Updike lovers might be hard pressed to cite their favorite “funny” Updike book.

Is it A Month of Sundays, with its comedic premise of a clergyman sent to a curative retreat for wayward ministers because he was getting a little too intimate with his flock . . . and then can’t help himself from trying to seduce his overseer through journal entries he knows she’s reading? Or S., another book in Updike’s Scarlet Letter trilogy in which he pokes fun of the notion of suburban housewives needing to “find” themselves in a commune, only to discover another form of male dominated servitude?

Is it The Coup, with its hilarious satire of a Third World dictator and American consumerism?

Is it one of the sardonic, tongue-in-cheek books on Updike’s Jewish alter ego, Henry Bech (Bech: A Book, Bech Is Back, Bech at Bay)?

PureWow went with The Witches of Eastwick.

In a list-story on “The 50 Funniest Books We’ve Ever Read,”  they picked Updike’s tale of female vs. male power as their #6 funniest book: “The movie version is fabulous, but Updike’s original source material about three spurned women is even more satirical and wonderful.”

The bottom line is that there are a number of funny Updike books to choose from—enough for him to be considered not just one of America’s great writers, but one of America’s great comic writers as well.