John Updike 8-16

 John Updike Bothers me. I knew of  his stature but my heart did not warm to his Rabbit Angstrom stories. My notes from prison will show that. Still, I wanted to know more about him. This is what I was able to find on The Volunteers of America halfway house's computer lab.

Biographies can be found at Wikipedia and The Modern Novel. The following comes from his obituary in the New York Times:

“My subject is the American Protestant small-town middle class,” Mr. Updike told Jane Howard in a 1966 interview for Life magazine. “I like middles,” he continued. “It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.”

From his earliest short stories, he found his subject in the everyday dramas of marriage, sex and divorce, setting them most often in the fictional town of Olinger, Pa., which he described as “a square mile of middle-class homes physically distinguished by a bend in the central avenue that compels some side streets to deviate from the grid.” He wrote about America with boundless curiosity and wit in prose so careful and attentive that it burnished the ordinary with a painterly gleam.

Maybe my problem lies in not sharing the interest in the middle class for my middle class is barely hanging on by its fingernails or been dispersed by the closing of the factories decades ago,

The Library of America publishes an Updike collection.

Like Thomas Wolfe, a John Updike Society exists with much information inside and online.

The Modern Library site has articles on the Rabbit novels.

Here is a YouTube video with Updike talking about American novels. I do like hearing the man.

The Modern Novel reflects my bewilderment at reading Updike's Rabbit at Rest:

Let’s be honest here. This novel succeeded because – shock, horror! – it had sleazy sex in it. Americans love sleazy sex (though they will furiously deny it) and this was so naughty that Knopf had to cut some of the dirty bits out when it was first published but, of course, that made Americans even more eager for it and they lapped it up (pun intended). The four books follow the story of Harry Angstrom, known as Rabbit. Rabbit was a high school basketball star and, like other school sports stars, life afterwards seems a bit mundane. When we first meet him he is in a dull job and a dull marriage, perfect Peyton Place material. He leaves his pregnant wife for a prostitute with a heart of gold (Updike is good with the literary clichés) but returns when his wife goes into labour but leaves again. His wife, who is an alcoholic, accidentally drowns the baby and poor Harry is left torn between the drunken wife and the prostitute with a heart of gold. End of first book, riddled with clichés.