First Updike

After a few months of listening to the audiobook of "Rabbit, Run" while washing dishes, finally finished tonight.  About halfway through I started to understand the accomplishment.  Very good.  And such an influence I see so many other places, "The Graduate", all the work of Tom Perotta (sub-par in comparison) etc.  So Updike was good after all, not just prolific.  I will now read more of the rest, I'm sure.  Too bad I waited for his death to get me over the strange resistance I always had to him.  To be fair the distaste came from that feverish week when I bought the cassette tapes of "Rabbit at Rest" (I believe it was) thinking I could fast forward and get Updike, but unfortunately a 104+ temperature had me delirious and drenching the sheets day after night after day, and I always stuck that nauseating audiobook with its interminable suburban set pieces and characters glowering over my illness with a grudge joined to that nightmarish week.  That was early in the time of Jane living with me at 215 Garfield, so must have been 90 or 91.  So, a setback, but there you have it.