The Centaur

I've read many of John Updike's books, but I missed this one, published in 1963. I was compelled to read it after reading so much Greek mythology. In this book, Updike updates the story of Chiron, the centaur.

In Greek mythology, Chiron was the wisest of centaurs, and a teacher of sorts. Most centaurs, like satyrs, were wild and lusty beasts, but Chiron was wise, and taught many of the great figures of myth, such as Achilles, Ajax, Theseus, and Aeneas.

Updike's story is of a middle-aged science teacher in the quiet of Olinger, Pennsylvania (Updike was from Shillington, PA). He is George Caldwell, and in the very first pages of the book he is shot by an arrow by one of his students (happily, this has not happened to me yet), The prose then seems to blend both Caldwell's experiences and that of Chiron.

But then the book settles down into one of Updike's stories of quiet desperation in the middle class of America. Caldwell kind of fell into teaching, getting a job during the Depression (the book is set just after World War II). The point of view changes, with most of it told by his son, who was a teenager at the time but is now an artist living in New York City. The son, Peter, is more like a father, as George is something of a mess. He is approaching a nervous breakdown, and worries about x-rays taken at the doctor's office (he's so worried that an obituary, apparently dictated by himself, appears in the middle of the book).

Father and son spend three days trying to get home. One night the car won't start, and the second night there's a snowstorm. Both times they are helped immeasurably by Al Hummel, a relative by marriage who I think is supposed to represent Hephaestus (or maybe Heracles, but Hephaestus fits better).

This is pure Updike, in that the most mundane things in the world are written about as if they were the Fourth of July. Here's a description of a snow fall: "Snow puts us with Jupiter Pluvius among the clouds. What a crowd! What a crowd of tiny flakes sputters downward in the sallow realm of the light above the entrance door! Atom and atoms and atoms and atoms. A furry inch already carpets the steps. The cars on the pike travel slower, windshield wipers flapping, headlight beams nipped and spangled in the ceaseless flurry." What florid prose! What a use of exclamation points!

The best parts of the book are those that follow Caldwell, a great character, and one that has meaning to me since I'm now a teacher. Caldwell is both a cynic and a romantic, and he has a great answer for everything. He cares nothing and he cares everything. "'The Founding Fathers,' he explained, 'in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you. I am a paid keeper of Society's unusables--the lame, the halt, the insane, and the ignorant. The only incentive I can give you, kid, to behave yourself is this: if you don't buckle down and learn something, you'll be as dumb as I am, and you'll have to teach school to earn a living."

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