Yes, Of the Farm is still worth reading

Unless something surprising and out of character occurs in final 1/4 (30 pp.), John Updike's 4th novel, Of the Farm (1965), is very much like a domestic drama and could well have been written as a play. It pretty closely adheres to the three unities (time, place, action) a principle: Just 4 characters (narrator Joey, a recently remarried dad; his mother, current owner of the old family farm in Pa.; Peggy, Joey's new/2nd wife; and her son, Richard, 11 but seems much older), all the events taking place over the course of a weekend, and all the events save the moments just before arrival, at the farm. There's a lot of talk, a lot of nuance, as the adult family members stick barbs in one another and vie for one another's affection; looming behind it all is the decision as to whether to keep the farm - no longer used for farming - or sell it off to developers. Sentiment says keep it, but realistically it's too much for the mother to manage, and Joey, an active businessman in NYC with plenty of dependents (3 kids from first marriage) is unable to offer much help. Of course the beauty of this novel lies not in the limited action and interactions but in Updike's beautiful prose: terrific evocation of certain moments, places, and memories throughout plus, of course, some over-the-top passages as well, especially the sex scenes and the many affirmations of the beauty of Peggy's body. All told, this novel feels quaint and deliberately minor - as if JU wanted to show he could work in a different key, after the magnitude of Rabbit, Run and the esoterica of The Centaur (which I haven't read). Most of all, this novel is foundational to the many novels and stories and memoir-essays that Updike would writer later in his career about this same farm, where he spent most of his youth.