On Updike's Of the Farm

Even people who don’t like him give Updike a blue ribbon for his prose. Even people who like Updike acknowledge that he is not the most empathetic of authors. (Pity the characters who are not horny, divorced, hyperverbal white males for whom spirituality is a way of becoming more self-centered, not less.)

Of The Farm is so interesting because some of the prose is, in my unaccomplished opinion,  bad and the some of the characters are vivid.

I encounter sentences that work so hard to be precise they feel distended and a tone that can be almost comically reverent yet also unempathetic. And the two sharpest characters are an old woman and a young boy.  Examples to follow.

Comments

[Carolyn]

"Of The Farm is so interesting because some of the prose is, in my unaccomplished opinion, bad and the some of the characters are vivid."

And this is a damn fine sentence! Personally, I have always been a bit down on Updike. An uninspected opinion.