Even before it falls into the hands of average readers on April 8, Adam Begley’s biography, Updike, is doing what scholars and society members expected: reawakening the debate over Updike’s status as an American writer.
There has always been a small segment who think he “writes like an angel but has nothing to say,” and reports of his demotion in the canon have been greatly exaggerated, given his continued presence in major anthologies. Michael H. Miller of the New York Observer weighs in, but only concludes “Updike, like George Caldwell in The Centaur, a character modeled after his own father, did the best he could with what was given to him—a massive flawed talent. Here’s the whole article:
