John Updike's description of a pussy .....

I remember a vivid description of anal sex in one of the Rabbit books.

Didn’t you like it? 

I enjoyed all four. The first was my favourite, my least favourite was the second.

Ah, I see. I’ve only read one book in the last 12 months! And that’s not that unusual for me.

A treat, to have been able to see him in person. He was, as you say, a gifted observer; I have all three of his books of essays on art and artists and his keen appreciation, as well as his humility in coming from the perspective of amateur enthusiast, make them enjoyable and enlightening reads. And I completely agree with you that his best fictional talents often displayed to the most advantage in his 'funnier' works. He seems, of late, to have fallen deeply out of favor with the millenial crowd (the late David Foster Wallace wrote an essay on Updike that, while admitting his undeniable writing talent, essentially savaged his work on thematic grounds), and I suspect one of the reasons was due in large part to the more, er, gynecological aspects of his work--he seemed destined to fall afoul of modern PC permutations (much as Philip Roth has, both men perhaps not entirely unfairly, but sad to see that just one limited facet of their respective takes on the human condition have taken on ultimate importance in the eyes of modern readers) and he seems to be falling by the wayside academically speaking. Sad, as at his best, he did capture vividly a section of American experience that still has pertinence in the culture of today.

I found a link to the Wallace essay:


bookmarks.reviews/just-a-penis-with-a-thesaurus-david-foster-wallace-on-john-updike-and-the-great-male-narcissists/

which I think is a bit harsh, overall (the title is a giveaway), but makes some valid points with regard to Updike's treatment of the whole male/female relationary thing. It's of interest mainly because it seems to have become a bit of a seminal text on what the current generation of readers are being indoctrinated with in regard to the university take on Updike's PC scorecard.

Vidal was, in a sense, 'on to' Updike early on, finding him something of an empty vessel in what he had to say about his contemporary American world. It's hardly a secret that Vidal was no great fan of the genre heteronormative style of novel which dwelt, sometimes to the the seeming exclusion of anything else, on the sexual lives of affluent white Middle America. Although Gore admits Updike's beauty of language (something even his severest critics nearly always give the nod to, with good reason), his take on the corpus of Updike's fictional world appears to be that Updike lacked the sense of engagement with the political and social ferment of his times, or at any rate focused only on the narrowest aspect of them, primarily the sexual--and in a way that both Vidal and other critics found infuriatingly chauvinistic and shallow. I think a valid case stands for this view, and is a primary reason I tend to prefer Updike's non-fictional works to his novels--though several, such as The Poorhouse Fair are successful at transcending those limits and for me hold enduring value as purely literary works.