2. If we have to do a comparison, it should encompass contemporaries of Updike & Roth: Morrison, DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Pynchon, etc
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Replying to @HeerJeet
3. I haven't even mentioned Alice Munro, who is perhaps the outstanding writer of English fiction in the 1930s.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. But if we are, for whatever arbitrary reason, limiting ourselves to Updike and Roth, a few distinctions can be made.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. Updike has everything going for him except one crucial thing, which to many is the most important thing, compulsive readability.
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6. For most of Roth's fiction, particularly books from Ghost Writer onwards, if you start reading, you'll want to finish in one gulp.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. Updike doesn't have Roth's gift of grabbing you in the first sentence and pulling you along. Sensuousness of U's prose works against that
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8. If Roth is more readable, Updike is more re-readable. There are layers of depth in Updike that repay visiting, much more than Roth.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9. There are a few Roth books I've re-read (the first Zuckerman trilogy, the Counterlife) but many seem to exhaust themselves after reading
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10. Perhaps Updike v. Roth is about comparative advantage of specialization. After "Goodbye, Columbus" Roth singlemindedly focused on novels
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. Updike never purely a novelist, but always had hand in many genres (poetry, short stories, literary criticism, art criticism).
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12. Roth's ferocious devotion to the novel -- perhaps the only loyalty he developed outside immediate family -- paid off in mastery.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
13. If single-mindedness is a Roth trait, it shows up in his willingness to bravely focus on narrow range of characters & obsessions.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
14. Updike, compared to Roth, suffered from the defuseness of having a wide range of interest & restless need to experiment narratively.
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