Rabbit Has Shuffled Off This Mortal Coil

[karlhenning]

[ Am I searching poorly, or has no one actually marked this here? ]

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[Josquin des Prez]

Isn't this the guy who wrote those terrible novels about adultery?

[mozartsneighbor]

I read a few of Updike's Rabbit series novels -- not bad, but certainly not awe-inspiring. He was a bit overrated, seems to me.

[karlhenning]

I've never tried any of the novels, but I devoured some three volumes of short stories back in the day.  He was a fine writer.  I found his stories inventive, perceptive and engaging.  I enjoy his writing style, which is low-key without being at all flat.

[karlhenning]

T.C. Boyle's tribute surprised me a little.  Boyle's work is by nature a good deal more 'colorful' than Updike's (though, again, I find Updike's tone an inherent part of his quality, and not any 'negative');  and I find it of interest when an artist speaks up for an artist whose work is strikingly different in tone, aim, what-have-you.

[mozartsneighbor]

I've never tried any of the novels, but I devoured some three volumes of short stories back in the day.  He was a fine writer.  I found his stories inventive, perceptive and engaging.  I enjoy his writing style, which is low-key without being at all flat.

Will try the stories then, maybe they will capture my fancy better than the novels. I forgot I also read a while ago "The Terrorist" -- again I could definitely tell he's a good writer, but it just never "grabbed" me I guess.

[Herman]

Rabbit died, I believe, back in 1990, in Rabbit at Rest. I met John Updike a couple years later for an interview, and he was a most gracious and sparkling man. I just wrote an In Memoriam.

Jeffrey Eugenides of The Virgin Suicides fame (whom I also interviewed at some point), spoke of 'an outpouring of grief' over Updike's death, and I concur. I have read a new Updike book every year for as long as I can remember, and it'll take some time getting used to the idea there will be only one more 'new' Updike book (a collection of stories come June) and then it's all over. It's painful to think that this man who could find holiness and intimations of mortality in the most mundane things is no longer here.

There's pretty much a consensus Updike will continue to be read as one of three great American fiction writers in the 2nd half of the 20th C (the other two are Saul Bellow and Philip Roth).