Customer Reviews

The Centaur

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Now, normally I read science fiction, it's the bread and butter that I grew up on and I still love reading old and new SF. But I like to challenge myself with what I consider "literature" to read those books that everyone considers classics and see what everyone is talking about. Most of them take lots of effort to get through, you have to concentrate intently on just about every page, pay close attention to plot and even in the end it might not all make sense. Sometimes these can be frustrating affairs and I wonder why I even bother and why I don't stick to the overall much easier to read SF genre.

Books like this remind me why I read literature. Simply put this has to be one of the most memorable books I've ever read. You don't so much read it as live it, immersing yourself in another time and place long gone. You can feel the icy sting of winter on your face, sense the tension of school both for teacher and student and hear the hopeful note in George Caldwell's voice even if he never seems to hear it. The book is simple enough, George Caldwell is a teacher who feels out of place in life, constantly putting himself down and sometimes not even sure why he carries on. He has a son and the relationship between father and son over a few days in a Pennslyvania 1940's winter is what makes up this novel and what makes this story work. Uplike seems to lovingly craft each scene with meticulous detail, not a word is out of place and he turns the most mundane aspects of life into something to be celebrated, chances are he'll make you look at routine things that you do around your life in a totally different manner. The father-son relationship is touching and refreshingly complex, there aren't any easy explanations, or answers. The book has a certain mythological aspect to it, Updike attempts to compare the tale of Chiron the Centaur's (hence the title) death and his relationship with his son Prometheus and link that to the story of George and his son and most of the characters in the book can be linked with the old Greek gods. If one so desires, it's great fodder for a paper if the teacher gives you an assignment like that but for most readers they won't even care, just go with the flow of the book, take the Greek god scenes (there aren't that many blatant ones, mostly in the beginning, after that it gets very subtle) for what they're worth and just enjoy the story and the words. I can't see anyone not liking this book, it's short and poetic, bittersweet and uplifting, something for everyone. Perhaps if you don't care about the beauty of words and just want slapdash action and explosions, you might not like this but that's why we have Tom Clancy. Seriously, don't take this as pretentious "literature" but instead a darn fine novel that deserves to be read.

This is perhaps my favorite Updike novel. The pathos and love of the relationship between Mr. Caldwell and his son Peter is the best writing of a father-son relationship i have ever read. Simply Mr. Caldwell is too good for this world and one of Updike's more likeable characters. His novels of the 50's and 60's seem to have more heart and vividness than some of his later work (particularly Roger's Version and S. - both of which i found lacking). But in the Centaur Updike makes a descriptive paradise out of the most mundane aspects of life: a broken down car, a high-school pep rally, morning coffee and much much more. Such things Updike turns into gold.

Truly most of the mythological stuff went over my head (my knowledge of ancient super-heros and comic books being mediocre at best), but i thought the interplay of the old fable and the story was handled well (Updike can handle anything well).

Besides having some of the most touching and memorable scenes I have read in a long time - (the images of this book have implanted themselves so firmly upon my mind that I feel i experienced the life of this novel rather than read it) - it also plays wonderfully with time - time running out, time misplaced, the span of three average days containing the musings and yearnings of a lifetime etc.

I really cannot think of one thing this book is missing: the writing, predictably, is amazing, the characterization is on the level of the Rabbit novels, and the originality of the format and the boldness of the narrative are dazzling. What more can I say?

The Greek mythology interspersed throughout this book is a small but seemingly important factor. The protagonist, Caldwell/Chiron is a teacher of high school students in 1940s East Coast. Caldwell is an obsequious and self-hating man that feels totally inadequate in life - however, he is a goodhearted man that means well. Caldwell, like the famous centaur, Chiron, is a noble teacher that lacks the command and respect that a good person deserves. The book starts with Caldwell being shot in the foot with an arrow that one of his students shot into his foot (the same way in which Chiron is killed in Greek mythology.) Caldwell and his son Peter/Prometheus are connected for a three-day period after car trouble and a blizzard. The book is mostly narrated from Peter's viewpoint, and you sense the boy/students frustration with his father/teacher and his lack of self-esteem.

Peter dotes over his father during this bonding period, as his father prepares for death and his lack of will to live. Symbolically I believe that the father figure is immortal in a son's eyes, and just as Chiron prepares for death as an immortal, the father figure must also prepare for a type of death when the son comes of age as a young adult. The story slowly evolves to being a modern day metaphor of the Chiron legend.

I wish I knew more about Greek mythology to truly appreciate this book. Even though my amateurish knowledge limited my understanding of the symbolism, I still truly enjoyed the book and Updike's incredible ability to write. I recommend the book and also recommend having a basic understanding of the Chiron legend to really appreciate the book.

I first read Updike's "Centaur" when I was not ready for it. Years later, and having become a father, I went back to it and was absolutely *floored* by the poignant honesty it so vividly conveys. This book is for anyone who knows the sorrow of wanting to feel closer to another, and yet having life's circumstances conspire against that goal. It is also for those who know that the great mystery in this life is that our ideals are out there, beckoning to us, even though we know we will never live up to them. There can be pain in that, and in this case, too much to bear. Updike is absolutely right: we are part mythical (our ideals) and part human (our flaws), and sometimes the tension in straddling the two worlds is just too great. Anyone who supposes to know anything about America's great literary tradition needs to have read "The Centaur."

_The Centaur_ is an excellent choice of reading for anyone trying to expand their horizons. In _The Centaur_, John Updike masterfully weaves a 1945 small town, Olinger, and the Greek world of myth to depict a few days a 15 year old boy, Peter Caldwell, spends with his father, George Caldwell. Through several themes, Updike tells the story of three days young Peter spent with his father. The most dominant of these themes is that of Greek mythology. Nearly all of the characters in the novel have a mythological counter part to advance their meaning in the novel. Peter has Prometheus while George's counterpart is the noble centaur Chiron. Each character has special attributes that make them stand out in the reader's mind and each has their faults that brings them down to a human level. Whether it is an obscene hitch hiker or a star athlete who isn't to bright, there is a character in _The Centaur_ that everyone can identify with. I am an AP student that chose to read _The Centaur_ for a school project because it peeked my interests (and it qualified for some of the possible bonus points.) I didn't know what I was getting myself into! _The Centaur_ made me think on more levels than any of the books I had previously read. Bouncing from multiple points of view and changing between parallel universes, Updike uses a variety of techniques to tell his story. However, it isn't just how Updike tells the story it is also the story that is told that makes this novel a modern classic. The story centers around three days when Peter is stuck with his father because their car keeps breaking down. After reading _The Centaur_ I thought about my own life and how this story related to it. "There was a word-[Peter] did not know it but believed [George] did-that waited between [them] to be pronounced" is powerful language! Incidentally the word was never spoken, however, the moment exists in almost every relationship, when there is a connection between two people, that both people sense, yet neither person verbally recognizes that Updike captures so well. Anyone looking to broaden their horizons should definitely read _The Centaur_, it is an American classic.

Twenty five years ago, I taught this book for the first tme and marvelled as adolescents handled myth and realty wthout wondering "what's it all mean?" Nobody questioned any of the scenes or worried about when Chiron and George were themselves. My son was two. He's 27 now and I am still teaching about books although the Centaur has been replaced by other books. I read it again last summer as I adjusted to a son making six figures for doing what I do but in the silicon valley with adults who need to know about computers. George, you are truer now than I thought you were way back before my son smiled and taught computers with Paradise Lost under his arm. Your creator knew fathers and sons, teachers and students, schools and homes as he made you. And despite the fact that Rabbit is dead and many more characters have spun from his web, nothing will replace the scene in the old buick and the night in the hotel in my memory banks. John Updike is the writer of my generation, surpassing Heller, Vonnegut, Irving, Kerouac, and Salinger. He makes real people and sees the bitterweetness of the time we have here

I'm a big fan of Updike--his Rabbit novels, especially--but I' still convinced that this is his best book.

The story concerns three days in the lives of George and Peter Caldwell, two residents of fictional Olinger, Pennsylvania. George is a high school science teacher, an endlessly compassionate man who is cursed with dangerously low self-esteem. Peter is his son, a developing artist who simultaneously loves and is exasperated with his father.

Interwoven with their story is the story of Chiron, "the noblest Centaur." Chiron's existence is one of suffering, due to a fatal wound he recieved at the hands of Hercules. Because of this affliction, he willingly gives up his life to save Prometheus, who is being punished by Zeus for the theft of fire. Throughout the course of the novel, it becomes apparent that George Caldwell is Chiron, a hero who suffers that those around him might live, and that Peter is Prometheus, an impetuous youth who dares to touch the face of God.

All of these elements combine wonderfully to create one of Updike's best, most compassionate, most complex, and most personal works. It's got all the humanity and spiritual yearning of ROGER'S VERSION or the Rabbit novels, but it's also got something those books don't: hope.

The Centaur is one of Updike's earlier works, published when he was only 30 years old. However, the marks of his future skill are there, in the gems of wording and imagery scattered throughout the book.

The novel tells the story of George Caldwell, a self-deprecating schoolteacher who is certain he is approaching death. His world revolves around his misbehaving and unappreciative students, his domineering boss, the wife he wasn't meant to marry, his father in law, who could fall down the stairs at any time, and his scab-ridden 14-year-old son Peter.

When George and Peter spend three days together in a snowstorm, the reader is treated to a development of the relationship between father and son. We see Peter's embarrassment of his dorky dad, at the same time we see his respect and care for him. Both unusual, but thoroughly likeable characters, father and son deal with their poverty, the car problems that keep them from home, and George's medical and psychological exhaustion that make him wonder if he should continue teaching.

At the beginning and end of the story, the myths of Chiron and Prometheus are woven in, doubles for the two main characters. Those with a strong grasp of mythology may find many deeper layers to the story. Those without can skim over the mythology and still enjoy the story.

Here is the work of an early genius. The Centaur (Updike's third novel) has something of the seriousness of The Poorhouse Fair and Rabbit, Run (his first and second), although it exceeds the ambitions of both of these. The aspiration of this book, it seems, is to revisit the experiment made by Joyce in Ulysses; i.e. to create a palimpsest out of a universal classical myth (in this case, the story of Chiron the centaur's wounding by an arrow-head and subsequent death) and a particular, contemporary setting. Updike pulls this off impressively on every level: from the elevation of his fundamental subject-matter from the mundane to the sublime, to the rather more joky and purely academic creation of minor roles (Hephaestus the blacksmith is now Hummel the car mechanic). The classical allegorising, however, is not the only symptom of modernism in this novel. Updike also experiments with disjointed narrative and multiple authorial voices. As effective as these devices are, it is worth remembering that, having done them justice, Updike in subsequent stories left them more or less alone. I for one think he was right to do so. In contrast with the more subtle, humourous and closely-observed world finally established in 'Couples', this novel looks self-consciously 'literary' and pyrotechnic. Updike did not need to compete with the modernists on their own territory; he needed to establish his own. (He succeeded.)

This novel was one of the seven books I had to read this summer for AP English, and I must say, it was the most interesting of these seven. Written in a way I have never encountered - sometimes in the third person, sometimes in the first person, once from a future narrator, one chapter is just an obituary - the book is a brave attempt at portraying the life and acception of death of a man suffering from psychosis. Once the readers realize that George Caldwell is a psychotic, the book becomes a fascinating read - one does not need to be completely grounded in greek mythology to follow the book, which attempts to relate everything in Caldwell's life to the myths of the ancient greeks. It is extremely well-written; some descriptions left me wondering how Updike could ever have conceived of representing things in such a way. The characters are all genuine and wonderful; I recommend this book to anyone that has grown tired of traditional writing.