Full disclosure: I have never read John Updike before, but I have always been pretty much bound and determined to dislike him. Having long heard all about how little he thinks of women, and how misogynist his writings usually are, I was predisposed to hate him. But since he’s John-freaking-Updike, he’s always been on my to-read list. So, I recently finally read Of the Farm. I figured it was good to start with, because it’s very short, and because DFW mentioned (in an essay about how awful and misogynist Updike is) that it’s one of the better of Updike’s works.
And what did I think of it? Frankly, I don’t know! I’ve simply always been so prejudiced against Updike that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to read him objectively. If Ian McEwan wrote this book, I might have liked it. I simply don’t know.
Of the Farm is about Joey Robinson visiting his aging mother on the family’s TK-acre farm in Olinger, PA. Joey brings his new wife, Peggy, who he divorced his previous wife, Joan, in order to marry, and her 11-year-old son, Richard. Naturally, Joey has a contentious relationship with his mother – particularly, she dislikes his wives. Now that he is divorced from Joan, his mother is all happy nostalgia for her and the two children of the previous marriage, which makes an already awkward visit even moreso. She (his mother) is quite sick, and has asked Joey to come and do the mowing on the farm she is no longer able to do. This farm is her baby; her husband, Joey’s father, never wanted the farm and he was not suited to work it. There’s a lot of accusation that Joey’s mother’s insistence on farm life killed the long-suffering family patriarch.
The family alternates between dancing stiffly around each other, and full out brawling, which frankly, I can’t relate to. I know that some families go at it in earnest, but it’s not the way I was raised. Forgive the absolute WASPishness of my saying I don’t understand people who can’t even keep their rage bottled up for a four-day visit – particularly when there’s no major catalyst to force things to a head. And after the four hundredth time somebody predicted death and dismemberment if the kid was permitted to drive the tractor. . . well, forgive me, but I expected to see the freaking kid drive the tractor at some point! Chekov’s gun, Updike. Chekov’s gun.
Also, I might be too much a product of the literary phase during which I was raised to appreciate Updike. His prose seems absolutely florid to me; his total seriousness embarrassing. I enjoyed the dialogue, but man, some of the descriptive passages:
. . . butterflies loped and bobbed above the flattened grass as the hands of a mute concubine might examine, flutteringly, the corpse of her giant lover.
Seriously?
