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Updike on the self — 10 Comments

  1. He was a nice man. When I was very young and naive, I wrote to him and he wrote back.

  2. I have ambivalent feelings about Updike. I remember some quote to the effect that he was “addicted to tap-dancing in prose,” and I can see that, but his virtuosity makes me gasp, and as his life work begins to take on perspective after his death, I can see that in writing about adultery the way he did, he was not advocating for it. He was a religious writer, and, obliquely, a moralist.
    I’m talking about his fiction here. I don’t know many of his essays, though I’m enormously grateful for his “On Not Being a Dove.” I go back to it after social evenings with people who would turn on their heels and walk away if they knew my views! Updike was brave indeed to come out about the Vietnam War.
    I’ll have to read those essays.
    A sidelight: the head of the local literary organization — a friend of mine — tells me that Updike was the nicest writer who’s ever come through our city — modest, interested in others, obliging.

  3. I’ve never been much of a reader of fiction. I’ve always preferred non-fiction, especially history. That’s a pretty fertile ground which would keep me occupied for several lifetimes.

    I spend so much time on the internet (another fertile ground which would keep me occupied for several lifetimes) that I don’t have much time to read actual books. But I still keep buying them. I have quite a backlog.

    I have a longtime friend who is a huge Updike fan. I’ll have to check him out one of these days. But I also really need to read Heinlein.

  4. I remembering reading an Updike piece years ago for a writing class. In my critique, I said I thought Updike was a soft, whiny, privileged white man past his prime unable to come to terms with mortality and other aspects of the real world. Glad he could make a living at it.

  5. Sorry–too early the submit button. The instructor gave me a ‘damning’ grade for the paper, a ‘C’, and told me I could re-write if I wished for a higher grade. In other words, when I corrected my opinion of the great man, my revision would be rewarded.

    I should mention that I took the class as a middle-aged white man, so the threat of a ‘C’ didn’t reduce me to jelly. I passed on the revision and the class.

  6. Thanks Neo. I never became a fan of Updike’s fiction, but you have motivated me to seek out his essays.

    LAG, you describe a fairly high percentage of the modern American male population. If you neutered your description it could have even wider application.

  7. LAG: Updike become “privileged” through his own work as a writer. He did not grow up privileged.

    Soft? Well, he wasn’t a laborer or a soldier or a policeman; I guess he wasn’t tough. But he was toughest on himself, and he admired those who fought for the common defense (read “On Not Being a Dove”; that’s a good part of what it’s about).

    Whiny? Absolutely not. He described his infirmities (psoriasis; stuttering) without much self-pity at all, but rather with an observing and almost scientific eye, and a sharp sense of his own flaws.

    Unable to come to terms with his own mortality? Again, please read “On Being a Self Forever.” I think he came to terms with mortality better than most people.

    As for why you may have gotten that “C”—I don’t really know, since I didn’t read your essay. If you made those assertions about Updike and were able to support them with examples from Updike’s writing, and were articulate in your expression of your opinions, then I suppose you deserved more than a “C.” But if those opinions were unsupported by the text, then it’s not a matter of “correcting” your “opinion of the great man” (or agreeing with the professor’s opinion), it’s a matter of having evidence for what you wrote about Updike.

  8. It sounds like a worthwhile book. Thanks for the tip.

    Amazon has a few used copies for under three bucks. Shipping is free is you include the book in an order for more than $25 (or have Amazon Prime).

  9. From Wikipedia…””Updike famously described his own style as an attempt “to give the mundane its beautiful due.””

    Ever been around a person of noteriety and great success who seems to hang on to interest in ordinary people? Like you meet them and six months later he remembers your kids names or other things about you that you just wouldn’t expect? I’ve met a couple people like this and they are very genuine and refreshing. Mr Updike strikes me as possibly being in that category.

  10. ” …Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk [LBJ] from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world…”

    Oh so, true and still true today.

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