updike novels poll

The irrepressible combinations of the real! A very tall, willowy young black, with a shaved head and upon its baldness a many-colored skullcap, was carrying balanced across this spectacular head like a fantastic turban one of those padded semi-chairs, having a back and arms but no legs, with which people prop themselves up in bed; the thing was bright peach in color and wrapped in a transparent plastic that crackled as we passed, while crossing in opposite directions the sunken, tarred-over railroad tracks. Was this exotic black man, demographic studies to the contrary, a compulsive nighttime reader?

The Bech books are fun

*Ugh*
(Xpost)

I liked the Rabbit sequels better than Rabbit Run.

interesting how little attention is given to the centaur in this thread or the other, when i was a kid that one had a rep iirc. rabbit run is the only rabbit i've read and is really only interesting as a window into mores of the time (blowjobs were a pretty big deal once apparently). would've (and maybe did) voted for s. but recall enjoying his short stories considerably more than the novels. it's interesting to me just how much and how quickly his rep seems to have faded, he was an important central figure of the american literary landscape for decades but i doubt i know anyone under thirty that's ever read him.

See also: Cheever, John O'Hara, Mailer...

Yeah I ws thinking abt that when I read Toward the End of Time (urgh) recently, these writers who wrote v marginal if often v good books who had huge cultural presences due to their sociopolitical status/media skills etc

*were