Literary Hub is no stranger to John Updike, and a recent article, “From Eve Babitz to Raven Leilani, Readings on Solipsistic, Transformative Love” by Lillian Fishman, includes John Updike’s Couples.

Of the novel, Fishman writes, “A novel apparently about sex, Couples is actually about something much more interesting: how adultery itself—’its adventure, the acrobatics its deceptions demand, the tension of its hidden strings, the new landscapes it makes us master’—can breathe life into a prematurely settled existence. Though he describes a number of affairs among the couples of Tarbox, Updike follows most closely behind Piet, whose womanizing is never premediated but who falls into one affair-adventure after another, believing his talent is that he genuinely loves every woman he touches. Sincere and special in the way it expresses how we explain ourselves to ourselves, and deeply forgiving of our failings, especially when they occur in the service of reanimating a life.”

Other novels referenced and recommended are Luster: A Novel (Raven Leilani), Simple Passion (Annie Ernaux), Slow Days, Fast Company (Eve Babitz), Self-Portrait (Celia Paul), Seven Years (Peter Stamm), Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? (Kathleen Collins), and Pure Colour (Sheila Heti).

Fishman is the author of Acts of Service, available from Hogarth Press.

Keanu Reeves was in the news again with the release of the new Matrix film, The Matrix Resurrections, in which Reeves reprises his iconic role of Neo. That means he’s now a hot interview subject, and interviewer Swapnil Dhruv Bose decided to ask the actor to name his all-time favorite books for Far Out Magazine.

John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy made the list. According to Bose,

“While discussing the works listed above, Reeves claimed that The Count of Monte Cristo was his favourite book as a child which sparked his interest in reading. Later, as a teenager, he matured into more serious existential works and started exploring the literary legacy of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

“After discovering Dostoevsky, Reeves enjoyed the works of authors such as Jim Thompson and William Gibson until he discovered Marcel Proust’s modernist magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. As an ageing actor now, he revealed that he finds more truth in the seminal Rabbit series by John Updike.”

In a Husteust.com article that begins with a quote from Game of Thrones‘ Tyrion Lannister (“A mind needs books as a sword needs a sharpening stone”), “Five books you should read this year” are recommended:

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

Of the Updike selection, the site says, “In terms of sheer skill, Updike is the ultimate master of the late 20th century. His sentences are astonishingly brilliant and his command of the language is almost nil.”

Clearly, the last part of that compliment doesn’t express what the author thinks it might. Which reminds us: the actual quote from Tyrion Lannister is, “My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. That’s why I read so much. . . .”

“Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, Updike’s lovably mediocre alter ego, is one of America’s great literary protaganists, up there with Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby,” The Guardian wrote in naming Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels No. 88 on their list of 100 best novels.

“John Updike is 20th-century American literature’s blithe spirit, a virtuoso of language whose perfect pitch illuminated every line he wrote with an airy and zestful brilliance,” Robert McCrum wrote. “He was always something of a miniaturist. His first hope was to be a poet. When that ambition misfired, he took his delight in the English sentence and made a name for himself as a New Yorker short story writer. Finally, he brought his gifts of wit, curiosity and invention to the American novel. By the end of his career, he had become one of the most complete and versatile men of letters in his country’s history. Among many possible fiction choices – his debut, The Poorhouse Fair; the sensational scandal of Couples; the exhilarating magical realism of The Witches of Eastwick – I’ve picked his panoramic masterpiece, the Harry Angstrom series, a portrait of America compiled over four decades: Rabbit, Run (1960); Rabbit Redux (1971); Rabbit Is Rich (1981); and Rabbit at Rest (1990).

Read the full article.

In 2012, Time magazine published a list feature by Nick Carbone on the “Top 10 Racy Novels.” Both Roth and Updike made the list—Roth with Portnoy’s Complaint, and Updike with Couples. Christopher Matthews wrote the entry for Updike’s 1968 novel:

John Updike became a literary superstar by documenting the collapse of the idyllic American fifties and the sexual taboos that, in part, defined it. He gained a reputation for sexual explicitness with such novels as 1960’s Rabbit Run, and his 1968 novel Couples was a doubling down on that approach. Its original dust jacket featured William Blake’s watercolor drawing of a nude Adam and Eve, hinting at the carnality and betrayal that lay between the covers. The novel itself features Updike’s famously clinical description of sex acts, and, more importantly, an incisive examination of late-sixties, upper-middle class American society. An increasingly oversexed society demanded this kind of frankness, and Updike was up to the task. As Wilfred Sheed wrote in a New York Times review in 1968, “Rumor has it that Couples is a dirty book. But although Updike does call all the parts and attachments by name, so does the Encyclopedia Britannica. And if this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”

Which begs the question: Now that it’s 2021, is Couples still a “racy novel”?