John Updike died today of lung cancer, at 76. This came as a (sad) surprise to me ... I wasn't aware he was seriously ill. It's sort of bitterly ironic since I've read suggestions lately that the only way for Updike to save his literary reputation was to die soon, given the degree to which it's been flagging over the past decade. During this period I have felt, and now feel, defensive of him (against critics such as James Wood). He may have dwindled from relevance in his late years, but I hope he'll be remembered for his impressive body of erudite yet accessible criticism and his best novels, including the fantastic Rabbit tetralogy.
John Updike lived in Massachusetts and I guess I hoped to meet him at some point; I once schemed with a then-date to drive to his house on a Sunday morning for spying and/or social ambush, but instead took an unexpected dive through a French door and ended up in the ER. Here's to blown chances.
January 27, 2009
John Updike is dead
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8 comments:
Thanks, Elisa!
I feel like I've been coming to Updike's defense for the past few years, too. He was my favorite American novelist, and his work has been enchanting me since I picked up Rabbit, Run in the ninth grade. He's taken a lot of crap for writing about the "middle-class, middle-aged white, Protestant male," usually by so-called intellectuals who'd never admit that he also wrote some of the most beautiful, candid and engaging prose of the 20th Century.
Sigh.
This 1984 interview is awesome, if you haven't listened to it. And if you weren't already crushing on Updike, this would do the trick:
http://wiredforbooks.org/johnupdike/
"usually from" so-called intellectuals...
Thanks for the link!
I always felt like Rabbit Angstrom was a Holden Caulfield for grownups ... that magnetic in the first book, but then the next three are largely about watching him fail through life. I love authors that can make me root for someone who is basically detestable.
Yeah, the Rabbit books are amazing. And Updike's way with a sentence, his prose, would just make me swoon. After Nabokov, he's my favorite stylist.
Wasn't much of an Updike fan myself. Thought his prose was empty music that was occasionally beautiful. After say, 1985, he had little to no sense of what was going on and so his novels became increasingly about Updike and less and less about anything else. That happens to most--it happened to Roth--but unlike Roth, Updike never found his way towards any other shore. He was the same writer at the end as at the beginning. Neither his prose nor his novels ever seemed to allow the world to really alter or intrude.
I did admire the way he stuck up for certain authors but I thought the omnivore thing undid him in the end. His art writing (supposedly his real passion) was particularly thin at times. His piece on an exhibit of German Limewood sculptures was a pretty straight half-digested regurgitation of the exhibition catalog with a dusting of semi-poetic nonsense.
Updike was a reputation that we were all unable to walk away from, years after there wasn't anything left to see.
One genuinely interesting question is raised however: If there are, say, between 40 and 50 issues of the New Yorker each year, Updike easily took up 8 slots or so.
What will happen to them now? Will this be the event that helps Treisman to the door...not so much that the emperor has not clothes, but the editor has no Updike?
Of course, there's probably a 3 year backlog of accepted Updike at the NY-er. There's that to consider.
An interview of Updike, found on the french website Mediapart : http://www.mediapart.fr/node/32717
I love this pic! He looks exactly how I always pictured Rabbit Angstrom.
I have always been an Updike fan, and always looked forward to what he had to say in the New Yorker. Remember that story Elsie by Starlight? That was a really good one.
I sure hope you ditched the fool whose french door you fell through!
Oh... no? Sorry. My mistake.
w/ love,
Adam
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