- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reissue edition (Aug 27 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0449912167
- ISBN-13: 978-0449912164
- Product Dimensions: 14.1 x 2 x 20.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #329,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“A triumph of love and art.”—The Washington Post
“A brilliant achievement . . . No one should need to be told that Updike has a mastery of language matched in our time only by the finest poets.”—Saturday Review
“Unsurpassed . . . Natural, pertinent, fresh, subtle, and superbly written.”—Newsweek
“A brilliant achievement . . . No one should need to be told that Updike has a mastery of language matched in our time only by the finest poets.”—Saturday Review
“Unsurpassed . . . Natural, pertinent, fresh, subtle, and superbly written.”—Newsweek
Book Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER
The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell’s fifteen-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the author’s remembered past with tales from Greek mythology, John Updike translates Chiron’s agonized search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent in rural Pennsylvania in 1947. The result, said the judges of the National Book Award, is “a courageous and brilliant account of a conflict in gifts between an inarticulate American father and his highly articulate son.”
The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell’s fifteen-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the author’s remembered past with tales from Greek mythology, John Updike translates Chiron’s agonized search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent in rural Pennsylvania in 1947. The result, said the judges of the National Book Award, is “a courageous and brilliant account of a conflict in gifts between an inarticulate American father and his highly articulate son.”
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
stunning, stellar, haunting,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Centaur: A Novel (Paperback)
To say a book is not worth anything simply because modern readers won't be familiar with Greek myths is yet again an indication that the majority of people are imbeciles. If you aren't familiar, get familiar! Dig deeper than most commercial fiction allows. That's the wonderful thing about literature, in particular Updike. You can read this book and not know anything about Greek myths, and it still will be an amazing read. (I normally don't get sad while reading; but one sentence in particular in this book - one sentence! - almost brought me to tears.) If you happen to know Greek mythology, then the underlying symbolism in the novel will have meaning for you beyond the sheer emotion presented in the story.As a whole, this is a wonderful, complicated book, one I plan on rereading as much as time (and other books) allow. Also, seriously: yet again, this is proof for me that certain books (i.e. literature) cannot be listened to on tape. There is something within the optical structure of a novel that adds even more depth to the story. There is a reason a paragraph begins and end; a reason why something is in italics, or point-of-view switches from first to third. You lose all that when you listen to it. Try reading it, and maybe you'll see what I'm talking about.
5.0 out of 5 stars
two worlds combined,
By
This review is from: The Centaur: A Novel (Paperback)
a fascinating technique employed by updike where he combines two diiferent worlds to deliver a poignant story
5.0 out of 5 stars
Updike's most compassionate and complex book,
By Andrew (Sioux Center, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Centaur: A Novel (Paperback)
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.
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