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Updike At Rest — 16 Comments

  1. In my teens and twenties I read and enjoyed many of Updike’s books. But like Catch 22 (Heller), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Robbins) and others at – when I went back to read them I no longer found the humor or really enjoyed them. Maybe I just got cynical, but I actually think it was because, while the stories were pretty good, the writing wasn’t all that great or memorable. There are some authors that I can reread more than once and I still find myself captivated because they understand that mostly it is the journey not the destination that is the point of the story. I miss John D. McDonald.

  2. I was surprised to learn that you find Nabokov cold. “Reserved”, maybe. Disillusioned- yes.
    Cold – as much as gray ash that covers volcanic boil underneath.

    If all Updike’s writing is mike the “pigeon” example above – how boring, verbose and convoluted his style is, then. No clarity, just posturing.
    Bleh.

  3. Oh, and I wish people stop sharing the all-important news of their stuttering or psoriasis. Really, this kind of too-much info should only be revealed to a prospective spouse, as a warning.

  4. As an avid golfer, Updike’s short stories, and articles which often appeared in Golf Digest were gems to be treasured.

    A truly great writer. And, as every golfer knows, an honest writer. Nothing reveals the true nature of any person more than a round of golf. Within a few hours you can immediately find out who is the cheat, who is self-delusional, who has a sense of grace and humor (most likely Updike from his golf writings), etc.

  5. I’ve never read much Updike, but I have a good friend who is a huge fan. He regards Updike with roughly the same awe and near-reverence that I have for Bob Dylan.

    I guess I ought to check him out.

  6. Updike did extraordinary things with language. Maybe the apparent ease with which he wrote had the effect of cheapening his writing, but that really shouldn’t count against him. The news of his death hit me in the solar plexus. It was one of those end-of-an-era moments, and even though he was never really my favorite writer, I feel bereft now that he’s gone.
    When Roth goes I’ll weep and tear my garments.

  7. I went back to college in my fifties because I enjoy the give and take in a good class. In one writing class, I was assigned one of Updike’s books. I couldn’t stand the whiny middle aged man tone. He may be a genius, but I can’t see it. The funny part was the C I got on the paper. The prof, who I admired and got along with, told me that I could rewrite (i.e. regurgitate what she wanted to hear) for an up-check. I declined.

  8. Commentary magazine published Updike’s essay “On Not Being a Dove” again, in his honor.

    http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/on-not-being-a-dove-7529

    It’s particularly pertinent to this blog; do check it out. He talks about being a lifelong Democrat, member of the literati — and patriot, and supporter of our efforts in Vietnam. And how difficult it was to assert these things in his circle and family.

    He delves deeply into his own motives, into those of others around him, and the zeitgeist of the time. Damn near all of it applies to today. And his insights are nuanced, yet powerful.

    It will really repay your time well to read it. Go, do!

  9. Just a snippet from the above-mentioned essay:

    “I differ, perhaps, from my unanimously dovish confré¨res in crediting the Johnson administration with good faith and some good sense. Anyone not a rigorous pacifist must at least consider the argument that this war, evil as it is, is the lesser of available evils, intended to forestall worse wars. I am not sure that this is true, but I assume that this is the reasoning of those who prosecute it, rather than the maintenance of business prosperity or the President’s crazed stubbornness. I feel in the dove arguments as presented to me too much aesthetic distaste for the President, even when not lifted to the paranoid heights of MacBird; even the best of the negative accounts of our operations in South Vietnam, such as Mary McCarthy’s vivid reports or Jonathan Schell’s account of the destruction of Ben Sue, too much rely upon satirical descriptions of American officers and the grotesqueries of cultural superimposition. The protest seems too reflexive, too Pop; I find the statements, printed with mine, of Jules Feiffer and Norman Mailer, frivolous. Like W.H. Auden, I would hope, the sooner the better, for a “negotiated peace, to which the Vietcong will have to be a party,” and, like him, feel that it is foolish to canvass writers upon political issues. Not only do our views, as he says, “have no more authority than those of any reasonably well-educated citizen,” but in my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it. I recognize that what to me is essential may well be, to a peasant on the verge of starvation, an abstract luxury.”

  10. About Nabokov, I must fully agree with Tatyana: he never was cold. He was a passionate, fanatical hater, and world for him was full of things to hate and despise; he could do both royally. He was also a mystic, capable seeing omens and signs everywhere, like a tribal shaman, and express these arcane feeling in wonderfull prose. He pushed the limits of Russian language further than anybody before him, even farther than Bunin.

  11. sergey and tatyana: Finally, you agree on something!!

    My perception of Nabokov as cold remains. It has nothing to do with what he was like as a person—I’m not really familiar with that. His writing, and especially his subject matter, is cold and removed to me. Perhaps some of this is the difference between reading him in English and reading him in Russian, as you both have?

  12. Beverly: I do plan to reread the essay. It was part of the book Self-Consciousness, by the way.

  13. Neo: technically, it’s *sergey who agrees with me.

    A writer’s personality seeps through the text, that’s what makes the writer interesting and unique. Otherwise literature will be nothing by journalism (in its’ academic sense, not what it became; see NYTimes p.i.).

    I have read Nabokov in Russian and in English. His subject matter is universal, and as a stylist, his mastery of [both]languages is unsurpassed. Although I can’t claim an authority on judging his English; he might appear a bit too pedantic for native speakers, a bit rigid in constructing perfection.

    It is strange to hear him accused of coldness, of all things. And to compare him to Updike…why not to Danielle Steel, then?
    In any case, this went way off the subject of your post.

  14. Tatyana: as I said, it’s his themes that are cold. When I compared Updike to Nabakov, it has nothing to do with theme but everything to do with use of language. I especially noted this in comparing their memoirs rather than their fiction.

    Obviously, you and I differ greatly on this.

  15. Updike made me shame myself.
    When I was a trainee platoon guide–they took the ugliest guy in each platoon and put him in charge in training units–I was accompanying a real sergeant, a young guy, during an inspection of my guys’ lockers. He found Updike’s “Couples”, widely considered at the time to be high-priced porn. He called the soldier on it.
    I said, in terms of unbelieving horror, “UPDIKE? PORNOGRAPHY?”
    “Oh, yeah,” said the sergeant, “didn’t see that. Mumble mumble.”
    Best use I got out of my college education in the Army.
    Still would like to apologize to the guy for that.
    Damn.
    But I had my people to consider.
    Still haven’t read any of him. No more interest in his NYC exurb troubles–like Neo–than I am in Cheever country.

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