The Centaur, John Updike
The Centaur, John Updike
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The Centaur

Author: John Updike

Narrator: John MacDonald

Unabridged: 8 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/24/2017

Synopsis

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.”

About The Author

John Updike was the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels, including The Centaur, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009.John MacDonald has narrated audiobooks by many bestselling and award-winning authors, including John Grisham, John Updike, and Tom Clancy. Some of his credits include The Centaur, The Client, and The Hunt for Red October.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on October 21, 2024

Somehow The Centaur is my most favourite John Updike’s novel – it is pristinely poetic and sparkling with the freshness of adolescence… And John Updike was the one who with his wondrous words turned adolescence into a miraculous saga. The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an......more

Goodreads review by Barry on July 18, 2015

In this modern retelling of ancient Greek myth (à la Joyce's Ulysses) Updike presents us with the famed myth of Chiron, the centaur. Set in late-40s small town America we have the stories of George Caldwell, a teacher in his 50s, and his son Peter, 15 years old and laden with psoriasis. The father's......more

Goodreads review by brian on May 10, 2020

when updike croaked out edmund white wrote that the father/son sections of the centaur were his personal favorite of the dead man's writings. the rabbit cycle has gotta be updike's greatest work, the one that continues to grow with time, and the one that is more than the sum of its parts. but the bo......more

Goodreads review by Cosimo on May 10, 2018

"Appesantito e stordito dalla propria morte, torpido e diafano come un predatore trasparente che trascini i propri tentacoli velenosi attraverso le pressioni adamantine delle profondità oceaniche, si sposta alle spalle degli spettatori e cerca suo figlio tra la folla". Updike si muove in questo testo......more

Goodreads review by Nood-Lesse on June 10, 2021

In medio stant virtus et umbelicus Mi sono chiesto più volte per quale motivo John Updike abbia un seguito scarso qui da noi. Su Anobii un gruppo di americanisti aveva dedicato schede autore e discussioni a tutti, perfino a Dan Peterson e Mike Bongiorno (è la mia solita esagerazione), ma Updike non a......more

Quotes

“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

Awards

  • National Book Awards
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