ¹⁰
In a brief mention in The New Yorker, the reviewer asserts,"This 'closet drama,' as its author calls it, will attract readers interested in american history as well as in contemporary literature -- the first because it reassses a cipher who puzzled the nation, President James Buchanan, and the second because of its author's glittering use of historical materials." ¹¹

Reviews of Buchanan Dying (from John Updike: A Bibliography, 1967-1993 Compiled by Jack DeBellis)

Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. "The Historical Mind and the Literary Imagination." Atlantic 233 (June 1974): 54-59.
"'Final Homage' Paid to His State." Philadelphia Inquirer 9 June 1974.
Weintraub, Stanley. "Closet Drama." The New Republic 170 (22 June 1974): 26.
Prescott, Peter S. "Immobile President." Newsweek 24 (June 1974): 82, 85-86.
Taylor, Robert. "Biographer, Subject Merge in Updike Book." Boston Globe 25 June 1974: 11.
Putney, Michael. "Historian Updike Looks at…James Buchanan?" National Observer 6 July 1974: 17.
"Buchanan Dying: A Play." The New Yorker 50 (8 July 1974): 80.
Ehrenpreis, Irvin. "Buchanan Redux." The New York Review of Books 21 (8 Aug. 1974): 6, 8.
Mano, D. Keith. "Doughy Middleness." National Review 26 (30 Aug. 1974): 987-88.
Straub, Peter. "Wise Women." The New Statesman 89 (10 Jan. 1975): 50.
"F & M Featuring Updike Exhibit." Reading (Pa.) Eagle 6 Mar. 1976.
Taylor, Sam. "Author John Updike Has Always Been Fascinated by Buchanan." Lancaster New Era 9 Mar. 1976.
Fidler, John. "Buchanan' Plays Well for Updike." Reading Times 30 Mar. 1976: 25, 27
"Updike Play Opens." Reading Eagle 30 Mar. 1976.
Sullivan, Dan. "Updike Breathes Some Life into Buchanan." Los Angeles Times 27 Mar. 1977: 1, 54.
"John Updike's Buchanan Dying: A Chamber Theatre Production." Readers Theatre 7 (Fall/Wint. 1979): 7,8,37.