Status Updates From Toward the End of Time

Whoa whoa all sorts of sex

So weary of phallic posturing.

Odd but compelling

One minute Updike's protagonist (Ben) is describing in great detail his wife's front garden and every flower in it, the next he's describing his erect penis, or his obsession with the breasts of a young woman to the reader. Then, we're off playing golf.

I haven't checked reviews of this one yet (going in blind) - so I knew nothing about it. I bet it has mixed reviews, even though I am loving this work - what an author!!

Really enjoying this.

i now understand why people dislike this book

i hate this book so fucking much and i am purely being propelled by sunk cost fallacy to finish it.

This is a really strange book. I cannot say I like it, exactly, but I am not hating it either.

Since this was written decades ago but is set in the year 2020 in a post-disaster time, I figure this is a fitting time to try it out.

I've decided to mark this a DNF because life is too short to spend time reading something where you loathe the protagonist with every fiber of your being

"...The Mayans had calendars more accurate in arranging leap years than our own. Dwellers in the Andaman Islands keep a calendar based the odors of seasonal plants as they bloom and die..."

It must have something to do with the constant descriptions of flowers throughout the book.

"...The Mayans had calendars more accurate in arranging leap years than our own. Dwellers in the Andaman Islands keep a calendar based the odors of seasonal plants as they bloom and die..."

It's a little disappointing to not have a status bar anymore to give me a visual on how far I've come. I'd kind of gotten used to it.

"What is wrong with me, that I want to leave a trace, by scribbling these disjunct and jumpy notes concerning my idle existence? Spoiling paper - no worse and no better than scribbling on a bridge pad."

I had to update my library card, so i thought I'd use it.

Abandonado definitivamente, no puedo con algo tan depresivo.

Demasiado introspectivo, se me hace cuesta arriba seguir.

Got this far and things finally getting interesting? Don’t disappoint me Updike...

I love and hate this book all at the same time, can’t live with it, can’t live without it sort of territory and it works and hurts my brain and there is no-one to love in this story except maybe the Spring flowers but yet I can’t stop thinking about it

Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes repulsive, and really almost nothing happens (actually things do but they're downplayed to the advantage of the narrator's endless nature-perving trips to the mailbox). Oscillates between solid four star goodness and one star "why would anyone write, let alone publish, this" material.

This is one weirdass book, man. I'm enjoying it, kinda, even tho the narrator's a misogynist dick even by Updike standards

Enjoyable reading.

stuck in DIA...perhaps i'll finish this one sooner than expected. lord knows the novel has taken some strange dips and turns...

I'm not sure if this book is genius, or a waste of paper....very perplexing.

This book is messier than a kitchen filled with excrement trying to be cleaned by toddlers. But, i can't say that is a diss to the novel. There is something at work here that I can barely comprehend.

All this novel seems to be about is paranoia, confusion, isolation, and sex sex sex sex--this last part in all varieties.

Updike you were a very sick man; I mean sick sick. But, strangely, I am very comfortable with your writing, and the story is keeping me engaged. Perhaps that tells me more about me than I really wish to admit.

Poetic writing. I can see why Atwood loved this book, but I can also see why David Foster Wallace spoke so harshly of this book.

surprised of his description of women