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Title: James Markus, you are a dolt
Review: John Updike is NOT Nabokov's equal in any sense, let alone in the realm of the metaphysical novel, in which Nabokov is and will forever remain God. Updike, unlike Nabokov, is constantly begging the reader to pity his nasty, dull protagonists. Everything seems to go right for them, despite their best efforts to fail and feel sorry for themselves, yet we're expected to cheer them allong and cry for them when they experience minor setbacks? No thanks. Nabokov's multi-layored gems offer no easy heroes and no simple-minded moral messages. That said, I think Updike can be really good. The Centaur is a wonderfull book, and some of his short fiction is great. His serially-destributed fiction is, however, far to long-winded and thick-headed and self-serving to be compared to anything by Nabokov. If Nabokov has an American successor, it's Pynchon or Barth, not Updike.
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