The Updike-athon continues Since my last report, I've read Museums and Women, Bech is Back, In the Beauty of the Lilies, Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest.
The good news: Updike is fluent, a masterful stylist, a remarkable story-teller, a distinguished craftsman. He's original, entertaining, bold, inventive. The section of Beauty of the Lilies that describe Alma DeMott's childhood in Basingstoke, Delaware is as good as anything I've read in years -- a truly classic piece of writing
The bad news: Updike's characters have no heart They're almost uniformly small-minded, bigoted, hateful, unloving and, in fact, incapable of love. The novels are distressing and depressing. And inconsistent. The Rabbit quartet is reputed to be Updike's masterpiece, but the long section about Skeeter in Redux is a ludicrous mess, a total bomb, a failure that disfigures the entire series
A reader who knew America only through the Rabbit series would be convinced that Americans in the second half of the twentieth century were selfish, money-grubbing, racist, entirely without culture, sex-obsessed, alcoholic, uneducated, insecure, obnoxious, undisciplined and knowledgeable only of TV trivia. I suppose that there are such people -- but there are also substantial citizens, artists and artisans, and good, functioning families. I must say that four large novels in the company of Updike's folk can wear a reader down. I think it's time to re-read Trollope's Palliser novels, wher4e there is villainy but also redemption. I need an antidote.
I'm reading In the Beauty of the Lillies now. It's my first Updike. I have to agree with you that the writing is quite good, but the characters are very small people. I've wondered from the beginning why I was still reading it, since I don't think the plot is all that interesting either. I suppose it is the writing style and how deep into the characters' heads I find myself. Or maybe I just have very little to entertain me in Liberia!
Posted by: Kyla | September 22, 2009 at 12:50 PM