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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 25, 2024 11:06:58 GMT
Memoir (1985)
Just rando memories really. Skipped great swathes of it where he's word-toodling around his hometown from the 1930's (ffs) describing some boring as fuck buildings.
The huge chapter on his psoriasis perked me up though. Had no idea he was a fellow psoriatic. Never mentioned it in his books. No wonder he was so self-deprecating and modest. Hard to be arrogant when your very skin has betrayed you. My condition is mild but his sounds like it was hell on ice. To the extent his neck crusted up and he couldnt turn his head. Buying a house by a beach so he could lie in sand dunes burning the fucking shit out of himself. Spending entire summers in the Caribbean to escape the Pennsylvanian winter and fix his fucked up skin.
Felt sorry for him when he's detailing the lobster and crab he enjoyed in his seaside lifestyle chasing the scab-healing sunlight cos from what I've read, shellfish, along with tomatoes, potatoes and green peppers (the "deadly nightshades) are massive no-go's for the psoriatic. Corrodants of the gut lining which manifests itself as outbreaks on the skin surface. Or something like that.
7/10
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 25, 2024 11:24:24 GMT
Museums and Women (1960's)
Fairly formative. Only a couple of these very short short-stories work for me.
Was very young when he wrote these. 1960's. Seems very enamoured with himself.
I made the mistake of recently reading his memoir before reading this and a lot of his real life married up to these tales, so much so that it pretty much seemed like nonfiction. He got wayyy better at the writey writey later on in his literariii career
5/10
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:26:20 GMT
A Month Of Sundays (1967)
1967 and very "formative". That being, he aint got his legendary style down yet and, instead, like many new authors, he biffs the whole fucking thesauras at every single sentence. Just impenetrable verbiage. After 10 pages I was reading it in my head in the voice of Martin Prince from the Simpsons.
From then on I couldn't unsee that and gave the fuck up on the novel completely.
A story that was completely unfollowable due to the density and showboaty complexity of the sentences. Thank fuck he got this bullshit out of his system and went onto the Rabbit trilogy etc.
3/10 and that 3 is due to the name John Updike alone
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Nov 3, 2024 6:03:24 GMT
The Olinger Stories (1954-1964)
Johnny U was real young when he wrote these short, short stories. They're vague and a wee bit pretentious as he "finds his voice" (a literary term, you wouldnt understand).
They're also kind of boring really. I got bored. 10 page stories that go nowhere then just end having tried to be more emblematic than required.
Johnny U got reeeeall good at this shit in the 1970's. Real damn good.
5/10 here John-o.
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Post by jethro on Nov 3, 2024 13:18:57 GMT
I don't think I've read any Updike. You keep telling us he's great while leaving lukewarm reviews here. I'll need to see more evidence.
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Post by jethro on Nov 3, 2024 13:23:42 GMT
Memoir (1985)
The huge chapter on his psoriasis perked me up though. Had no idea he was a fellow psoriatic. Never mentioned it in his books.
7/10 Oh, and this. Please don't. I liked it better when I could attribute my mental image of you as hunched-over-gratuitously-whacking-and-physically-repulsive to some jingoistic mean-spiritedness on my part. Didn't need the ugly slice of reality. |
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Nov 3, 2024 21:36:01 GMT
I don't think I've read any Updike. You keep telling us he's great while leaving lukewarm reviews here. I'll need to see more evidence. |
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Nov 4, 2024 10:27:35 GMT
The Olinger Stories (1954-1964)
Johnny U was real young when he wrote these short, short stories. They're vague and a wee bit pretentious as he "finds his voice" (a literary term, you wouldnt understand).
They're also kind of boring really. I got bored. 10 page stories that go nowhere then just end having tried to be more emblematic than required.
Johnny U got reeeeall good at this shit in the 1970's. Real damn good.
5/10 here John-o.
I think I read this the "wrong" way and did it a disservice.
I spent 2 hours reading this last Friday between morning and arvo shifts at funny farms. Plonked down in a big bustling rowdy foodcourt. On my bicycle that day, it was pissing with rain, sitting there drenched wet in some huge anonymous foodcourt. Kids screaming, everything on the go. That being, not really concentrating on what is probably a masterpiece.
Went back to it again today. This aint no page turner. Sure there's some boring descriptive shit but every page has some sumptuous magisterial sentences secreted away in there.
"Among deaf mountains human life pursues a comic low road."
You can't just flit past sentences like that. You have to wallow in that shit. Reread them 2, 3, 4, 5 times. |
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