Updike's best and in many ways most ambitious novel, written at the height of his lyrical powers. ( )

i realize this is meant to be a modern classic, but dudes, this is a weird little novel.

into what would otherwise be a poignant and well written character study, Updike has entwined strange tendrils of Greek mythology.

the opening scene is exemplary of this trend; we have our main character, a high school teacher, shot with an arrow by one of his students through the leg and trailing a bloody hoof.see, he's a centaur, apparently. once he reaches aid in the form of a mechanic able to cut the arrow, he goes back to class and struggles to complete his lecture under the jaundiced eye of his in-school nemesis, the vice principal.

the point of making any of these characters mythical creatures is completely lost on me and the execution seemed inconsistent from both a psychological and practical sense. a centaur that drives? how many legs do they have again?

to my mind this choice distracted from what would have otherwise been a solid, if somewhat gray, snapshot of a father-son relationship captured over the course of a handful of wintry days.

not bad per se, a little bizarre. perhaps just not to my taste. ( )

3203. The Centaur, by John Updike (read June 3,1999) This won the 1964 National Book Award, and I am sort of doing those winners. I found this book less obnoxious than the Rabbit books. It is heavy on mythological referants, and I did not follow those well, since mythology is not a strong point for me. There are humorous parts, and pathetic parts. I did not dislike the narrator nor his father, and I found the book readable. ( )

Despite its title, I was surprised by how myth-centric this novel is. It is the story of a high school science teacher and his student son. It is also a re-telling of the myth of the centaur Chiron who, wounded, gives his life (his immortality) to Prometheus.

This is a book I may appreciate more in the recollection. While reading it, I was distracted by the allegory. Sometimes, the mythical references were too vague or convoluted to catch and I had to refer to the index at the back to make sure I wasn't missing something important. But at times, the myth is more than allegory -- Updike sometimes refers to the hero as Chiron and describes his hooves clacking on the school stairs, for instance -- which I found jarring. Also, the hero was annoying, not just to me as a reader, but to his son, wife, and co-workers in the story. I can't figure out how this ties in with the myth of Chiron.
( )

This early novel by John Updike remains my favorite. The opening page is as good as any he's written, and the handling of myth and realism is balanced and not too strained. This is not a University Novel, to be taught, but a Public Novel, to be read.

Updike is at his best, as far as I can tell, in short story form. That being said, this novel from the early '60s still impresses, and will, I suspect, continue to impress long after his dozens of later, more popular fictions, fade from memory. ( )