My experience with Updike consists of reading one of the Rabbit novels and hearing one of his poems read on NPR. I thought the novel was absolutely banal and worthless, and I thought the poem was pretty good in terms of thought (it was basically about how sad it is that we store up all this knowledge and stuff in life, and that all has to go away) but not stunning in terms of verse.
So I’m not widely read in Updike, but the impression made by one of his novels on me was quite negative.
There are three layers to my question. The first is whether Updike is himself good. The establishment seems to say yes, though I wonder how much they really care about his work in 2014. He seems like the kind of author who is loved and respected by the establishment in his own time but whose half-life is pretty short after his death. For example, James Russel Lowell was a big presence in the US literary world in his time, but no one gives a shit about him now. Not sure though about Updike.
The second layer is whether that establishment really means anything now. Are a bunch of old white dudes the only ones who care about Updike now, and what does their opinion really matter? This is a bigger topic, but I think that it really doesn’t matter much. In general, I see a trend after WWII of academic opinion drifting away from popular taste and turning into a circle jerk, pardon the expression. For example, academics in the field of music cared a lot of about atonal composition in the 1960s; the average person was oblivious to that stuff.
The third layer is the simple question of whether Updike is a “popular read” any more (i.e., he’s important because people still love his works). My impression is that, again, the half-life has been very short. Yes, he was a very popular novelist in his time. But I think that, to the masses, he was basically a supermarket read, maybe with a little higher “brow” than the bodice rippers and whatnot. Dunno, did he seem “important” in 1975 or whenever? In any case, you don’t hear about Updike fans now. James A. Michener has been dead for awhile too, but I get the impression that people might still pick up one of his books like Texas or whatever and get into it. I don’t imagine people still tucking into the Rabbit novels.
True story, I was kicked out of a book club years ago for picking Rabbit Run as the book to read. The person in charge felt it was too racy and that it was a perverse suggestion.
I think he was a little shocking for the time perhaps, but I didn’t get anything much out of reading Rabbit Run really.
I think that was the one I read, but it may have been the second or third. It’s hard to remember inasmuch as the book made no impression on my mind in terms of characters and plot.
That is a funny story, by the way. I just saw a clip on YouTube yesterday of Merv Griffin interview Gene Wilder, and Gene is taking pains to explain why he felt he needed to live with someone before marrying her. In 1979, “living with someone” was still a semi-big deal. It’s kinda funny.
Well, I loved his work, and eagerly read all the prose of his that I could find, not only all the novels, but short stories, essays etc., from when I was about 18 to my mid to late 50s. Somehow I could not get through Toward the End of Time, and lost interest after that.* I blame the internet. (I don’t read much fiction at all any more. I used to read loads.)
Important, I don’t know. What makes a fiction writer “important”? But enjoyable, to some of us definitely yes, and definitely enormously gifted as a prose stylist. I think I have heard that a lot of feminists don’t approve of him,** so, as they wield a lot of clout in literary and academic humanities circles these days, his reputation may be in a decline.
Of course, if you don’t like literary fiction, you won’t like his.
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*Though I did read Bech at Bay, which I see from Wikipedia was published later, though perhaps I read it before. I remember being a bit disappointed with it though.
**Mind you, that probably means that there are other feminists who think he is great.
The sad part about my story is it happened about 10 years ago - mid 2000’s. I think the leader of the book club was very religious; I’m not sure which denomination exactly, but it was under umbrella of Christianity.
Maybe a touch ironic, since Updike was a Christian and explored religious themes in his work; although I can understand why he wouldn’t be embraced by the more straitlaced and conservative type of Christians.
Speaking as a librarian, Updike is seen as important in one very important way… his books are discard-proof. He’s seen as a big enough name that unless one of the copies is literally falling apart, they’ll all stay in the collection when it comes time to cull the shelves.
That said, I don’t think he’s very popular anymore. In my neck of the library world, he seems to be more popular than Michener, but less popular than someone like John Irving. I get the feeling that Michael Chabon will have the same kind of library career as both of them.
I haven’t read Updike in a long time. For poetry, he was a master of light verse, which probably means he’ll end up like Ogden Nash.
His books are good, but it’s been years since I’ve read them.
Fun fact: Updike was well known to be dismissive of science fiction. Yet, in his book Of the Farm, he clearly and correctly describes the plot of Alfred Bester’s “Adam and No Eve,” using it for one of the philosophical points of the book. He undoubtedly read the story, and it stuck with him.
I love “The Centaur” although the allegorical aspects of it fly right over my head. Also love his short story “Alligators”. One of the most poignant endings ever.
Was it one of the Rabbit books wherein a drunken mother drowns her baby in the sink? I distinctly remember seeing that coming, and abandoning the book at that point.
Updike is being widely attacked these days by younger woman writers, who find him and other male writers of his era like Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, odious: preoccupied with sex but failing to create female characters with the detail and imagination they granted to their male characters. I know it’s hard to read Hemingway these days because of that, and that may be a permanent scar on their careers. I was never a huge fan of Updike’s and I mostly stayed away from his relationship novels about suburbia, which pretty much knocks me out of any knowledgeable defense.
Chuck, I’m surprised at your comment. Of course Updike wrote so much about everything - he’ll be remembered as the last person to write deeply about every author being published - that I’m sure you can find quotes to back up almost any point of view. My memories are very different. I know he’s written about reading and liking sf as a kid. I remember reading some reviews in which he discussed the field intelligently. And he wrote more books with non-mimetic themes that almost any of his contemporaries. Centaur, The Witches of Eastwick, Toward the End of Time.
And to pull this thread together, Evelyn C. Leeper (a well-known fan) wrote a review of that last book that hits every post here. This was 1997.
I’ve read one or two of his novels, including ‘Couples’ - I found that quite readable. But his writing is quite misogynistic, and with no great depth, it strikes me as just well-written trash. So I’ve always assumed his continued readership comes from having written high-brow, titillating page-turners.
I read but can’t say I enjoyed Witches of Eastwick and some of his essays. My favorite of his fiction I’ve read was Roger’s Version.
What I’m about to say is probably ridiculously provincial and classist, but I’ll say it anyway:
He’s way too upper-middle-class white-guy-angst for my taste. It’s a social class I’ve never been a part of (I’m from a rural background and a working class [often holding on by the fingertips] adulthood) and while I absolutely realize that the country club Ivy League set have serious problems and personal issues I just can’t really relate to a lifestyle where the wolves aren’t always at the door and thus they’re free to become far more self absorbed than they might otherwise be. His work reeks of self obsession and insularity and highballs. I can see him trading heated bon mots with William F. Buckley in the sauna of their club.
Has the establishment ever meant anything to the general public ?
Your decription of academic opinion as turning to “a circle jerk” is not totally off the mark but were the “masses” crazy about Beethoven or Van Eyck in their time? I don’t think so. The “average person being oblivious” to their work has no bearing on their worth.
I agree that academic opinion should be more inclusive of points of views other than those of “old white men”. I even think it’s vital for the survival of High Art and I think that it’s increasingly the case. But that does not mean that popular taste has it right. Actually, at the risk of sounding elitist, I’d argue that we’re in need of educated people’s opinion (or even guidance) in that respect.
I get you, Sampiro. I’m poor working class from literally “the wrong side of the tracks.” WASP culture was far less meaningful to me than science fiction. That made complete sense, emotionally, probably because it was predominantly written by people from equivalent backgrounds.
John P. Marquard, Louis Auchincloss, John Cheever, Edith Wharton, Evan Connell. I’m embarrassingly ignorant about that whole group.
Not sure how my period favorites like John Barth, Robert Coover, and Donald Barthelme fit in. Probably their odd styles were such a poor fit for telling tales of suburban angst that they were forced to write about what was to me realer worlds, no matter how non-mimetic they became. (Mimetic, which means imitative or representative, is used in criticism similarly to realism. SF works are by definition non-mimetic and so the term got picked up early on to distinguish works meant to be real world and works meant not to be. It was coined to counter the truism that all fiction is fantasy, which is so broad a truth that it’s absolutely meaningless in the particular.)
Actually Updike is kind of interesting because he was one of the few authors who was very well respected by the “traditional” literary establishment, and at the same time had a pretty fair degree of popular success as well. Several of his novels were best-sellers. This was a fairly important thing for me in the late 1980s, when I was an undergrad studying English, and tended to have a lot of conversations about high art versus commerce.
The only one of Updike’s novels I’ve actually read is Roger’s Version, which I read for a college class on theology in literature. It’s about trying to prove the existence of God using a computer program. I found it interesting without necessarily enjoying it. As others have said about his work, it felt really insular. In this case, the insularity of the theology department at a small upper crust college. I do recall it having the distinction of being the only book we read in that course that included vivid sex scenes!
The only one of Updike’s novels I’ve actually read is Roger’s Version, which I read for a college class on theology in literature. It’s about trying to prove the existence of God using a computer program. I found it interesting without necessarily enjoying it. As others have said about his work, it felt really insular. In this case, the insularity of the theology department at a small upper crust college. I do recall it having the distinction of being the only book we read in that course that included vivid sex scenes!
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“Important” is such a weird word to use here. Important to whom, and for what reason? Generally when it’s used as the OP is using it, it means a book is important because it is so designated by academic and other lit-crit types. But the vast majority of readers could give a shit what the lit-crit types think is important. There may have been a time when they could designate a writer “important” and it might mean something outside of lit-crit circles, but … those days are long gone. The words of the prophets are now written in cyberspace.
I don’t know that he was ever “important.” Certainly, he was considered a Serious Author of Serious Books in certain circles. He probably still is. The questions are whether those circles are expanding or contracting and how much influence they have on modern literature.
I’m not sure I understand this. Could you be more specific?
If you mean that it’s now possible to find pearls of wisdom online, then I couldn’ t agree more. You have to find them, though as they are buried under steaming piles of BS.
On the other hand your post could also be interpreted as some sort of aesthetic relativism (“what I like is great and what you like is great and everything’s great”). In which case, we disagree.