Talk:John Updike/Archive 1

Well, it's the 2 cents that's probably a violation in spirit of neutrality - at least blame it on "Many Critics," as in "Many critics hold that Updike is the most important author..., head and shoulders above...." I doubt you can claim that many critics think that Irving is a dick and get away with it, even though I sympathize.

Oh - and there's a missing bit in a sentence about Rabbit Run, and I never liked the book enough to go reread it and fill inthe blank. It's a telling in intricate detail of just what? Getting up in the morning?
 * "pages long telling in intricate detail."

The incredibly dull opening to The Centaur is burned into my brain - an incredibly detailed description of the imaginary arrow in the imaginary fetlock of a secondary school teacher who kinda thinks he's a centaur. But that's not Rabbit. --MichaelTinkler

Ah, a /Talk. Either that's a great idea or I'm just not very good with ideas. I just can't let a mention of Irving slip by without mentioning he's a dick. You know how it is. So here's my opinion:

To give my two cents, Mailer, Irving, and Updike are head and shoulders better than Wolfe. Irving's a dick though.

And yes, you're right about the Centaur. I enjoyed it only by ignoring the parts about the centaur itself. It's a good story without it. Updike seems like he ought to be boring, and usually overly wordy authors bother me. I couldn't make it past more than the first book of Midnights Children ( Salman Rushdie ) for example, despite the fact that I would be the first to admit that Rushdie's probably better with the poeticism. I don't know what it is about Updike, but for some reason while I'm consciously thinking I ought to not be enjoying this book, I always decide to turn just one more page. Then I finish the book, not entirely sure what the point was, but with the nagging sensation that I've grown as a person.

I fixed the intricate detail thing.

--Seckstu

What does the first paragraph mean? Why does it sound like it's from a /Talk page rather than an article? Is the second paragraph in the public domain? Who is I? Why write an encyclopedia article from the first person, especially on a wiki where anyone can edit, correct, improve, degrade, or otherwise distort what this supposed "I" originally said? I'm not understanding this article, I think. --KQ - Exiled from the main page as a copyright violation (we can rephrase it and work it back in, perhaps):


 * ".... He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in England on the Knox Fellowship, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine art in Oxford. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, to which he has contributed poems, short stories, essays, and book reviews. Since 1957, he has lived in Massachusetts. He is the father of four chlidren and the author of thirteen other novels. His fiction has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award."