John Updike's "Terrorist"

Source: NY Times 5/6 " A Homegrown Threat To Homeland Security" by Michiko Kakutani

FM-FM Comment:
I have never taken to John Updike's work. He did speak to me as "the bard of middle-class mundane, the chronicler of suburban adultry and angst," Exactly why I could put his work down and never return. His interests are not my interests. He is overloaded with prizes, awards, and honorary degrees. His honorary degrees are so numerous that they have recently turned up in an Ipswich, MA bookstore for sale. It was not explained how they arrived there. And now Mr. Updike has chosen to walk in the shoes of a teenage boy who becomes a terrorist. Yesterday an NPR commentator said that his latest novel was being described as a masterpiece. Well, Michiko Kakutani in the NY Times begs to differ with " Unfortunately, the would-be terrorist in this novel turns out ot be a completely unbelievable individual more robot than human being and such a cliche that the reader cannot help suspecting that Mr. Updike found the idea of such a person so incomprehensible that at some point he abandoned any earnest attempt to depict his inner life and settled instead for giving us a static, one-dimensional sterotype." Henry Roth's new novel was also panned first by an early review and then later people fell over themselves to praise it in the same paper. We'll see if Mr. Upike recovers from this early review. Surely I will not read the book to find out if it's that bad. Too bad for Mr. Updike with all of his awards and stuff.