Why Updike's The Centaur is still worth reading, at least in part

Yes, John Updike's early novel The Centaur (1963) is still worth reading, especially for Updike fans (me, too) who can't get enough of his amazing ability to recall and capture moments in time from his past (particularly childhood in Pennsylvania) w/ Proustian accuracy - and what readers of my age (and gender?) won't recognize themselves in some of these Updike moments, regardless of how different our lives seem to have been and have become? That said, it's clear to that this novel would be better, or at least better appreciated today, had it been cut by about 50 pages, i.e., leaving aside all the pretentious references to Greek mythology and the pointless attempts to draw parallels between the father and a mythical Centaur; had there been some payoff, some way in which these comparisons provided us with any moments of connection, astonishment, or insight, then sure, OK, but the parallels between these denizens of a small Pennsylvania city in 1947 and anything  having anything to do w/ Greek mythology are so obscure and undeveloped - what's the point? The point, I think, was for Updike to show that he was more than just a fine lyrical writer but that he was also a thinker and was not estranged from the narrative experimentation that was shaping American fiction - led by the South Americans - in the 1960s: take that, John Barth, John Hawkes, Robert Coover, et al. This strategy did earn JU his first national award (which she should have won for Rabbit, Run) but he was playing from weakness; today, these ventures - telling the story out of chronological sequence, the oddly ambiguous ending (did the father live or die?), the shifting of modes make the novel feel quaint and out of date. Still worth reading - though some brief sections are worth skimming.