The Centaur

THE CENTAUR

—originally conceived as a contrasting companion to Mr. Updike's previous novel Rabbit, Run — retells the myth of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded and yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes Olinger High School, Chiron a teacher of general science tiler, and Prometheus his fifteen-year-old son. Seeking to pierce the shadow-line that separates human experience from the mythical dimension, the author alternates objective chapters with chapters told in retrospect by Chiron's son, and translates the agonized centaur's search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent In Pennsylvania in 1947.