A review by moirastone
The Centaur by John Updike

2.0

It wasn't a bar bet, exactly, but one night not long ago I made a few sweeping (and whiskey-fueled) statements about the irrelevance and sexism of mid-century white dude novelists like Roth, Cheever, and Updike that quite unexpectedly garnered such a thoughtful, knowledgable defense of Updike from my friend Dave that the only possible way I saw to save face was to immediately promise to read the Updike novel of his choosing. (Jodi was there, she saw it go down.) Which is how I came to The Centaur.

I didn't love it. I didn't even much like it, even as I admire the craft with which it was made. In the end, my main takeaway was a kind of grudging respect for just how clearly this book does not give one single fuck about me. If Updike wrote for anyone, I can only imagine that it was a reader just like him - a white, highly educated, wealthy, East Coast heterosexual man who loves boobs, and latin, who didn't know how to connect with his father, and who believes the body a shoddily-made prison for a soul as refined as his.

More than a few images from this novel will stick with me, but I am still glad Updike and his kind no longer rule the literary world.