The Forbidden Book

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

It's 1968 and religion is dying. Faith is fluttering away. Marriage is a desolate, lonely place. With death approaching, all that comforts is the welcoming arms of a lover. Sex is the new religion. But not just any sex. It's gotta be sex with someone who isn't your legally bound partner. Maybe it's the wife of your friend. The pregnant woman down the road. The town's dentist. It's time for some bed hopping. You know, the old switcheroo. Lascivious activity hidden and secretive or agreed upon like a business transaction sealed with a handshake. Adultery is the new raison d'être, coitus the new divinity.

This premise shocked the literary world when Couples was published. It got Updike on the cover of Time Magazine. I'm sure that it had many people agape at the limp morals of the book's characters.

Knowing this, I expected a salacious page-turner. Couples could have easily been titled "Swingers". So why did I find myself struggling through the sex-laden pages?

First, there are simply WAY too many characters. This story focuses on ten couples in the fictional town of Tarbox, Massachusetts. That's twenty people. Twenty. Twenty people who have very few distinguishing characteristics. Who is Freddie? And who the hell is Eddie? Who is Carol married to? What are their kids' names? Does it matter? It got to the point where I sketched out a map to remind myself who belonged to who, who was screwing who, who had screwed in the past, etc. As time went on, I questioned whether it was that important to remember. They are all the same soulless person.

The book is also way too long. 450 pages could have been trimmed down at least by a third. Just when you think everything that could happen, has, there's still like 100 pages to go. People still screwing, still complaining, still wandering around aimlessly. Scary-long paragraphs describing the New England scenery.

The apathy, too. There is very little crescendo of emotion, so even when there are 'consequences' to naughty boinking behaviour, it doesn't mean much, because the reaction is polite, very cerebral, repetitive, and ... boring.

Boring! How could I be bored when there is talk of phalli and vaginas every 5-10 pages? Don't get me wrong. John Updike writes about sex with such lyrical pull that I must bow to the beauty. He writes the dialogue of people laying in the dark together like none other. This is why I opened up this book, and so in that sense I got what I came for. Ahem. But, I have to say, sex isn't all that hot when the people involved are so unaffected and indifferent. And, most importantly, so easily replaced. Especially the women, who are for the most part not in control of the affairs, and who seem to pay the biggest price.

What starts off as a "post pill paradise" - a sexual freedom that the people in this community revel in - devolves. This isn't a surprise; how can it continue like this? John Updike lived through the sexual revolution, and I think he captured an experience many people tried out. I believed him. He is honest about the vacuous disintegration. He's honest about his struggle between God and faith with our animal compulsions. The church will always be rebuilt though, in his world, and philanderers will have their hands slapped. The phallucy of paradise is upended.

It's all so silly, isn't it? Adultery. It's so much trouble.