I have never read him, but I just finished a fulsome tribute to him in The New Yorker. I confess myself intrigued. What should I read first? What should I avoid? I am not all that interested in reading his plays or poetry, but his novels or short stories. Which?
Thanks in advance. I am going out of town tomorrow, but will reserve a book by him as soon as I get back.
His Rabbit books are his best known works, and arguably his best. I would recommend starting with Rabbit, Run.
I didn’t find it fulsome at all–I thought very positively of it, in fact.
There is actually a copy of (what I learned from that NYer) a story that was the first he ever published there, “Friends from Philadelphia,” a nice youthful story, that is published separately (and so very cheap)–it’s at home, and I’m not, but I’ll tell you the publisher when I get back. It’s a series of mini-books, with a lot of orange on the spines.
Thanks. Fulsome does not always mean over the top etc. For TNY to be so enthusiastic about any author naturally intrigues me.
Rabbit, Run is great, but I’d actually start with Pigeon Feathers, a collection of short stories that includes “A&P,” my favorite thing written by him.
The Rabbit series is terrific. I’ve also got copies of Couples and The Centaur which i bought after the wave of enthusiasm generated by Rabbit. I’ve never been able to make it past the first few pages of both of those novels. I’m going to pull them out to try again.
I heard he ghostwrote Krusty the Klown’s autobiography.
But srsly, I am ashamed to admit I knew nothing about Updike’s work and only when I read his obituaries did it occur to me that I probably ought to read some of his stuff. That’s what engineering school will do to you.
Well, actually the only time “fulsome” doesn’t mean “excessive” is when it’s being misapplied but you can use it however you choose. I was just trying to point it out if you thought it just meant “complete” or something.
The New Yorker is pretty fulsome, actually, in its praise for its own long-time writers and staff. They’re one of the few publications that regularly runs full-length obits for staff writers, in fact, historically, and most of those are very well-written tributes to people who never got much coverage when they were alive. For a long time, the NYer buried their bylines at the back of the articles and stories, though they’ve stopped doing that in recent decades. But when they die, the magazine heaps accolades on them.
Ditto. Also found in anthologies.