Lot of baloney really. The first Updike book I read was Rabbit, Run, at 16; found it alone on a shelf. You may find the language stubby, but it's a dead ringer for that part of PA, where I grew up, and it was a dead ringer when I read it 30 years after the time of the story's setting.

His other stuff is good -- well, some of it is -- and the early stuff tends to be prettier, but he knew Rabbit and Rabbit's time and place inside and out, and it showed, esp. in the first two books. That's what makes them strong. Rabbit's no experiment, and neither are the rest of the family -- Janice, her mother, Harry's parents and sister, the various priests and coaches and the rest. There's no impersonation going on there. That's just how it was.

Archie lived about three hours north and east, really not the same place at all, or even same kind of place at the time. Brewer is a stand-in for Reading, PA, and Reading at that time was still quite far, culturally, from NY. Janice's mother is the pole there with her PA Dutch. Which Updike nailed, incidentally. Bad legs and black views and all.