Verdict: Updike

The day that John Updike died, I purchased a copy of Rabbit, Run, hoping that I would enjoy it more than Villages, a wildly underwhelming (indeed, failure of a) novel. I've finished Rabbit now, and must say that I am confounded by the praise Updike has garnered. True, he writes pretty, even lyrical, sentences, but to what end?

Below, a few examples from Rabbit:

"He looks up from the toenails to Joyce's watching face and from there to her mother's bosom, two pointed bumps under a buttoned blouse that shows through its summer weave the white shadow of the bra." (182)

"It floods Rabbit with an ancient, papery warmth, the oblique sun on his cheeks, the sparse inattentive crowd, the snarled pepper chatter, the spurts of dust on the yellow infield, the girls in shorts strolling past with chocolate popsicles." (193)

"On Friday Janice comes home. For the first days the presence of the baby fills the apartment as a little casket of incense fills a chapel." (200)

"...Janice and Ruth, Eccles and his mother, the right way and the good way, the way to the delicatessen - gaudy with stacked fruit lit by a naked bulb - and the other way, down Summer Street..." (263)

Part of my problem with Updike - and this is particularly evident in the final quotation - is that he seems content with beauty alone. My question: where is the philosophy? Even Roth, Updike's generational counterpart, more effectively addresses the metaphysics (indeed, the humanity) of human interaction.

In the end, Rabbit (and Rabbit) is far too American for my liking, far too committed to plot. And it's not that I'm asking for existential angst, because I'm not. It's just that if I had a choice between James Salter, for instance, and Updike, I'd go with the former every day of the week.

Updike's novels reveal Updike's characters. I prefer novels which shed light, by way of character, on the universes beyond their pages.

Sorry, Christopher Guerin

Romano, too generous?