Mr Updike's Literary Contribution

Enjoyed his novel Gertrude & Claudius, but only because I have a fascination with Hamlet.

bump because the op of the other thread is a faggot

Talented writer with ideas I disagree with.
He's like a dick that everyone puts up with because he's so damn good at what he does.

Literally a white male.

Go back to your safe space, cuck.

Reminder that irony doesn't belong here anymore because Veeky Forums is strictly a counterculture website.

Which of his ideas do you disagree with?

One of the GOAT American prose stylists, decent storyteller, realistic. Roger's Version is my favorite Updike book.

>Maybe the only thing the reader ends up appreciating about Ben Turnbull is that he's such a broad caricature of an Updike protagonist that he helps us figure out what's been so unpleasant and frustrating about this gifted author's recent characters. It's not that Turnbull is stupid ... It's that he persists in the bizarre adolescent idea that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants is a cure for ontological despair. And so, it appears, does Mr. Updike -- he makes it plain that he views the narrator's impotence as catastrophic, as the ultimate symbol of death itself, and he clearly wants us to mourn it as much as Turnbull does. I'm not especially offended by this attitude; I mostly just don't get it. Erect or flaccid, Ben Turnbull's unhappiness is obvious right from the book's first page. But it never once occurs to him that the reason he's so unhappy is that he's an asshole.

UPDIKE BTFO

badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/observer1.html

Excellent writer who I have no interest in.
It's fun to recall that DFW article where he speaks of a woman who referred to Updike as a "penis with a thesaurus".

Excellent post

...

This. You can only really enjoy his work if your a depressed male WASP who low-key hates his wife and kids

I used to get pissed off at this review, because the only thing I had read was Rabbit, Run, and I thought it was clear that just because Updike writes about an asshole doesn't mean he is one.

Then I read his short stories, the rest of the Rabbit Tetralogy, The Centaur, and The Couples before getting bored of it and realized the son of a bitch does, indeed, seem to have something fundamentally wrong with him.

He's a really great stylist, don't get me wrong. Probably the best of all time (yes, I'd go that far). His books have given me more joy than many of the books I've read, and I've read a lot of books. But holy shit, he seems to have something fundamentally wrong with the way he views people. He can't write about anything or anyone else besides sociopathic petty middle-class people. So it becomes easier and easier to think that Updike, too, is just this same sociopathic petty middle-class non-entity, covering up his psychological emptiness with pretty prose. Philosophically and psychologically, his books are total shit, and proof that a book must be more than pretty to have worth. This is what makes Nabokov better than Updike, IMO.

He's a great stylist, though, can't deny that.

>Judging Updike by his worst novel, written when he was beyond senile

Why is it that DFW felt justified in calling out narcissistic American male novelists when he himself was one? His whole bag is self awareness is it not?

Do you really not understand the problem with asking this question?

>implying the lack of tact didnt just reveal who he truly was as a writer, and that his final novel is his most honest

good post

I mean I do, yes, but he still rubs me the wrong way

DFW was a hypocrite. Literally, too autistic to reconcile the fact that "performance" is part of being human. Tried to subvert post-modernism/self-awareness by using those same techniques to criticize the cynicism that he saw as endemic to our culture. Attacked hollow tranagressive lit, yet used those same techniques in his writing. His attempts to be sincere were forced, and ultimately, insincere.

How does "lack of tact" equate to 'more honest'? If anything his last novel is his least honest, i.e. deluding himself into thinking he's still something he's not.

Idk, I really liked "Towards the end of Time"

>And so, it appears, does Mr. Updike

Whatever happened to disassociating the author from his characters?

*dissociating

Also I just realized that silly paragraph was written by DFW.

Is this why he killed his wife and kids with the oven??

I have no interest. I'd rather go full jew and read Roth.

y tho

>TFW unsure if you misspelled transgressive or it's some new 4-dollar DFW thesaurus-dredged fuckery I've never heard of.

>He's like a dick that everyone puts up with because he's so damn good at what he does
The Clapistani Martin Amis, then?

Damn, some good posts in this thread. Is it because Updike isn't a meme?

I'm and non-American. I felt like I found his works more depressing because of that, because it's a lot easier to look in from the outside and point out the similarities I guess?

The meme trilogy is the pinnacle of literary excellence.

>tfw I've been trying to subtly push Updike on this board for years and some prick makes a great thread on what is likely his first try
Fuck you OP

Rabbit Redux is my favorite Updike, I think it's pretty relevant to today's political and cultural scene. Probably the most relevant it's been since it came out. It's also so very well crafted and pieced together. I'm inspired to improve my own writing whenever I come back to it.

As a whole I don't think anyone can describe Updike better than Gopnik: "Updike's great subject was the American attempt to fill the gap left by faith with the materials produced by mass culture. He documented how the death of a credible religious belief has been offset by sex and adultery and movies and sports and Toyotas and family love and family obligation. For Updike, this effort was blessed, and very nearly successful."

The real question is Updike or Roth

That may be the case, but it's hard to have intelligent discussion about them here amongst the memes.

Roth is better overall. Updike is the better stylist.

Updike, Roth's prose makes me want to blow my brains out.

What's wrong with Roth? Reading American Pastoral right now.

Roth desu

Yep, don't really think there's a better place for discussion however, unless you organize a book club or something.