Reading the 20th Century discussion

Are there any fans in the house?


I read the Rabbit novels many many decades ago and recall finding much to enjoy

Aside from those books, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by him

What about you?

What inspired this thread is this list in the Guardian of his best 10 novels………

John Updike’s best books – Ranked!…

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2...

It is the four Rabbit novels which top the Guardian list


1 Rabbit Angstrom: the four novels (1995)

The author’s supreme achievement – if you have never read any of these novels, jump right in at the start and work your way through to the heartbreaking finale. To rank each work in turn, they go: Rabbit at Rest (1990), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), Rabbit, Run (1960) and Rabbit Redux (1971). A separately published novella, Rabbit Remembered (2001) , is a disappointing misfire. Taken as a whole, the tetralogy offers an unforgettable portrait of the life of the white middle-class American male in the last century. Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is priapic, patriotic and prone to bouts of religious introspection. When we first meet him, he feels trapped in a stale marriage, his days as a feted high-school baseball player behind him, long years of existential emptiness ahead. Those years will cover the counterculture explosion of the 1960s, the monied excess of the early 1980s and the bitter realisation by the close of that decade that unbridled materialism has poisoned the body corporeal and politic. Updike’s gifts for vivid description and apt metaphor have never been surpassed.

Updike tropes Sex, religion, death

I think The Witches of Eastwick is interesting. I read The Centaur but remember almost none of it. Updike has a number of short stories most if not all collected in two volumes from Library of America which I plan to read from eventually.

Never read him, but he’s near the top of my “maybe this year, finally” list. Several people whose taste resonates with me like him, which makes me cautiously optimistic that I might, too.

Or, if I don’t like him, I’m at least not as likely to want my time back as I have been with a variety of other acclaimed (mostly white make) writers.

I made the mistake of listening to some interviews with him that really irritated / enraged me. There's been a handful of times that getting to know more about writers has been lovely, but I find that it often works in the other direction. That put me off reading him for years, aside from some short stories, which I actually liked quite a bit.

I read him decades ago, and stopped with Rabbit Redux, but would be curious to reread Rabbit Run and one of his later novels.

But my priority next year will be finishing Proust, so I may not be available for a Buddy Read until I'm done with that.

It's going to be that kind of 2026, I'm afraid. Setting my priorities.