Updike

I'm curious what y'all think of John Updike. I read Rabbit, Run a year or so ago and didn't love it. Rabbit was just such a dick. Yes, the ending was powerful, but overall I'm not dying to get back to the rest of the Rabbit books, even though they're sitting on my shelf. I just finished The Witches of Eastwick and didn't love that one, either.

Maybe I'm missing something. Perhaps there is a deeper meaning that I'm supposed to extrapolate and because of my current mental exhaustion (I choose to believe this would be the cause, and not general idiocy) I'm failing. I just don't think Updike likes women very much, and I don't think he takes them seriously, even when they're at the center of his novels. The three witches of Eastwick have these witchy powers--they can cast spells, causing everything from minor mishaps to death. And what do they spend 306 pages doing? Obsessing about a man and whether their thighs are the right size. Seriously?!?! Really!?

Or am I supposed to believe that Updike actually loves women, that he's in awe of what he believes are the gifts we have that leave men in the dust. Maybe he's befuddled by the way women really can focus on men sometimes, despite being so awesome in our own right. But even if that's the case, he's just selling us short by assuming that we're obsessed by anything with a swinging dick. Either way, Updike's views and scope are so limited as to do no one justice at all.