The great American novelist John Updike has died, a lung cancer victim, at the age of 76.. As a stylist, he was certainly comparable to his great hero Vladimir Nabokov. A few of his novels (like THE CENTAUR) and most of his poetry I found insufferably precious, but the Rabbit books, his stories about the disintegrating Maple family, and even the Bech comedies are remarkable core samples of their times; I can remember images and turns of phrase from RABBIT REDUX, which I read more than 20 years ago, as vividly as I remember anything I saw with my own two eyes in the 1960s. Updike was also one of the great literary critics and essayists of our time, and the enormous books he published collecting this material -- PICKED-UP PIECES, HUGGING THE SHORE and ODD JOBS, for example -- are eminently worthwhile. He wrote especially well about nature, money, the realities of business and middle age, illicit sexual relationships and Herman Melville. I also loved the way he stuck with Alfred J. Knopf as his publisher from, I believe, his second book on -- the hardcovers under the dust wrappers forming a rainbow-hued uniform edition of his collected works. My title may seem irreverent, but remembering his own proclivities for alliteration and rhyme, I feel it is very close to the title he would have selected for his own obit.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
John Gone, or Updike Underground
The great American novelist John Updike has died, a lung cancer victim, at the age of 76.. As a stylist, he was certainly comparable to his great hero Vladimir Nabokov. A few of his novels (like THE CENTAUR) and most of his poetry I found insufferably precious, but the Rabbit books, his stories about the disintegrating Maple family, and even the Bech comedies are remarkable core samples of their times; I can remember images and turns of phrase from RABBIT REDUX, which I read more than 20 years ago, as vividly as I remember anything I saw with my own two eyes in the 1960s. Updike was also one of the great literary critics and essayists of our time, and the enormous books he published collecting this material -- PICKED-UP PIECES, HUGGING THE SHORE and ODD JOBS, for example -- are eminently worthwhile. He wrote especially well about nature, money, the realities of business and middle age, illicit sexual relationships and Herman Melville. I also loved the way he stuck with Alfred J. Knopf as his publisher from, I believe, his second book on -- the hardcovers under the dust wrappers forming a rainbow-hued uniform edition of his collected works. My title may seem irreverent, but remembering his own proclivities for alliteration and rhyme, I feel it is very close to the title he would have selected for his own obit.
