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Couples
Couples is the book that has been assailed for its complete frankness & praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrait of love, marriage & adultery in America. But be it damned or hailed, Couples drew back the curtain forever on sex in suburbia in the late 20th century. A classic, it's one of those books that will be read & remembered for a long time to come.
506 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
621 people are currently reading
8094 people want to read
About the author
John Updike
865 books2,393 followersJohn Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
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August 16, 2024
These days Couples is mostly interesting for revealing the atmosphere of the time and the manners of the period it takes place in.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” – Exodus 20:14.
But days in a small town are empty and everyone needs something to fill the hole in one’s day-to-day living. So adultery becomes practically the only entertainment and the transgression of this commandment is no longer sin but bliss…
But walking on thin ice of the vice slowly makes life of all the participants more and more muddled…
Wasn’t this commandment created specially to tempt?
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” – Exodus 20:14.
But days in a small town are empty and everyone needs something to fill the hole in one’s day-to-day living. So adultery becomes practically the only entertainment and the transgression of this commandment is no longer sin but bliss…
She seemed to float on her bed at a level of bliss little altered by his coming and going and thus worked upon him a challenge; at last she confessed he was hurting her and curled one finger around the back of his ear to thank him. She was his smallest woman, his most passive, and his most remote, in these mournful throes, from speech or any question.
But walking on thin ice of the vice slowly makes life of all the participants more and more muddled…
Wasn’t this commandment created specially to tempt?
May 9, 2025
What are we gonna do -
Now that all of the children have grown up?
And where are we gonna go -
Knowing Nobody gives us a Damn?
...Games People Play
In the Middle of the Night!
- Alan Parsons, Games People Play.
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson -
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Simon & Garfunkel, The Graduate.
Three stars? Yep.
You see, I’ve been married to the same girl for nearly forty-five years, and have never strayed. I did it all for love, as the song goes.
Cause like a great river approaching the sea, my love just grows deeper and deeper, and goes from better to best.
What would a happy guy like me have to do with Updike’s gaudy tinsel talk?
Not a heck of a lot, cause some of us oldies have outlived our raw human animals...
And found tranquillity.
Our bodies learn gravity; but our souls discover the way back up - grace.
Oh, and Peace beyond anyone's understanding!
But, hey, Updike’s amusing, alright! If I see an old New Yorker in a dingy waiting room I always grab it to check out the ‘toons and poetry - and look to see if there’s an Updike gem.
And his writing is superb.
When young architect Piet in this yarn goes through a religious prise de conscience, I could sure relate.
Piet’s conflict is downright Barthian in complexity, like mine was. Cause the ghost of his Dad is always there, after a wild night out - waiting to roundly convict him in his sin.
But I just can’t relate to the general lovelessness of his existence.
I find that inhumanly scary.
So if you take up this book, perhaps you share that loveless burden -
Alone, alone,
All, all alone -
Alone on a sunless sea!
But I don’t, and don’t wish it on my worst enemy:
However, if you’re like that, you might rather like this Updike classic for its existential truths.
It’s not torrid, trite ‘n trashy:
In fact, it’s pretty profound - in its perplexedly aporetic problematics.
For Piet's oceanic guilt and insecurity is SO Human!
Now that all of the children have grown up?
And where are we gonna go -
Knowing Nobody gives us a Damn?
...Games People Play
In the Middle of the Night!
- Alan Parsons, Games People Play.
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson -
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Simon & Garfunkel, The Graduate.
Three stars? Yep.
You see, I’ve been married to the same girl for nearly forty-five years, and have never strayed. I did it all for love, as the song goes.
Cause like a great river approaching the sea, my love just grows deeper and deeper, and goes from better to best.
What would a happy guy like me have to do with Updike’s gaudy tinsel talk?
Not a heck of a lot, cause some of us oldies have outlived our raw human animals...
And found tranquillity.
Our bodies learn gravity; but our souls discover the way back up - grace.
Oh, and Peace beyond anyone's understanding!
But, hey, Updike’s amusing, alright! If I see an old New Yorker in a dingy waiting room I always grab it to check out the ‘toons and poetry - and look to see if there’s an Updike gem.
And his writing is superb.
When young architect Piet in this yarn goes through a religious prise de conscience, I could sure relate.
Piet’s conflict is downright Barthian in complexity, like mine was. Cause the ghost of his Dad is always there, after a wild night out - waiting to roundly convict him in his sin.
But I just can’t relate to the general lovelessness of his existence.
I find that inhumanly scary.
So if you take up this book, perhaps you share that loveless burden -
Alone, alone,
All, all alone -
Alone on a sunless sea!
But I don’t, and don’t wish it on my worst enemy:
However, if you’re like that, you might rather like this Updike classic for its existential truths.
It’s not torrid, trite ‘n trashy:
In fact, it’s pretty profound - in its perplexedly aporetic problematics.
For Piet's oceanic guilt and insecurity is SO Human!
July 18, 2020
What is it that Jack says to Ennis in Brokeback Mountain? “I wish I knew how to quit you?” I think that's it, and that's exactly what I want to say to John Updike. . . I wish I knew how to quit you.
I wish I knew how to quit you, John, quit this relationship I've gotten myself into with you. There are no cliffhangers here, no outbursts of laughter or joy, just a whole lot of painful examinations of life and much unwanted talk of our impending deaths.
So, why do I stay?
Is it the sex?
Mmmm, yes, it could be the sex. The sex is great. Oh, baby, it's so great. Well, most of the time, like when you aim for the right orifice. But you don't, John, do you? You don't always aim for the right door, do you, John (and don't tell me that it was just a slip)!
And, on top of that. . . you smoke!
Ugh! There's nothing worse than having you light up, after you've had your way with me, and then blowing that nasty smoke in my face as you then wonder aloud how we're both going to die.
So, why do I stick around, even after you ignore me, ignore me multiple times in a row, when my response to your hand on my hip is a respectful not tonight dear?
Why, John, why?
Why can't I quit you?
Oh, I know why.
Because you're mother fucking brilliant.
I wish I knew how to quit you, John, quit this relationship I've gotten myself into with you. There are no cliffhangers here, no outbursts of laughter or joy, just a whole lot of painful examinations of life and much unwanted talk of our impending deaths.
So, why do I stay?
Is it the sex?
Mmmm, yes, it could be the sex. The sex is great. Oh, baby, it's so great. Well, most of the time, like when you aim for the right orifice. But you don't, John, do you? You don't always aim for the right door, do you, John (and don't tell me that it was just a slip)!
And, on top of that. . . you smoke!
Ugh! There's nothing worse than having you light up, after you've had your way with me, and then blowing that nasty smoke in my face as you then wonder aloud how we're both going to die.
So, why do I stick around, even after you ignore me, ignore me multiple times in a row, when my response to your hand on my hip is a respectful not tonight dear?
Why, John, why?
Why can't I quit you?
Oh, I know why.
Because you're mother fucking brilliant.
September 15, 2018
Sex is like money; only too much is enough.
It's 1968 and religion is dying. Faith is fluttering away. Marriage is a desolate, lonely place. With death approaching, all that comforts is the welcoming arms of a lover. Sex is the new religion. But not just any sex. It's gotta be sex with someone who isn't your legally bound partner. Maybe it's the wife of your friend. The pregnant woman down the road. The town's dentist. It's time for some bed hopping. You know, the old switcheroo. Lascivious activity hidden and secretive or agreed upon like a business transaction sealed with a handshake. Adultery is the new raison d'être, coitus the new divinity.
This premise shocked the literary world when Couples was published. It got Updike on the cover of Time Magazine. I'm sure that it had many people agape at the limp morals of the book's characters.
Knowing this, I expected a salacious page-turner. Couples could have easily been titled "Swingers". So why did I find myself struggling through the sex-laden pages?
First, there are simply WAY too many characters. This story focuses on ten couples in the fictional town of Tarbox, Massachusetts. That's twenty people. Twenty. Twenty people who have very few distinguishing characteristics. Who is Freddie? And who the hell is Eddie? Who is Carol married to? What are their kids' names? Does it matter? It got to the point where I sketched out a map to remind myself who belonged to who, who was screwing who, who had screwed in the past, etc. As time went on, I questioned whether it was that important to remember. They are all the same soulless person.
The book is also way too long. 450 pages could have been trimmed down at least by a third. Just when you think everything that could happen, has, there's still like 100 pages to go. People still screwing, still complaining, still wandering around aimlessly. Scary-long paragraphs describing the New England scenery.
The apathy, too. There is very little crescendo of emotion, so even when there are 'consequences' to naughty boinking behaviour, it doesn't mean much, because the reaction is polite, very cerebral, repetitive, and ... boring.
Boring! How could I be bored when there is talk of phalli and vaginas every 5-10 pages? Don't get me wrong. John Updike writes about sex with such lyrical pull that I must bow to the beauty. He writes the dialogue of people laying in the dark together like none other. This is why I opened up this book, and so in that sense I got what I came for. Ahem. But, I have to say, sex isn't all that hot when the people involved are so unaffected and indifferent. And, most importantly, so easily replaced. Especially the women, who are for the most part not in control of the affairs, and who seem to pay the biggest price.
What starts off as a "post pill paradise" - a sexual freedom that the people in this community revel in - devolves. This isn't a surprise; how can it continue like this? John Updike lived through the sexual revolution, and I think he captured an experience many people tried out. I believed him. He is honest about the vacuous disintegration. He's honest about his struggle between God and faith with our animal compulsions. The church will always be rebuilt though, in his world, and philanderers will have their hands slapped. The phallucy of paradise is upended.
It's all so silly, isn't it? Adultery. It's so much trouble.
It's 1968 and religion is dying. Faith is fluttering away. Marriage is a desolate, lonely place. With death approaching, all that comforts is the welcoming arms of a lover. Sex is the new religion. But not just any sex. It's gotta be sex with someone who isn't your legally bound partner. Maybe it's the wife of your friend. The pregnant woman down the road. The town's dentist. It's time for some bed hopping. You know, the old switcheroo. Lascivious activity hidden and secretive or agreed upon like a business transaction sealed with a handshake. Adultery is the new raison d'être, coitus the new divinity.
This premise shocked the literary world when Couples was published. It got Updike on the cover of Time Magazine. I'm sure that it had many people agape at the limp morals of the book's characters.
Knowing this, I expected a salacious page-turner. Couples could have easily been titled "Swingers". So why did I find myself struggling through the sex-laden pages?
First, there are simply WAY too many characters. This story focuses on ten couples in the fictional town of Tarbox, Massachusetts. That's twenty people. Twenty. Twenty people who have very few distinguishing characteristics. Who is Freddie? And who the hell is Eddie? Who is Carol married to? What are their kids' names? Does it matter? It got to the point where I sketched out a map to remind myself who belonged to who, who was screwing who, who had screwed in the past, etc. As time went on, I questioned whether it was that important to remember. They are all the same soulless person.
The book is also way too long. 450 pages could have been trimmed down at least by a third. Just when you think everything that could happen, has, there's still like 100 pages to go. People still screwing, still complaining, still wandering around aimlessly. Scary-long paragraphs describing the New England scenery.
The apathy, too. There is very little crescendo of emotion, so even when there are 'consequences' to naughty boinking behaviour, it doesn't mean much, because the reaction is polite, very cerebral, repetitive, and ... boring.
Boring! How could I be bored when there is talk of phalli and vaginas every 5-10 pages? Don't get me wrong. John Updike writes about sex with such lyrical pull that I must bow to the beauty. He writes the dialogue of people laying in the dark together like none other. This is why I opened up this book, and so in that sense I got what I came for. Ahem. But, I have to say, sex isn't all that hot when the people involved are so unaffected and indifferent. And, most importantly, so easily replaced. Especially the women, who are for the most part not in control of the affairs, and who seem to pay the biggest price.
What starts off as a "post pill paradise" - a sexual freedom that the people in this community revel in - devolves. This isn't a surprise; how can it continue like this? John Updike lived through the sexual revolution, and I think he captured an experience many people tried out. I believed him. He is honest about the vacuous disintegration. He's honest about his struggle between God and faith with our animal compulsions. The church will always be rebuilt though, in his world, and philanderers will have their hands slapped. The phallucy of paradise is upended.
It's all so silly, isn't it? Adultery. It's so much trouble.
February 22, 2019
You know when a guilty man sets about justifying his behaviour, how he strives for big philosophical words and at the same time to bring all his charm to the fore to justify the petty thing he did? Well, this entire novel is a bit like that. It's about ten couples in suburban America in the 1960s. It's like a medieval banquet of sex, climaxing with the moral equivalent of gout. Apart from anything else it's all wildly implausible. A balding middle-aged man of average intelligence and no creative talent who feels a kind of contemptuous affection for his two young daughters somehow manages to seduce most of the wives of his friend set. We learn little about the motives of the women who succumb to this obnoxious man's insatiable appetite for sexual conquest. The men get all the best lines and all the volition in this novel. I was initially excited because of how well Updike writes (he also frequently overwrites) and how perceptive he can be about relationships but as a novel it drags on endlessly on the same repetitive beat. The denouement when the chastened hero watches his church burn down just felt naff as any kind of commentary on the feckless gratuitous behaviour of all the too many and often indistinguishable characters in this book. Only because of the quality of the writing does it merit three stars.
July 16, 2009
I’m honestly a bit surprised that I picked this up. To my prejudices it was the jejune, possibly self-caricatural big bestseller, the book whose fame caused every obituary writer to narrowly cast Updike as a chronicler of upper-middle class New England marriages (Rabbit is a Pennsylvanian petit-bourgeois, as it happens). I had heard plenty of bad reports—-from personal friends, from distantly eminent judges (Martin Amis called it a “false summit” of the Updike oeuvre). But I was at a library sale, and it was $2, and the jacket photo was so vintage Updike, with his quizzical smirk, seersucker shirt tucked into chinos, tanned forearms, and behind him a wall of weathered Nantuckety beach house shingle. And at that sale a few weeks previous I had bought a copy The Stories of John Cheever, and had read so many that I wanted more midcentury New England agnst, more communter trains and cocktail shakers and girdles, and the sale also had stacks of old early 1960s issues of LIFE that nobody bought but contained the ads of that world, ads for cheap vernacular bourbon and Hi-Fi and convertibles that you drive a blond to the beach in. So I had to buy Couples. How bad could it be? Updike long ago entered my personal pantheon of writers (James, Nabokov, Edmund White) whose least distinguished books are readable, so great is my relish of their phrasing and perception. I wasn’t expecting much but I thought it would be fun.
Turns out, this is the true trial of an Updike-lover. I passed, and was rewarded; but much in this book is bad. For one, there are too many people. 10 couples, 20 rather boring and/or repellent characters entangled with each other in adulterous affairs past, ongoing, and just dawning. Piet Hanema, like Updike a Dutch-descended sensualist Christian, churchgoing but priapic, serves as a sturdy enough platform for Updike’s observatory lyricism (well, except for the painfully derivative Joycean stream-of-consciousness); and Piet’s wife and daughters are finely drawn; but the rest of these people just suck. So much dialogue! The vast middle of the novel is devoted to seemingly endless transcripts of middlebrow cocktail party ruminations; to feeble flirty jokes, soporific gossip, booze-addled attempts to apply half-remembered Freudian and anthropological terms to their ennui. Updike was asleep at the wheel for much this one. He does the tense socializing of outwardly friendly but lustful and rivalrous couples so much better in Rabbit Is Rich, in the country club scenes, where the number of couples is manageably fewer and they are all interesting, or at least relevant to Rabbit’s story.
Updike also indulges some wannabe-comic but totally unfunny racial characterization. John Ong, a Korean, is allowed one trait: unintelligible English. And Ben Saltz, a Jew, is ponderous and pushy; he also reads Commentary. There is also excruciatingly metaphorical sex. Less than you’d expect in a 400+ page novel about suburban swingers, but still quite a bit. Piet and the very pregnant Foxy Whitman have astronomical sex:
As I neared the last of the novel’s four mega-chapters, I began to think that writing this ridiculous could have been avoided if Piet, as much I favored him above the others, hadn’t been the surrogate intelligence of the book. His wide-eyed wonder at the world was unsuited to a catalogue of bored bed-hopping—-to make such action interesting Updike needed command of a Gallic, cynical tone; this should have been a novel of malicious manners, modeled on the novel of pitilessly dissected motives that is, said W.M. Spackman, one of the glories of French literature--Les Liaisons dangereuses, Madame Bovary.
But as I said, these were my thoughts before starting the last section, which turned out to be uninterruptedly awesome, an 80-page clean sprint of wisdom and insight and skill. Updike even redeems his condescending characterization of John Ong with the moving scene in Ong’s hospice room. The chatty extraneous couples recede and it becomes all about Piet’s disintegrating marriage, his apartmented singleness, his reunion with Foxy. The tone is far-seeing, laconic, epilogic. Updike drops on you the crushing sadness of just starting to move on--and not just from a failed relationship, but from friendship, from mere acquaintance (“what have they forgotten, what have they lost?” asks the narrator’s first wife in Cheever’s “The Seaside Houses,” like Couples a story about sundering and new selves and lost time set against a backdrop of New England beaches). Suddenly, Updike’s melancholic attention, throughout the book, to the mutations and minute light effects of seasonal change came to have a thematic resonance; I remembered that the action takes place over just a year, a blip in the lives of people. Opening to my marker last night, I steeled myself for a weary slog to the end; I closed the novel with a big smile and my brain buzzing. That’s what I read Updike for.
Turns out, this is the true trial of an Updike-lover. I passed, and was rewarded; but much in this book is bad. For one, there are too many people. 10 couples, 20 rather boring and/or repellent characters entangled with each other in adulterous affairs past, ongoing, and just dawning. Piet Hanema, like Updike a Dutch-descended sensualist Christian, churchgoing but priapic, serves as a sturdy enough platform for Updike’s observatory lyricism (well, except for the painfully derivative Joycean stream-of-consciousness); and Piet’s wife and daughters are finely drawn; but the rest of these people just suck. So much dialogue! The vast middle of the novel is devoted to seemingly endless transcripts of middlebrow cocktail party ruminations; to feeble flirty jokes, soporific gossip, booze-addled attempts to apply half-remembered Freudian and anthropological terms to their ennui. Updike was asleep at the wheel for much this one. He does the tense socializing of outwardly friendly but lustful and rivalrous couples so much better in Rabbit Is Rich, in the country club scenes, where the number of couples is manageably fewer and they are all interesting, or at least relevant to Rabbit’s story.
Updike also indulges some wannabe-comic but totally unfunny racial characterization. John Ong, a Korean, is allowed one trait: unintelligible English. And Ben Saltz, a Jew, is ponderous and pushy; he also reads Commentary. There is also excruciatingly metaphorical sex. Less than you’d expect in a 400+ page novel about suburban swingers, but still quite a bit. Piet and the very pregnant Foxy Whitman have astronomical sex:
Their lovemaking lunar, revolving frictionless around the planet of her womb. The crescent bits of ass his tongue could touch below her cunt’s petals. Her far-off cries, eclipsed.
As I neared the last of the novel’s four mega-chapters, I began to think that writing this ridiculous could have been avoided if Piet, as much I favored him above the others, hadn’t been the surrogate intelligence of the book. His wide-eyed wonder at the world was unsuited to a catalogue of bored bed-hopping—-to make such action interesting Updike needed command of a Gallic, cynical tone; this should have been a novel of malicious manners, modeled on the novel of pitilessly dissected motives that is, said W.M. Spackman, one of the glories of French literature--Les Liaisons dangereuses, Madame Bovary.
But as I said, these were my thoughts before starting the last section, which turned out to be uninterruptedly awesome, an 80-page clean sprint of wisdom and insight and skill. Updike even redeems his condescending characterization of John Ong with the moving scene in Ong’s hospice room. The chatty extraneous couples recede and it becomes all about Piet’s disintegrating marriage, his apartmented singleness, his reunion with Foxy. The tone is far-seeing, laconic, epilogic. Updike drops on you the crushing sadness of just starting to move on--and not just from a failed relationship, but from friendship, from mere acquaintance (“what have they forgotten, what have they lost?” asks the narrator’s first wife in Cheever’s “The Seaside Houses,” like Couples a story about sundering and new selves and lost time set against a backdrop of New England beaches). Suddenly, Updike’s melancholic attention, throughout the book, to the mutations and minute light effects of seasonal change came to have a thematic resonance; I remembered that the action takes place over just a year, a blip in the lives of people. Opening to my marker last night, I steeled myself for a weary slog to the end; I closed the novel with a big smile and my brain buzzing. That’s what I read Updike for.
August 19, 2017
What's wonderful and aggravating about Updike all in one book. We see the same recycled themes here (parts feel very much like Marry Me and the Rabbit series, among others), which isn't a bad thing. Updike loves to focus on adultery, and he does so as well as anyone I know. Some great characters here. Love the Piet storyline and all the characters involved in it. Also love the side-story about the swinging couple; really interesting stuff there that, unfortunately, he never really comes back to.
The book, like many Updike books, feels too long. His descriptions are often beautiful -- but, as usual, he gives us too many (for my way of thinking, far too many) of them. I found myself skimming many of the scenes describing the beautiful (and fucking boring) New England coast.
Aside from the Rabbit books, probably my favorite Updike. Despite its flaws, there is so much life and energy in this book. Highly recommended.
The book, like many Updike books, feels too long. His descriptions are often beautiful -- but, as usual, he gives us too many (for my way of thinking, far too many) of them. I found myself skimming many of the scenes describing the beautiful (and fucking boring) New England coast.
Aside from the Rabbit books, probably my favorite Updike. Despite its flaws, there is so much life and energy in this book. Highly recommended.
November 16, 2016
Nobody writes about infidelity quite as good as Updike. Well, Roth sometimes gets close, but particularly in Couples, the disintegration of the various couples in the small New England town is described with painful realism by John Updike. Each character is fully developed and is sometimes endearing, sometimes enraging but always compelling. After the Rabbit series, this was my favorite Updike book.
February 17, 2009
one reads a lot of this about updike: “it’s really well written, but…”, “the prose soars, but…”, “the writing was great, but…”
you don’t see a lot of this regarding vincent van gogh: “it’s really well painted, but…”, “the brush strokes are nice but… isn’t he just painting a flower? or some wheat? or a dirty bar?”
an imperfect analogy, but close enough. updike digests reality and spits it out with such force and kaleidoscopic beauty i’d compare his description of reality against reality itself as i would vincent’s Starry Starry Night against any actual night sky all splattered out with stars.
updike might harp on a few larger themes, but after finishing six novels (and countless short stories) it'd be tough not to realize that what updike’s all about is expressing what it means to be alive in a world of other people with the knowledge that we will die alone. or, as one character explains it to his friends:
“We’re all put here to humanize each other.”
it’s ugly work. and no one does it better than updike.
but updike’s no romantic. no way. if his contemporaries philip roth and norman mailer are john ford with their mythic landscapes and smashed heroic myths, then updike has gotta be yazusiro ozu with his small domestic dramas and devestating mini-heartbreaks.
when one character realizes:
“How plausible it was to die, how death, far from invading Earth like a meteor, occurs on the same plane as birth and marriage and the arrival of the daily mail”
it says it all.
Musee des Beaux Arts
W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
you don’t see a lot of this regarding vincent van gogh: “it’s really well painted, but…”, “the brush strokes are nice but… isn’t he just painting a flower? or some wheat? or a dirty bar?”
an imperfect analogy, but close enough. updike digests reality and spits it out with such force and kaleidoscopic beauty i’d compare his description of reality against reality itself as i would vincent’s Starry Starry Night against any actual night sky all splattered out with stars.
updike might harp on a few larger themes, but after finishing six novels (and countless short stories) it'd be tough not to realize that what updike’s all about is expressing what it means to be alive in a world of other people with the knowledge that we will die alone. or, as one character explains it to his friends:
“We’re all put here to humanize each other.”
it’s ugly work. and no one does it better than updike.
but updike’s no romantic. no way. if his contemporaries philip roth and norman mailer are john ford with their mythic landscapes and smashed heroic myths, then updike has gotta be yazusiro ozu with his small domestic dramas and devestating mini-heartbreaks.
when one character realizes:
“How plausible it was to die, how death, far from invading Earth like a meteor, occurs on the same plane as birth and marriage and the arrival of the daily mail”
it says it all.
Musee des Beaux Arts
W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
February 3, 2023
The novel should have called "adultery" to knock down the entry cards. Because what's about this book? Only sleepovers between each other, like a philosophy of life or a pastime to relieve boredom. Indeed it is necessary to replace the text in its historical context of the time, the Sixties, to appreciate the satire of it; John Updike denounces the social conventions of this environment where sex is the main driving force behind candid appearances. And the writer does not skimp on suggestive scenes, sparing himself the understatement to call a spade a spade. At the time, it must have heated the spirits.
All of this rings true and accurate from the writer's pen, but it remains of very little interest, at least today. Moreover, Updike notices this in a moment of belated lucidity and makes one of his characters say in the last pages: "the world, he continued, is not so interested in lovers than we imagine", especially when it spanned over four hundred pages!
All of this rings true and accurate from the writer's pen, but it remains of very little interest, at least today. Moreover, Updike notices this in a moment of belated lucidity and makes one of his characters say in the last pages: "the world, he continued, is not so interested in lovers than we imagine", especially when it spanned over four hundred pages!
July 15, 2018
Updike non è un autore facile, uno di quelli che catturano dalle prime pagine. Al netto di ogni speculazione sulla traduzione buona, meno buona, datata etc. resta uno di quegli scrittori in grado di spiazzare il lettore con le sue immagini e la costruzione della sintassi, un maratoneta più che uno scattista. Questo romanzo non piglia da subito; ci vuole un po' di tempo per calarsi nella incredibile aria avvelenata di Tarbox, ennesima riproposizione del paesino di provincia del nordest americano dove si alternano serialmente pigri party, storie di letto con incroci pericolosi, dialoghi ad alto contenuto freudiano e un pizzico di politica, amicizie taglienti come rasoi. Ho già notato come il sesso nella narrativa nordamericana sia spesso tremendamente mortifero, termometro di decadenza fisica, strumento per colpire, fredda abitudine; qui Updike spinge sull'acceleratore e ci regala un romanzo formalmente erotico che lascia un fondo di estrema amarezza, in cui i rapporti tra coppie di vecchi amici vengono letteralmente disintegrati dal sesso. Sullo sfondo i roaring sixties, in cui prende buono spazio anche l'evento più traumatico della storia politica del novecento americano, l'omicidio di JFK. Finale autunnale con lavacro morale, forse insospettabile per una lettura così profondamente cinica e misantropica.
March 24, 2018
How innocently life ate the days.
March 11, 2008
Maybe I'm an idealist when it comes to matter of the heart, romantic idiom, love and marriage, so it is hard for me to grasp the reality that some people actually live(d) as described in this book. But with an entire novel (Couples) and a good part of at least two of the Rabbit books dedicated to the scenario of partner "swapping" and "swinging," and other forms of adultery (a.k.a. cheating), I am pushed to accept that not only does this behavior exist, but that author John Updike actually did it. Not as strong as some of his other works, this book kind of floats along with a sense of apathy and detachment, a kind of mirror of the main character, Piet Hanema, the catalyst of community-wide relationship destruction in a small New England town in the early-mid '60s. Couples rests on the idea that everyone is unsatisfied, unfulfilled and unhappy in their marriages, and that good times are only to be found outside the "sacred bond." I found a lot of similarity between the scenarios presented in this book and the recent AMC original TV series "Mad Men," which is set around the same time. It's an interesting snapshot of the period. Sexuality really seemed to be "on the verge" of something, perhaps fueled by and entwined with the popularization of psychotherapy for the masses, early women's lib, Cold War anxiety, the rise of the middle class and other socio-political realities of the time. As far as Updike's "heroes" go, Piet is much harder to like than Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom; he's also not as well drawn. The best character in Couples is the villain/anti-hero, Freddy Thorne. He's got some incredibly sharp and funny lines.
April 4, 2019
My GOD, this was a boring book. Reading it felt like wading through a sea of treacle – every step I moved forward it pushed me back, so I was still in a random house with Piet Hanema while he had mostly unsatisfying sex with an interchangeable array of bored housewives. It’s 458 pages of quite small text. It’s always a sign of a fundamentally unsatisfying book if I know how many pages there are because I’m always rechecking in case it’s lower than I remembered and I’m closer to the end than I thought. (I never was. Even when I was ten pages from the end, it sucked me down into a treacly hole of literary inertia to the point where I skimmed it just to be DONE.)
With the Great White Male canon, comparatively Updike's been the worst experience. Steinbeck was also awful, but at least the story (Of Mice and Men – I’m not torturing myself with any others) was propulsive. Roth was squeamishly naval-gazy, completely unaware of his systemic biases, and boring to boot, but again, he had a point to make (American Pastoral) and by god he was going to make it, with a jackhammer if necessary. Ellis was a very weird experience I still haven’t fully recovered from, and De Lillo was surprisingly enjoyable.
This book, though – it just went NOWHERE. The writing was so dull. Thank god he threw in the Kennedy assassination to place it because otherwise this might be anywhere and any point in time – a bland greyscape of a somewhere town in a somewhere country with characters who are completely disengaged from politics, culture, art, or any kind of strong opinion (apart from Harold the neo-Nazi, although I suppose 1968 is close enough to WW2 that he’s just a straight-up original Nazi).
Literally the only thing these people do is fuck each other. I had to work very hard with every page to remember that in 1968, the sexual revolution was just happening. Books with this level of explicit detail were not common – there’s a reference to Henry Miller, who I started after this, and who really enjoys using the word ‘cunt’ in every second sentence. Obviously this might have been exciting for the readership then. It’s the opposite of exciting now.
The sex scenes aren’t bad per se, they’re just dull, and anatomical, and peppered with an abundance of weird plant metaphors. Every single person in this book, male or female, is indistinguishable, and they are described in such a way as to suggest that in fact they are all amorphous blobs of dough in the process of sublimating into primordial plant matter.
No one seems more attracted to any one person than anyone else; everyone is totes fine with adultery. There’s no sense that someone is mad about X, but not keen on Y – they’ll have sex with X and Y and the whole alphabet provided they find a spare room. I don’t know why anyone is or stays married given that no one rates their marriage partner above or below their adulterous partners. Why be married at all when you just have sex with anyone and care about no one?
And, of course, there’s the raging racism, Orientalism, anti-semitism and misogyny that makes reading mid-century white guys such a TREAT.
some random graduate courses, a stab at a master’s degree, two terms of life-drawing in Boston, vacations, even flirtations: but nothing fruitful. […] She wanted to bear Ken a child
Page 43, the hymn to misogyny reaches a height from which it never descends. Having kids is a legitimate life goal! It’s not the only goal! The life Foxy describes as ‘fruitless’ seems super fucking full and interesting to me, and forgive me if I’m not going to trust a randy old white dude to penetrate the motivations of the average female when he assumes ‘uwu baybees’ is IT.
Courteously he bowed before them, his tail an interrogation mark
The only good line in the book, about Foxy’s cat Cotton. I wish this book was just about Cotton. I love cats and think they’re great but when I say the characters in this book display no more higher order thinking than cats it is not a compliment.
Ken doubted the story, for how could any woman leave so good a man?
Said man refers to women as bitches on the reg. I rest my case.
since without a vehicle she was virtually a prisoner […] Ken had forgotten about this car, though obviously she needed it.
Why does this not surprise me.
He confessed, “I feel bogged down.”
She thought, You need another woman.
Like. No. Just no. Fully zero percent of non-polyamorous women, and probably a large percentage of polyamorous ones, would ever think this. Only in the head of a sex-crazed heterosexual old man would they think this.
Janet’s been a bitch for nine months plus.
In case you are curious, what Janet was doing for those nine months plus was GESTATING, BIRTHING, AND RAISING HIS INFANT CHILD.
He considered himself something of a dandy, an old-fashioned elegant. Last spring, in St Louis, he had given a girl two hundred dollars to spend the night with him.
Buying sex is many things; elegant is not one of them.
I look at that ass and I think Heaven. Twenty miles of bluebirds and strawberry whip.
I do actually quite like that. I mean if you’re going to treat women as objects and not people at least use evocative comparators.
“Isn’t there some way I can earn it? I could go into Boston this fall and get enough education credits to teach at least at a private school. […] I can begin therapy, just twice a week, with the education courses. Oh Piet, I’ll be a wonderful wife; I’ll know everything.”
This felt like a slap – this long-suffering woman, whose husband has slept with every one of her female friends, who’s having a mental breakdown, who is frustrated in her assigned role as homemaker, BEGGING her husband to let her take some courses and go to therapy. BEGGING. And he says NO. And she just has to TAKE THAT. Piet for many reasons just deserves a bullet in the head, but this is the most egregious.
“Yeah,” Piet said, “and why not make the kids celebrate Ramadan by not eating their lunch boxes?”
Why not? If you’re going to have Christmas and bitch about Hannukkah this seems legit. Oh wait, you were kidding because you’re a horrible racist. Never mind.
“No, it’s in you. You invite it.
This to physical violence – not consenting BDSM, now, which I doubt Updike’s tiny mind could ever consider let alone endorse – legit domestic abuse. Piet is a victim-blamer; who is surprised?
Women are gentle fruitful presences whose interpolation among us diffuses guilt.
U WAT NOW
He fought against her as a raped woman might struggle, to intensify the dead.
… I’d start believing in hell just to hope he’s in it.
Piet gave him a quarter. “Gahblessyafella.” Angel in disguise. Never turn away. Men coming to the door during the Depression. His mother’s pies. Bread upon the waters. Takes your coat, give him a cloak. Asks a mile, go twain. Nobody believes.
This fucking horrendous stylistic tic is why Microsoft Word invented the squiggly green lines that chastise you for fragmenting sentences. BAD UPDIKE. NO COOKIE. FUCK OFF.
With the Great White Male canon, comparatively Updike's been the worst experience. Steinbeck was also awful, but at least the story (Of Mice and Men – I’m not torturing myself with any others) was propulsive. Roth was squeamishly naval-gazy, completely unaware of his systemic biases, and boring to boot, but again, he had a point to make (American Pastoral) and by god he was going to make it, with a jackhammer if necessary. Ellis was a very weird experience I still haven’t fully recovered from, and De Lillo was surprisingly enjoyable.
This book, though – it just went NOWHERE. The writing was so dull. Thank god he threw in the Kennedy assassination to place it because otherwise this might be anywhere and any point in time – a bland greyscape of a somewhere town in a somewhere country with characters who are completely disengaged from politics, culture, art, or any kind of strong opinion (apart from Harold the neo-Nazi, although I suppose 1968 is close enough to WW2 that he’s just a straight-up original Nazi).
Literally the only thing these people do is fuck each other. I had to work very hard with every page to remember that in 1968, the sexual revolution was just happening. Books with this level of explicit detail were not common – there’s a reference to Henry Miller, who I started after this, and who really enjoys using the word ‘cunt’ in every second sentence. Obviously this might have been exciting for the readership then. It’s the opposite of exciting now.
The sex scenes aren’t bad per se, they’re just dull, and anatomical, and peppered with an abundance of weird plant metaphors. Every single person in this book, male or female, is indistinguishable, and they are described in such a way as to suggest that in fact they are all amorphous blobs of dough in the process of sublimating into primordial plant matter.
No one seems more attracted to any one person than anyone else; everyone is totes fine with adultery. There’s no sense that someone is mad about X, but not keen on Y – they’ll have sex with X and Y and the whole alphabet provided they find a spare room. I don’t know why anyone is or stays married given that no one rates their marriage partner above or below their adulterous partners. Why be married at all when you just have sex with anyone and care about no one?
And, of course, there’s the raging racism, Orientalism, anti-semitism and misogyny that makes reading mid-century white guys such a TREAT.
some random graduate courses, a stab at a master’s degree, two terms of life-drawing in Boston, vacations, even flirtations: but nothing fruitful. […] She wanted to bear Ken a child
Page 43, the hymn to misogyny reaches a height from which it never descends. Having kids is a legitimate life goal! It’s not the only goal! The life Foxy describes as ‘fruitless’ seems super fucking full and interesting to me, and forgive me if I’m not going to trust a randy old white dude to penetrate the motivations of the average female when he assumes ‘uwu baybees’ is IT.
Courteously he bowed before them, his tail an interrogation mark
The only good line in the book, about Foxy’s cat Cotton. I wish this book was just about Cotton. I love cats and think they’re great but when I say the characters in this book display no more higher order thinking than cats it is not a compliment.
Ken doubted the story, for how could any woman leave so good a man?
Said man refers to women as bitches on the reg. I rest my case.
since without a vehicle she was virtually a prisoner […] Ken had forgotten about this car, though obviously she needed it.
Why does this not surprise me.
He confessed, “I feel bogged down.”
She thought, You need another woman.
Like. No. Just no. Fully zero percent of non-polyamorous women, and probably a large percentage of polyamorous ones, would ever think this. Only in the head of a sex-crazed heterosexual old man would they think this.
Janet’s been a bitch for nine months plus.
In case you are curious, what Janet was doing for those nine months plus was GESTATING, BIRTHING, AND RAISING HIS INFANT CHILD.
He considered himself something of a dandy, an old-fashioned elegant. Last spring, in St Louis, he had given a girl two hundred dollars to spend the night with him.
Buying sex is many things; elegant is not one of them.
I look at that ass and I think Heaven. Twenty miles of bluebirds and strawberry whip.
I do actually quite like that. I mean if you’re going to treat women as objects and not people at least use evocative comparators.
“Isn’t there some way I can earn it? I could go into Boston this fall and get enough education credits to teach at least at a private school. […] I can begin therapy, just twice a week, with the education courses. Oh Piet, I’ll be a wonderful wife; I’ll know everything.”
This felt like a slap – this long-suffering woman, whose husband has slept with every one of her female friends, who’s having a mental breakdown, who is frustrated in her assigned role as homemaker, BEGGING her husband to let her take some courses and go to therapy. BEGGING. And he says NO. And she just has to TAKE THAT. Piet for many reasons just deserves a bullet in the head, but this is the most egregious.
“Yeah,” Piet said, “and why not make the kids celebrate Ramadan by not eating their lunch boxes?”
Why not? If you’re going to have Christmas and bitch about Hannukkah this seems legit. Oh wait, you were kidding because you’re a horrible racist. Never mind.
“No, it’s in you. You invite it.
This to physical violence – not consenting BDSM, now, which I doubt Updike’s tiny mind could ever consider let alone endorse – legit domestic abuse. Piet is a victim-blamer; who is surprised?
Women are gentle fruitful presences whose interpolation among us diffuses guilt.
U WAT NOW
He fought against her as a raped woman might struggle, to intensify the dead.
… I’d start believing in hell just to hope he’s in it.
Piet gave him a quarter. “Gahblessyafella.” Angel in disguise. Never turn away. Men coming to the door during the Depression. His mother’s pies. Bread upon the waters. Takes your coat, give him a cloak. Asks a mile, go twain. Nobody believes.
This fucking horrendous stylistic tic is why Microsoft Word invented the squiggly green lines that chastise you for fragmenting sentences. BAD UPDIKE. NO COOKIE. FUCK OFF.
July 16, 2018
Tl;dr būtų daugmaž tikslu, bet tiksliausia būtų parašyti, jog ties 5% DNF'inau nes tų ~20 psl. per akis užteko suprasti, kad ne mano šita knyga bus, kad ne mano žanras, ne mano stilius ir šiaip nepatinka. Daugiau ir nesiplėsiu, neturiu tiesiog ką dar parašyt apie šią knygą.
November 21, 2020
Двойки е книга за изгубеният морал и за липсата на любов и търсенето на такава , на места очаквано цинична , но и много отегчителна .Не бих се осмелил да прочета нещо от Ъпдайк скоро стилът му не ми допадна поне в тази книга .
August 1, 2008
60's wife swapping in New England - hence rather confusing at first re who is married to who, who is having an affair with who, who children belong to etc. Wonderfully poignant and evocative metaphors and descriptive passages; other bits are deliberately disjointed, more like stream-of-consciousness.
May 16, 2022
John Updike has been a favorite writer of mine for 30 years. I finished going through his novels last year. I suppose I'm starting through (at least some of) them again, as I picked Couples as a reread for this year. I've always named Couples as my favorite Updike novel, and it didn't disappoint this second time. My greatest impression the first time was that I had never felt more immersed in the scenes of a book - he has an incredible talent for placing you in a room with people and building an imposing reality around you. Since Couples is largely told as a series of dinner parties, backyard cookouts, town meetings, encounters on the sidewalk and trysts in bedrooms, his facility is ever on display. As I reflect on how the book felt for me on the reread compared with my first experience of it, I'm going to say that the second time it came off as a more cohesive whole, but was felt not quite as viscerally. That is probably true of most rereads. But I don't think I had a different reaction to the characters or to the events reading it at 65 versus at 35.
Updike wrote Couples in 1968, and I thought its setting was exactly contemporary, but actually the Kennedy assassination places its action spread over a little more than a one-year period of 1963 and 1964. We are in Tarbox, Massachusetts, a coastal town 27 miles south of Boston. The first couple we meet is Piet and Angela Hanema. Updike narrates in the third person, but in general Piet is the central character. The Hanemas are part of a group of youngish, married-with-children group that socializes together. The roster of couples includes:
Piet & Angela Hanema
Roger & Bea Guerin
Frank & Janet Appleby
Harold & Marcia Smith
Freddy & Georgene Thorne
Ken & Foxy Whitman
Eddie & Carol Constantine
Ben & Irene Saltz
John & Bernadette Ong
Through the course of the story, at least seven new couples are formed by adulterous unions among them. I don't know how many novels came out with the theme of married couples who freely swapped mates as we experienced the sexual revolution of the 1960's, probably many, but I imagine Couples was one of the most read and commented on. I would really enjoy reading some reviews that were contemporary to the book. I imagine that, regardless of how Updike's views on adultery were interpreted, many reviewers condemned the book as trash, and another portent of society's demise.
Which begs the question of Updike's aim with this book. I believe he was simply using an important societal change as a backdrop for a novel. I could research Updike's personal life to determine whether he was unfaithful to his wives, or vice versa, but one's behavior doesn't necessarily follow one's beliefs anyway, does it ? However, even though Couples wasn't written as a morality tale, Updike could hardly avoid direct and indirect commentary on the factors influencing adultery, and the outcomes of it.
In all of his books Updike enjoys deep looks at relationships between men and women, and the dynamics, balances, power struggles and currency of them. In Couples, more than his other novels, I got the feeling that Updike saw women as physically, and probably morally superior to men. There were times when I heard him saying that men are impossible to love and women are impossible not to love. Here he portrays women's bodies as different forms of perfection, and often quite comically paints the men's bodies and faces as grotesque. Throughout the book, men had equine faces, piscine faces and bodies that were hideous. I actually laughed out loud at some of his descriptions. Men were beings who deserved physical adjectives like "invertebrate, elderly (when they weren't), absurd, ingrown (I'm surprised he didn't add inbred!), gangrenous and twisted." We might easily infer that men are diseased inside as well. Even one of the children chimes in: "Daddy's ugly." And later: "'Daddy's toes,' Nancy said, gazing up impudently from beneath Angela's protection, 'are like Halloween teeth,' and Piet saw that he represented death to this child: that what menaced and assaulted the fragility of life was being concentrated for her in his towering rank maleness; that this process would bring her in time to (her older sister) Ruth's stage, of daring to admire and tame this strangeness; and at last to (her mother) Angela's, of seeking to salvage something of herself, from the encounter with it. He loved them, his women, spaced around him like the stakes of a trap." I hear Updike commenting on men as takers and women as givers, men as crude and women as sculptors and shapers of unwieldy men.
Many of Updike's novels include death as a major theme, and Couples is no exception. It is interesting to see that this theme actually interweaves with his characters thoughts as they experiment with extramarital sex. Perhaps Updike feels that many adulterous couplings arise partially or even primarily out of existential angst / boredom. As the novel opens, we find Piet, a house builder, gazing approvingly at a beautiful old church in town. On top of the steeple is a weathercock that has a copper English penny for an eye. Some of the children of town grow up believing that the rooster is an all-seeing God. So guilt is suggested as well. I was reminded of the optometrist's billboard with the glasses and staring eyes in The Great Gatsby. Harold muses about living with guilt or the threat of it, "The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards."
Updike seems to compare sex, especially with forbidden partners, with vibrant life, and compare ended relationships with death. A character in a sentimental and existential mood declares: " ... the ... church and naked women - everything else tells us we're dead."
WARNING: THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS
Again, I don't think Updike was making a statement on infidelity when he wrote Couples, but he explores it nevertheless. At one point he refers to "essential fidelity", as if he feels there can be degrees between black and white. At times there are clues to his own views through his characters. One qualifies cheating: " ... but he had never betrayed (his wife) with a social equal." After one man is cheated on, he goes to a couple he respects and asks what he should do, i.e. divorce her or try to work through it. It's easy for the uninvolved to absolve her, while the victim is crushed with grief. Updike certainly doesn't whitewash the serious damages that can be done. There are anger, jealousy, an unwanted pregnancy throwing those involved into a panic, divorces and a gradual dissolution of the group.
To say that Updike's writing is poetic, evocative and lyrical hardly does it justice. I've read few books whose writing quality matches this. There are many passages using stream-of-consciousness writing, both in dreams and in conscious thinking. He loves to look at how our silly brains work: even as a character receives terrible news on the phone, his mind wanders to the oddness of the everyday objects around him.
Finally, more than other writers, Updike is always concerned not only with the cerebral and existential parts of life, but also with the corporal. His characters have bodies that eat and digest - sometimes poorly - and eliminate and have sex and age and hurt and feel illness. He does sex scenes very well - his lovers make romance novel sex scenes look like comic books compared to his Botticelli-, Rubens- and Renoir-inspired visions.
Updike wrote Couples in 1968, and I thought its setting was exactly contemporary, but actually the Kennedy assassination places its action spread over a little more than a one-year period of 1963 and 1964. We are in Tarbox, Massachusetts, a coastal town 27 miles south of Boston. The first couple we meet is Piet and Angela Hanema. Updike narrates in the third person, but in general Piet is the central character. The Hanemas are part of a group of youngish, married-with-children group that socializes together. The roster of couples includes:
Piet & Angela Hanema
Roger & Bea Guerin
Frank & Janet Appleby
Harold & Marcia Smith
Freddy & Georgene Thorne
Ken & Foxy Whitman
Eddie & Carol Constantine
Ben & Irene Saltz
John & Bernadette Ong
Through the course of the story, at least seven new couples are formed by adulterous unions among them. I don't know how many novels came out with the theme of married couples who freely swapped mates as we experienced the sexual revolution of the 1960's, probably many, but I imagine Couples was one of the most read and commented on. I would really enjoy reading some reviews that were contemporary to the book. I imagine that, regardless of how Updike's views on adultery were interpreted, many reviewers condemned the book as trash, and another portent of society's demise.
Which begs the question of Updike's aim with this book. I believe he was simply using an important societal change as a backdrop for a novel. I could research Updike's personal life to determine whether he was unfaithful to his wives, or vice versa, but one's behavior doesn't necessarily follow one's beliefs anyway, does it ? However, even though Couples wasn't written as a morality tale, Updike could hardly avoid direct and indirect commentary on the factors influencing adultery, and the outcomes of it.
In all of his books Updike enjoys deep looks at relationships between men and women, and the dynamics, balances, power struggles and currency of them. In Couples, more than his other novels, I got the feeling that Updike saw women as physically, and probably morally superior to men. There were times when I heard him saying that men are impossible to love and women are impossible not to love. Here he portrays women's bodies as different forms of perfection, and often quite comically paints the men's bodies and faces as grotesque. Throughout the book, men had equine faces, piscine faces and bodies that were hideous. I actually laughed out loud at some of his descriptions. Men were beings who deserved physical adjectives like "invertebrate, elderly (when they weren't), absurd, ingrown (I'm surprised he didn't add inbred!), gangrenous and twisted." We might easily infer that men are diseased inside as well. Even one of the children chimes in: "Daddy's ugly." And later: "'Daddy's toes,' Nancy said, gazing up impudently from beneath Angela's protection, 'are like Halloween teeth,' and Piet saw that he represented death to this child: that what menaced and assaulted the fragility of life was being concentrated for her in his towering rank maleness; that this process would bring her in time to (her older sister) Ruth's stage, of daring to admire and tame this strangeness; and at last to (her mother) Angela's, of seeking to salvage something of herself, from the encounter with it. He loved them, his women, spaced around him like the stakes of a trap." I hear Updike commenting on men as takers and women as givers, men as crude and women as sculptors and shapers of unwieldy men.
Many of Updike's novels include death as a major theme, and Couples is no exception. It is interesting to see that this theme actually interweaves with his characters thoughts as they experiment with extramarital sex. Perhaps Updike feels that many adulterous couplings arise partially or even primarily out of existential angst / boredom. As the novel opens, we find Piet, a house builder, gazing approvingly at a beautiful old church in town. On top of the steeple is a weathercock that has a copper English penny for an eye. Some of the children of town grow up believing that the rooster is an all-seeing God. So guilt is suggested as well. I was reminded of the optometrist's billboard with the glasses and staring eyes in The Great Gatsby. Harold muses about living with guilt or the threat of it, "The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards."
Updike seems to compare sex, especially with forbidden partners, with vibrant life, and compare ended relationships with death. A character in a sentimental and existential mood declares: " ... the ... church and naked women - everything else tells us we're dead."
WARNING: THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS
Again, I don't think Updike was making a statement on infidelity when he wrote Couples, but he explores it nevertheless. At one point he refers to "essential fidelity", as if he feels there can be degrees between black and white. At times there are clues to his own views through his characters. One qualifies cheating: " ... but he had never betrayed (his wife) with a social equal." After one man is cheated on, he goes to a couple he respects and asks what he should do, i.e. divorce her or try to work through it. It's easy for the uninvolved to absolve her, while the victim is crushed with grief. Updike certainly doesn't whitewash the serious damages that can be done. There are anger, jealousy, an unwanted pregnancy throwing those involved into a panic, divorces and a gradual dissolution of the group.
To say that Updike's writing is poetic, evocative and lyrical hardly does it justice. I've read few books whose writing quality matches this. There are many passages using stream-of-consciousness writing, both in dreams and in conscious thinking. He loves to look at how our silly brains work: even as a character receives terrible news on the phone, his mind wanders to the oddness of the everyday objects around him.
Finally, more than other writers, Updike is always concerned not only with the cerebral and existential parts of life, but also with the corporal. His characters have bodies that eat and digest - sometimes poorly - and eliminate and have sex and age and hurt and feel illness. He does sex scenes very well - his lovers make romance novel sex scenes look like comic books compared to his Botticelli-, Rubens- and Renoir-inspired visions.
September 4, 2025
Updike is one of those writers who manages to bring the verbose sensibility and psychological magnification of the likes of Henry James into contemporary America, exploring the moral malaise and emotional stultification of modern suburbia alongside his own forays into an applied philosophy and theology for today, aimed at the mundane and unremarkable of daily American life.
Couples, an earlier Updike novel, is a feast of language but otherwise a tough read; Updike’s cynicism is on full display throughout and the inhabitants of his conjured suburb are hard to like at best. The plot, if you can call it that, is laborious and stifling.
It’s clear there’s a degree of self-consciousness and self-beratement at play in his depictions of marital infidelity, even amidst his casually jaw-dropping descriptions of sex and sensuality, which are alternately tongue-in-cheek and lovely. Like in other works, he worries away at Protestant theology in a way that feels personal, while offering his trademark post-modernist critique of modern-day meaninglessness and the moral hunger of abundance.
Because I know and love some of his later work, I know this cynicism never fully disappeared but was also eventually shored up by a sort of earnest (if clear-eyed) sincerity and emotional optimism. That transformation couldn’t be held in clearer contrast than in comparing Couples to Maples Stories, which came about some fifty years later and—set in that same American suburbia—is among the most beautiful depictions of marriage I’ve seen.
Although this entry wasn’t my favorite, Updike is going to be a lifelong writer of study for me, both thematically and in his mastery of language.
Couples, an earlier Updike novel, is a feast of language but otherwise a tough read; Updike’s cynicism is on full display throughout and the inhabitants of his conjured suburb are hard to like at best. The plot, if you can call it that, is laborious and stifling.
It’s clear there’s a degree of self-consciousness and self-beratement at play in his depictions of marital infidelity, even amidst his casually jaw-dropping descriptions of sex and sensuality, which are alternately tongue-in-cheek and lovely. Like in other works, he worries away at Protestant theology in a way that feels personal, while offering his trademark post-modernist critique of modern-day meaninglessness and the moral hunger of abundance.
Because I know and love some of his later work, I know this cynicism never fully disappeared but was also eventually shored up by a sort of earnest (if clear-eyed) sincerity and emotional optimism. That transformation couldn’t be held in clearer contrast than in comparing Couples to Maples Stories, which came about some fifty years later and—set in that same American suburbia—is among the most beautiful depictions of marriage I’ve seen.
Although this entry wasn’t my favorite, Updike is going to be a lifelong writer of study for me, both thematically and in his mastery of language.
November 22, 2020
Имах по- високи очаквания за " Двойки", но...не бях впечатлена, никак даже. Началото тръгна обещаващо, а после затънах в множество персонажи, на които им загубих дирята, и в подробности и многословие, абсолютно излишно според мен. Ако трябва да съм честна, книгата ми беше леко скучна и отегчителна, почти толкова, колкото животът на персонажите от " Двойки".
Обаче...
Романът определено е провокативен и скандален за времето си, суров, първичен, циничен. Беше ми интересно да видя една различна авторска перспектива на човешките взаимоотношения. Хареса ми това как Ъпдайк стреля точно в целта със своята прямота, без заобикалки и натруфености, но циничността ми дойде леко в повече за моя вкус. Авторът е имал смелостта да говори открито за човешкия нагон, да покаже порочността, която винаги е присъствала и присъства в човека, независимо дали е реализирана или кротко дреме в мислите му, и която повечето се опитват да крият под булото на привидното благоприличие.
Обаче...
Романът определено е провокативен и скандален за времето си, суров, първичен, циничен. Беше ми интересно да видя една различна авторска перспектива на човешките взаимоотношения. Хареса ми това как Ъпдайк стреля точно в целта със своята прямота, без заобикалки и натруфености, но циничността ми дойде леко в повече за моя вкус. Авторът е имал смелостта да говори открито за човешкия нагон, да покаже порочността, която винаги е присъствала и присъства в човека, независимо дали е реализирана или кротко дреме в мислите му, и която повечето се опитват да крият под булото на привидното благоприличие.
March 30, 2013
"Двойки" напомня много на написаната 11 години по-късно "Ожени се за мен". Няколкото семейства са разширена версия на нейните две двойки. Образуват затворен кръг в идилично и елегантно предградие на Бостън - едно голямо семейство, което прави буквално всичко заедно, тайно или съвсем открито, в различни конфигурации от пол, възраст, социален статус, етнос, образование и религия. Едната част от ежедневието им е улегнала и нормална, другата - колкото скандализираща и порочна, толкова и първично човешка и обяснима.
Ъпдайк е много добър разказвач, увлича, а еротиката му е обилна, но истинска, ненатрапчива и красива. И макар скандалното и сексът (като освобождаване, прошка, извинение, бягство, сбогуване, навик, спорт, емоция, желание, сделка или отмъщение) са видимите водещи нишки, под тях има много откровени въпроси и отговори, които поради страх, нежелание или инерция често се подминават.
Романът определено не е за пуритани, но би трябвало да се прочете от повече хора именно заради темите, които засяга - малките неща, които събират, влюбват, отчуждават и разделят една двойка, трудният избор да бъде ли спасена и на каква цена, тънката граница между любов, привързаност, нагон и навик, непредвидимият изход от борбата между разум и чувства, красиво маскираната като обич или уважение лъжа, празнотата, по-страшна и депресираща не в другата половина на леглото, а като липса на родител и партньор, самотата сред хората, последствията от премълчавани желания и неслучили се разговори, разтегливите граници на личния морал.
С проблемите и вълненията на обикновените хора "Двойки" е много повече човечна и вълнуваща, отколкото скандална книга.
Ъпдайк е много добър разказвач, увлича, а еротиката му е обилна, но истинска, ненатрапчива и красива. И макар скандалното и сексът (като освобождаване, прошка, извинение, бягство, сбогуване, навик, спорт, емоция, желание, сделка или отмъщение) са видимите водещи нишки, под тях има много откровени въпроси и отговори, които поради страх, нежелание или инерция често се подминават.
Романът определено не е за пуритани, но би трябвало да се прочете от повече хора именно заради темите, които засяга - малките неща, които събират, влюбват, отчуждават и разделят една двойка, трудният избор да бъде ли спасена и на каква цена, тънката граница между любов, привързаност, нагон и навик, непредвидимият изход от борбата между разум и чувства, красиво маскираната като обич или уважение лъжа, празнотата, по-страшна и депресираща не в другата половина на леглото, а като липса на родител и партньор, самотата сред хората, последствията от премълчавани желания и неслучили се разговори, разтегливите граници на личния морал.
С проблемите и вълненията на обикновените хора "Двойки" е много повече човечна и вълнуваща, отколкото скандална книга.
June 18, 2020
I read "Couples" while living in Greece. There is nothing more opposite than Updike and Greece. One is bereft of worldly experience and the latter is a cornucopia of it. This was one of those books you read in short spurts, coming back to it out of a feeling of duty rather than from suspense or interest.
Also, it's not a book to read right after you've just married, which I did. Hence, I found it boring and irrelevant. Like everything else, reviews must take into account the flow of time concerning relevance. I still dread the thought of re-reading it, which I will not be doing, just as I used to do upon reading it sporadically.
Some of Updike affects me this way even though I acknowledge the view that he is a superior writer--a master wordsmith as it were. It's just what he writes about seems to me anemic, even if it's about sex.
Also, it's not a book to read right after you've just married, which I did. Hence, I found it boring and irrelevant. Like everything else, reviews must take into account the flow of time concerning relevance. I still dread the thought of re-reading it, which I will not be doing, just as I used to do upon reading it sporadically.
Some of Updike affects me this way even though I acknowledge the view that he is a superior writer--a master wordsmith as it were. It's just what he writes about seems to me anemic, even if it's about sex.
November 14, 2015
(In November 2015, my rare-book service sold a first edition, first printing of John Updike's Couples through our eBay account [http://ebay.com/usr/cclapcenter]. Below is the write-up I did for its listing.)
Like so many of the great authors of the Postmodernist era, John Updike by the late 1960s had already established himself through the usual channels of the Mid-Century Modernist age before -- he had been a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he had come directly after his stint at the Harvard Lampoon, a prim and erudite New Englander whose precious Kennedy-era books had already garnered such accolades as the National Book Award. Ah, but then in 1968, Updike published the scandalous Couples, the moment one could argue that he went from merely a well-respected academic writer to a national celebrity; for among other things, the novel was the first mainstream book in American history to tackle the subjects of suburban wife-swapping parties and casual drug use, which brought the topics into the realm of the national "establishment" conversation for the first time, a huge bestseller that coined the phrase "post-Pill paradise" and which landed Updike on the cover of Time magazine, serving as a rallying cry for sexual freedom during the countercultural years when this first came out. (And of course, it didn't hurt the book's salacious reputation that Updike had based the anecdotes on the true stories from his real set of upper-middle-class suburban friends in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, a shocking development in reserved New England which made the book the subject of whispered conversations there for literally decades afterwards.) When combined with Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Gore Vidal's Myra Beckinridge, all three of which came out in the same 12-month period, Couples marks a watershed moment in American literary history, the messy and violent wrenching of the smooth and slick Modernist era into what eventually became the Postmodernist one; and for anyone interested in collecting first editions from this period, this is an absolutely must-have acquisition, being sold at a premium price today because of the exquisite condition of this particular copy (but see "Condition" below for more on that).
Like so many of the great authors of the Postmodernist era, John Updike by the late 1960s had already established himself through the usual channels of the Mid-Century Modernist age before -- he had been a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he had come directly after his stint at the Harvard Lampoon, a prim and erudite New Englander whose precious Kennedy-era books had already garnered such accolades as the National Book Award. Ah, but then in 1968, Updike published the scandalous Couples, the moment one could argue that he went from merely a well-respected academic writer to a national celebrity; for among other things, the novel was the first mainstream book in American history to tackle the subjects of suburban wife-swapping parties and casual drug use, which brought the topics into the realm of the national "establishment" conversation for the first time, a huge bestseller that coined the phrase "post-Pill paradise" and which landed Updike on the cover of Time magazine, serving as a rallying cry for sexual freedom during the countercultural years when this first came out. (And of course, it didn't hurt the book's salacious reputation that Updike had based the anecdotes on the true stories from his real set of upper-middle-class suburban friends in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, a shocking development in reserved New England which made the book the subject of whispered conversations there for literally decades afterwards.) When combined with Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Gore Vidal's Myra Beckinridge, all three of which came out in the same 12-month period, Couples marks a watershed moment in American literary history, the messy and violent wrenching of the smooth and slick Modernist era into what eventually became the Postmodernist one; and for anyone interested in collecting first editions from this period, this is an absolutely must-have acquisition, being sold at a premium price today because of the exquisite condition of this particular copy (but see "Condition" below for more on that).
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May 28, 2020Sometimes Updike hits the nail right on the head. Sometimes he doesn't. And when he doesn't, you're still terribly impressed by his skills.
Couples misses the nail. I didn't particularly care about the inner workings of professional adulterers at mid-century – it's territory that Richard Yates covered far more sympathetically, and that Mad Men covered far more entertainingly. I mean, I get it. The characters were drawn out reasonably well (even if it was a big, messy ensemble cast), and some of their repulsive tics got some good sneers out of me, even if it wasn't like the belly laughs I got out of the best moments of the Rabbit novels. At the end of the day it was just too hard for me to care, though.
Oh, and you'll see why the Bad Sex in Fiction folks gave Updike their lifetime achievement award. The man's descriptive talents, when applied to the human labia, alternate between clinical precision and Penthouse letters. I get why this was a big deal in 1968. In 2020, it made my skin crawl. I'm pretty sure I watch too much porn, and it still made my skin crawl.
Couples misses the nail. I didn't particularly care about the inner workings of professional adulterers at mid-century – it's territory that Richard Yates covered far more sympathetically, and that Mad Men covered far more entertainingly. I mean, I get it. The characters were drawn out reasonably well (even if it was a big, messy ensemble cast), and some of their repulsive tics got some good sneers out of me, even if it wasn't like the belly laughs I got out of the best moments of the Rabbit novels. At the end of the day it was just too hard for me to care, though.
Oh, and you'll see why the Bad Sex in Fiction folks gave Updike their lifetime achievement award. The man's descriptive talents, when applied to the human labia, alternate between clinical precision and Penthouse letters. I get why this was a big deal in 1968. In 2020, it made my skin crawl. I'm pretty sure I watch too much porn, and it still made my skin crawl.
August 9, 2017
This was my first read of John Updike. Everyone who heard that I was reading it said that they'd read it when they were a teenager, and all they remembered was how 'saucy' it was. And it is, there's quite a bit of literary sex, and philandering. I did really enjoy the writing, Updike's amazing use of language to describe places and people, but it's also a very dense book, sometimes so heavy going, so full to the brim with language, that I wanted to get to the end, and now I feel the need for something lighter and shorter. I sometimes had some problems with how articulate and emotionally intelligent every single character was, but then I would forgive Updike this because it allowed his wonderful writing to just flow through my brain. The ending was also odd, just a quick summing up of all ten main over two pages, as if even Updike had had enough of them.
June 18, 2023
Più noto per la serie di romanzi dedicati all'estroso personaggio di "Coniglio" espressione delle paure e dei problemi dell'americano medio degli anni '60, John Updike con il romanzo "Coppie" cerca di raccontare il compromesso tra perbenismo puritano e voglia di evasione dai cliché dei giovani americani della middle class
August 27, 2019
Couples is a bait and switch book that used a scandalous subject to draw potential readers in then the author employed overwriting to make it a book that tries too hard to be literary and overly meaningful. The conflict inevitably made the book collapse onto itself for me. I read over half the book and realized that finishing it would just be for the sake of finishing rather than enjoying it at all.
October 1, 2018
Il romanzo è ambientato a Tarbax, cittadina della provincia americana, negli anni appena precedenti la pubblicazione (1968): una serie di giovani coppie sposate, frivole e annoiate, si frequentano per… passatempo, dedicandosi a chiacchiere, giochi di società e partitelle sportive. A movimentare l’atmosfera è però soprattutto il sesso extraconiugale: per farne solo qualche cenno, c’è un tal Piet Hanema che colpisce nel segno ripetutamente (gravide comprese), mentre due coppie danno luogo ad uno scambio incrociato, prima nascosto e poi palese... Il tutto lascia perplessi: al di là di ogni considerazione morale, disturba la superficialità generale, di pensieri e comportamenti. Updike, che tiene avvinto il lettore con notevoli capacità stilistiche, forse si augura la sua reazione, ma certamente si espone ben poco: “l’incisiva critica nei confronti di una società eternamente insoddisfatta e alla ricerca impossibile dell’assoluto” di cui parla il commento in quarta di copertina risulta perlomeno… molto indiretta. Quella che si coglie più chiaramente è, al contrario, l’eccessiva condiscendenza dell'autore verso i suoi personaggi immaturi, atteggiamento che finisce per ingenerare, nella sequela delle scene rappresentate, leggere o piccanti, un clima ben affermatosi in tempi successivi: quello della telenovela.
August 21, 2014
I came to this book purposefully, wanting to engage in mental conversation about couples in the suburbs of New England. I have very recently been reading other (similar) authors on the same subject: Fitzgerald (Tender is the Night, anyone?) Cheever, Yates (Revolutionary Road is a cousin, theme-wise). I’m not one to call these books “outdated” as some people have, as I usually find that 90% is universal and familiar in social behavior today. Couples, however, did feel dated because of the focus on the impact of the birth control pill and Updike’s intent to shock the reader with blasphemy of the church(yawn). That aside, I’m left with a very slow book that has some incredibly beautiful sentences (the sexual descriptions are so vivid and specific and that you’ll want a shower each time you finish a chapter). Gorgeous imagery means I liked it, I appreciated it, I’m glad I read it, but I didn’t love it. I found the characters to be shallow, immoral, callous, and not capable of real love. What is sex without emotion? You want to yearn with the characters, not just watch them bed hop. This novel might have also been titled "SWINGERS". The pace picks up at the end, and when the consequences of promiscuity come raining down, you are entertained but emotionally empty.
February 13, 2021
Another excellent novel by Updike, his language never distracts from the story but highlights the concepts with spot on word choice and flow, his characters never seem shallow or one-dimensional, his themes always resonate, even in an era and circumstances before my own birth. First rate narrative of marriage and infidelity.
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