How is it?

...

No. And that's bad question. Better or worse than either as, what? A novel in general? What do you want to hear....? How about, if you don't read it, you're Dad will think you're gay, and you're Mom will reveal that she did cheap 80's porno. Why? Why would she tell you this, you ask? Because it's recently become a vintage classic for reasons she doesn't want to get in to, but which have made he a minor cult celebrity. She didn't want you to find out from someone else why people were trying to interview her. She's not apologising for what she did. She just doesn't want to see you get hurt, or look at her any differently than you always have since you were a baby at her milky tit.

You gonna read them both now?

>top tier fucking prose, better than nabokov's in some ways
>vivid apprehension of characters, wonderful characterization
>maintains discipline and objectivity
Why is updike so slept on these days?

Same. Afraid they'll suck

...

Rabbit Is Rich is really good. I also really enjoyed Rabbit At Rest but I don't know if that was because it was good or because I loved being sucked back into the world of Harry Angstrom.

The last book is especially sad as it hits home how Harry, who despite his relative success in life (according to the American dream), is still a man of broken dreams longing for the old glory days which probably weren't so glorious to begin with. His family life is just such a fucking mess even though he really does try to improve it in the last book. It's the story of a waning man who's committing too little too late.

My favourite is either Rabbit, Run or Rabbit Is Rich

Janice gets drunk and accidentally drowns Rebecca June in the bath tub.
just like the beginning of Alien^3, the best Alien movie.

Because (pls no I'm not a SJW here) he wrote unapologetically misogynistic main characters and he's a fucking white male.

I have read Tropic of Cancer and I agree it was a pretty fruitless question but your response is really confusing.

>Will read Rabbit Run though now

Because he mostly had an extremely narrow, fairly boring focus without being the kind of author who could get away with that after his heyday and wasn't around at quite the right time or place to achieve meme status like the cornfather or pinecone. There's no real intrigue to anything he's well-known for even if he reached a certain level of technical mastery.

>Updike
>Dike
>dyke

What's intrigue? Not enough decaying castles or horses ridden to death?

whenever i stumble across updike i have to remember that idiotic joke about "updog". how can i disconnect that again? pls help me

What's updog?

Not much dog, what's up with you?

Some of Updike's later books are actually quite terrible. I'm looking at you, Brazil and Terrorist

Great book - partly written to highlight the harmfulness that comes from living like Neal Cassidy.
I found the sequel 'Rabbit Redux' even more interesting.

Rabbit, Remembered in the Licks of Love collection (I think?) is a good coda, too, with a grown-up Nelson and Harry's illegitimate daughter.

What's Updike?

What's Updike?

Yes, and some of Hemingway's books, and Joyce's books, and Nabokov's books are quite terrible. What's your point?

you're not helping...

How did the "Updike is an asshole" meme come to be?
He looks like the guy in that Beth Cooper movie.

are you blind? he clearly looks like a giant asshole.

Harold Bloom is very correct when he called Updike a minor writer with a major style.

protip: When reading him, skim everything but go slow when characters are either fucking, or contemplating their lives. These are the only times when his prose soars, and his characters deepen into something very genuine.

Let it go, Cheever.

>Harold Bloom is very correct when he called Updike a minor writer with a major style.
Big ideas for little brains.

There's very little besides what's plainly stated and all of the ideas involved were already banal trivialities when he wrote about them even if it's all competently packaged.

>and all of the ideas
seeOnly a clown reads for "ideas"

Joyce never wrote a bad book and the other two ""writers"" you named suck

>Joyce never wrote a bad book
Ulysses is his only good one.
>and the other two ""writers"" you named suck
t. brainlet who enjoyed portrait

how is dubliners not good??
i actually think it's one of his best.
Portrait is also good for what it is.