”It must be terrible to know so much.”A pause.“It is,” my father said. “It’s hell.” Chiron depicted in Roman art. The Greeks always depicted him with human front legs. Chiron educated the children of the gods and goddesses so he is an apt mythological creature for George Caldwell to identify with.George Caldwell is a school teacher at Olinger High School. He struggles with teaching, not because he isn’t good at it, but because he wants it to be so much more. His mind is so expansive that it often slips the bonds of Earth. One of those moments when he is taken by a flight of fancy was with Vera Hummel, a teacher as well, and also a lovely woman desired by all. John Updike is able to show off his knowledge of mythological creatures as Caldwell morphs into Chiron, and she of course becomes Venus. They discuss the gods and goddesses while flirting outrageously with each other. She extorts him to help her. ”Come, Chiron, crack my maidenhead; it hampers my walking.”It is a good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee when I read that because it would have been spewed all over this book. The narrative switches between George and his son Peter. Peter is a student at the same high school his father teaches at. He adores his father, but at the same time his father is so exasperating. George is self-deprecating to a painful point, and as an extension of his own view of himself, he wears a ratty cap and a dilapidated coat that make him look more like a bum than a well educated teacher. Peter is afraid for his father because he seems so vulnerable, so inept at the most mundane things, so lost in thoughts that can never be solved. In a moment of frustration, he yells at his father.”But there’s nobody else like you Daddy. There’s nobody else like you in the world.”The plot of the novel revolves around George and Peter trying to get home each day and encountering Herculean obstructions that keep them from arriving at their house in the country. George didn’t want to move to the country, but his wife yearned to be on the family farm. Some of George’s continuing issues with the car might have a lot to do with him never intending to own one. He prefered to live in town where he could walk everywhere he needed to be. After one of these thwarted attempts, they end up spending the night in the Hummel house. It proves to be an eye opening experience for Peter to have a day away from the chaos of their own household and have a glimpse at how normal people live. Vera truly becomes a magical goddess dispensing orange juice and bananas upon him like ambrosia. ”Intimations of Vera Hummel moved toward me from every corner of her house, every shadow, every curve of polished wood; she was a glimmer in the mirrors, a breath moving the curtains, a pollen on the nap of the arms of the chair I was rooted in.”The novel in many ways is brilliant, reflecting an author’s mind that is brimming with intelligence and convoluted thoughts, maybe the inspiration for the labyrinth of George’s own mind. Updike does occasionally veer off course leaving the reader in the middle of the road looking in all directions for the smoke plumes of the car crash. Easily forgiven when Updike writes understated gems like the paragraph below. ”I closed my eyes and relaxed into my warm groove. The blankets my body had heated became soft chains dragging me down; my mouth held a stale ambrosia lulling me to sleep again. The lemon-yellow wallpaper, whose small dark medallions peered out from the pattern with faces like frowning cats, remained printed, negatively in red, on my eyelids.”Peter becomes an artist. His father was a teacher. His grandfather was a priest. ”Priest, teacher, artist: the classic degeneration.” It did leave me wondering at the end of the book what exactly will the next generation of Caldwell’s be? Are they predestined to be teachers? Will they start the climb back to the priesthood? I identified with both characters. Less so with Peter as time marches me further and further away from those heady days of youth. His obsession with Penny Fogelman’s hot thighs; and yet, his fear of actually taking his clothes off in front of her were familiar counterweights from my own past. I was so skinny I thought any girl would think there was something wrong with me, like a bad case of ringworm or some wasting disease. George’s mind is bulging with information comparable to a crammed bus enroute to Jodhpur. He sees life as larger than it could possibly be. He rises so high on the wings of his thoughts that when he crashes, it proves to be a long fall back to Earth. He battles daily with the odious, student stroking, Supervising Principal Zimmerman, who besides caressing female students also tortures George with obtuse evaluations of his teaching style. The question that plagues George is the one that eventually plagues most of us...there has to be more? As the pendulum of time continues to duck walk me onward with my heels dragging and my hands grasping for purchase on anything to slow the motion forward, I too ask that question. It has become apparent to me that I can’t wait for some random act of the universe to send me on the proper path. The choice is really between accepting my fate, which some see as cowardly, but I see as yet another act of bravery, or I could pack up my paint kit and follow Gauguin’s footsteps to Tahiti. Ok, well, maybe not THAT. It does beg the question of what more is, and once we find and hogtie this mythical MORE, then what? It seems to me that most of us are just never supposed to be fulfilled. The thought of fulfillment is just depressing. It reminds me of the Matrix where they designed a world where everyone was happy and the citizens started committing suicide. We should achieve I think, but maybe not achieve too much. We always have to be left with something to dream about. That is quite the self-satisfied smirk on John’s face in 1960, but then he can probably pull it off because he probably is the smartest person in the room.I’m not really sure why people have quit reading John Updike. I could not put down this flawed, but wonderful book. I do hope that he does experience a resurgence of readers because there are writers in the next generation that would benefit from reading these eloquent and graceful sentences that Updike sprinkles liberally like a trail of emeralds through the texts of his books. I read this book to reconnect with his writing in anticipation of reading Updike by Adam Begley. The name of the author may be familiar to some. He is the son of Louis Begley, the writer that best carries the Updike torch forward in his own writing. However, he is 81, so someone else will soon have to shoulder the Updike legacy.I have recently, in my hubris, launched a blog which will host my book reviews, but it will also have so much more. For example, I recently wrote a movie review of Birdman. I plan to write about whatever strikes my fancy. I thought about calling it something like The Passionate Reader, but decided I am who I am. http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
One of the most beautiful things I've ever read was from this book:"My vast canvases- so oddly expensive as raw materials, so oddly worthless transmuted into art- with sharp rectangular shoulders hulk into silhouette against the light. Your breathing keeps time with the slow rose. Your solemn mouth has relaxed in sleep and the upper lip displays the little extra racial button of fat like a bruise blister. Your sleep contains innocence as the night contains dew. Listen: I love you, love your prim bruised mouth whose corners compress morally when you are awake and scolding me, love your burnt skin ceaselessly forgiving mine, love the centuries of being humbled held in the lilac patina of your palms. I love the tulip-stem stance of your throat. When you stand before the stove you make, all unconscious, undulant motions with the upper half of your body like a drinking hen. When you walk naked toward the bed your feet toe in as if your ankles were manacled to those of someone behind you. When we make love sometimes you sigh my name and I feel radically confirmed. I am glad I have met you, glad, proud, glad; I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoons, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible. My father for all his mourning moved in the atmosphere of such laughter. He would have puzzled you. He puzzled me. His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs."
What do You think about The Centaur (1996)?
I have to agree with the reviewer who said, "until the second chapter, I wasn't sure if I was going to finish this book." I felt exactly the same way. The weaving of the two stories was extremely confusing at first, the way that Updike just replaced Charion with George and slid seamlessly between the two narratives. I could not FOLLOW it. But, based on all the positive reviews here, I refused to throw in the towel and stuck it out. I'm so glad I did. I've always considered myself well-read, but somehow in my education, I missed reading John Updike's … anything. I feel cheated, almost, that this fantastic writer is someone I've not met until my later adult years, but it's also equally possible that it was destined to be that way. I'm not sure that my less mature self would have been truly able to appreciate his brilliant weaving of words into such a beautiful narrative. I'd love to give it five stars - and in truth, it probably deserves them. But without the overwhelming reviews here, I KNOW I would have put it down halfway through chapter 1, simply because I could not figure out what was going on. So my advice is to pick it up and stick it out. You'll feel enriched for the experience. I'm moving on to the Rabbit series. I want to read more of this Updike guy!
—♞ Pat Gent
when updike croaked out edmund white wrote that the father/son sections of the centaur were his personal favorite of the dead man's writings. you don't fuck with edmund white. the centaur is a strange strange book; flawed, but the good parts are really so good that white might be right: this could be updike's best stand-alone novel. (pardon the awkward qualifier -- 'stand alone' simply means that nothing's gonna beat the totality of the Rabbit cycle). it amazes how the guy can pack so much inside a few sentences -- the passage below is written as the protagonist stares at a painting he had made of a tree in his backyard:"I had loved that tree; when I was a child there had been a swing attached to the limb that was just a scumble of almost-black in the picture. Looking at this streak of black, I relived the very swipe of my palette knife, one second of my life that in a remarkable way had held firm. It was this firmness, I think, this potential fixing of a few passing seconds, that attracted me, at the age of five, to art. For it is at about that age, isn't it, that it sinks in upon us that things do, if not die, certainly change, wiggle, slide, retreat, and, like the dabs of sunlight on the bricks under a grape arbor on a breezy June day, shuffle out of all identity."
—brian
This incredible story by John Updike shows a father struggling to maintain a relationship with his son by comparing the real world to mystical characters. George Caldwell and his son Peter both long to escape from their town and find happiness. Depression and anxiety are a recurring theme throughout; both characters suffer from loneliness and refuse to accept themselves. Self-loathing is present and acceptance into this world by their peers in yearned for.John Updike makes interesting parallels in his novel. The present, 1940s, shows George and his son trapped in an unknown town during a blizzard because their car broke down. It then switches regularly to the 1960s where we read George’s obituary. Here we meet Chiron, a science teacher that gives up his life. This parallels to George giving up his life for his son. Peter is comparable to Prometheus; the principal of George’s school is Zeus because of the authority held. Another character, the mechanic, is compared to Vulcan. By comparing the characters discreetly, Updike allows the reader to make connections on their own into the mystical world. Also, Updike creates amazing characterization. The reader is shown the ways the characters are similar and thus are allowed to draw their own conclusions.The language used within this novel is exquisite. I love the fresh words used to describe something simple and seen in everyday life—like when Peter says the car is hungry for gasoline. It makes the reader really dissect the true meaning of the book. With this language, Updike also creates a supernatural aura within the book. The perspective in this novel switches often. It is in third person while describing the 1940s and the snow storm. When it is in the 1960s, Peter is the narrator and describes the world surrounding him in an anxious voice. The man, an artist struggling to become famous, ultimately is never successful. He suffers from psoriasis and is often lonely. As a writer, Updike taught me to create three dimensional characters. He successfully created the relationship between father and son. He taught me to experiment with the ways I write; although I tend to disagree with his point of view. At times it does not agree; while Peter narrates in first person he often talks in past and present tense. Also, the prose used is not words the reader believes would be thought or said, especially as an artist in the 1960s. Also, Updike has taught me to draw from my own experiences. He uses his own experiences create round characters and give the reader a fulfilling experience within his novel. Updike is a fantastic story teller. He used something that has been done before and created something innovative—something all writers try to do in present day. I would definitely recommend this novel to aspiring writers because it teaches great lessons of experimentation.
—Lauren Davidson
