Word: centaur
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...With The Centaur, his seventh published volume in the last six years, John Updike has switched into a new mode: use of the classic myth set up as framework for a contemporary tale. Updike readers will find it a bit of a jolt. One is used to seeing Updike detail the perfectly ordinary life; the marriage that never should have been, or, again and again, minutiae of his boyhood in rural Pennsylvania...
...Centaur, which takes place at once in Olinger, Pennsylvania,--and on Mount Olympus, tells the story of George W. Caldwell, teacher of science at Olinger High. Peter, his son, narrates. Metaphorically, Caldwell appears as the centaur Chiron, a tutor of heroes, who in mythology was distinguished from other rapacious, lecherous Centaurs by his kindness and wisdom. Chiron was erroneously wounded by a poisoned arrow, and, unable to bear the pain, he longed for death. He prayed that he might pass on his immortality to Prometheus, and that his death would be accepted in atonement for Prometheus's sin, the presentation...
During the three days which The Centaur spans, Caldwell lives with heightened awareness of the possibility that he might die. He feels, he tells his wife half-jokingly, "a poison snake wrapped around my bowels;" he continuously fears cancer. Hardly a speech goes by in which he does not allude, in some form, to dying...
...Centaur were a terribly serious attempt to explain the nature of man or to elucidate the father-son relationship by means of a classic myth, it would be a silly book. Fortunately, the book is not so serious. Updike treats the myth lightheartedly, operating on three levels: First, the corresponding characters of Chiron and Caldwell; next, parallel nomenclature (for those who like to play such games, it has been suggested that Olinger is Olympus; Zimmerman, principal of Olinger High, is Zeus; and third, the subtle penetration of mythical allusions into what appears the most straightforward Pennsylvania prose...
...Centaur, by John Updike. An imaginative retelling of the Greek myth in modern dress turns the tragic centaur Chiron into a long-suffering high school science teacher...