Updike

*this may be an ilm in-joke

I think he's a sound enough critic, with a good feel for many things, but I think he's less exceptional in that arena. I'm not sure he is terribly flexible and adaptable as a critic or essayist.

omg Rabbit tries to tip drill Janice.

but Skeeter goes for the Dirty Sanchez

whoa there, I've only just finished the first book - don't spoil things for me.

they both pale, compared to the almost unspoken Charlie Stavros action.

Hurting - the 2nd book is the worst.
4>3>1>2, imo.

no,sorry, the novella, "rabbit remembered" is the worst.
but it's still worth the reading.

should i read "rabbit, run"?

I think, particularly for a male writer who is so preoccupied with notions of maleness, he writes women very well. The women in The Witches Of Eastwick are totally believable to me, that is, I believe fully in the realism part of the magic-realism, making the witch part more viable. In Coupling many of the female characters, foxy especially, could just have been ciphers, but that isn't the case.

I thought the brief female-perspective sections of "Rabbit, Run" were some of the best parts.

J.D. - I liked it, but it wasn't exactly a fun read. The main character is hard to stomach, and if I hadn't been reading it for a book club I might not have finished. If you can savor good prose and character insight for their own sake, then read it.

"he writes women very well"

as a matter of fact, Updike tried to run the eastwick book, in part because women accused hi, he writes very bad about women.
i can see why people can get mad about his women's world perspective, but the men's world s his books, are unlikeble the same.

just read rabbit redux and it was pretty weird. what's the deal w/ him and his sister? and was rabbit, run as overwritten as this one? definitely notable for including the line 'the officer was white, btw' tho

what do you mean by overwritten

'he slides down an inch on the cool sheet and fits his microcosmic self limp into the curved crevice between the polleny offered nestling orbs of her ass'

maybe it's just the sex bits that seemed ott to me

yeah that's his prose style. they're all kinda like that

i've read rabbit, run before but it was a while ago. i think i'm going to go ahead w/ the rest of them. i enjoyed it, it was just like, sometimes too much. but still rabbit = great character

the Rabbits are his best stuff, imho

i read his memoir, Self-Consciousness, years ago, and loved it, much more than the few novels i've read by him.

his short story collection is very enjoyable

I got the feeling when I read Rabbit Run that there was a lot of writing, particularly in the sex scenes, that must have felt very *daring* both to write and to read at the time. With distance, it feels a little like when the goody goody nerd tries to be *bad*.

. . . but Updike just writes like that. He writes a lot about sex and he uses a lot of rich poetic language.

What do you mean "goody goody nerd?" Why would you start a book by Updike thinking he's a goody goody nerd?

I don't mean that Updike is a goody goody nerd. I'm just saying that there are a lot of passages that I imagine were very titillating at the time that feel a bit forced to me in the '00s (ending a poetic sentence with the word "ass", etc.)

yeah but that's you're thing that you're bringing to the table, it's not Updike's fault. Do you pick up a book written before there were cars and say, "Hey I like this but where the hell are all the cars?"

your thing that you're bringing

No, it's more like a writer in the early days of the automobile making a big show of his writing about automobiles.

"this book is great, it was really funny and I liked the stuff about sex, but I was wondering Mr. Updike, how come Rabbit never e-mails his wife or his girlfriend or gets on the Internet? Could you explain that to me?"

I mean when a sentence like that no longer seems bold solely for its mixing of poetic language and crude sexual terms, you get past that element of it, and then stripped of that element Updike's writing sometimes feels forced.

I don't see how your analogy has anything even remotely to do with what I'm talking about.

making a big show=Updike's prose style for everything I've read by him. Updike makes a big deal about everything. grass, flowers, vaginas. you gotta either accept it and dig it or it's maybe not for you.

I mean when a sentence like that no longer seems bold solely for its mixing of poetic language and crude sexual terms, you get past that element of it, and then stripped of that element Updike's writing sometimes feels forced.

And I'm saying that although it may have been bold back when he wrote it, for you to read approach it now by saying: This feels forced to me is missing the point entirely. The point is not to read it and place out 21st Century values/morals onto it.

Breaking News 1:24 PM ET:
The Author John Updike Has Died at 76, His Publisher Says

whoa.

wow, RIP

NEW YORK (AP) - John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.
Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Mass., died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir "Self-Consciousness" and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams.

An old-fashioned believer in hard work, he published more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards

:-(

rip

aw man, RIP :(

Reading the maples stories, don’t want it to end

Of all U's flawed male protagonists I find Dick Maples the least sympathetic