Also has anyone read U and I by Nick Baker?
― 57 7th (calstars), Saturday, 13 November 2004 14:14 (fifteen years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 13 November 2004 17:01 (fifteen years ago) link
"Rabbit, Run" is the book i have made most aborted attempts to read (beautiful sentences, yes) and the only other book of Updike's i have read is the beautiful "Self Consciousness" which is a (sort of) autobiography.
― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 13 November 2004 19:20 (fifteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 13 November 2004 19:21 (fifteen years ago) link
― David Elinsky (David Elinsky), Sunday, 14 November 2004 05:23 (fifteen years ago) link
― Remy (x Jeremy), Sunday, 14 November 2004 07:39 (fifteen years ago) link
What do people think of his actually writing the books 10 years apart for 40 years? What kind of confidence does it take to start a project this when you're, what was he, 25 years old? I'd like to know more about that actually, how much he had planned or envisioned what was to come for Rabbit.
Of the three Updike short stories I can immediately recall, I hated the one that appeared in the Atlantic about religion & 9/11, thought Should Wizard Hit Mommy? was mediocre, and really like The Walk With Elizanne. Probably because I was a band dork.
― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 15 November 2004 17:20 (fifteen years ago) link
― MikeyG (MikeyG), Monday, 15 November 2004 17:49 (fifteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Monday, 15 November 2004 18:28 (fifteen years ago) link
I think it's a marvellously entertaining little book.
Updike was reputedly on The Simpsons the other night.
― the bellefox, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 18:04 (fifteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 18 November 2004 14:43 (fifteen years ago) link
― W i l l (common_person), Thursday, 18 November 2004 21:52 (fifteen years ago) link
― j c (j c), Friday, 19 November 2004 00:45 (fifteen years ago) link
― John (jdahlem), Friday, 19 November 2004 19:03 (fifteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 30 December 2004 19:19 (fourteen years ago) link
A few highlights come to mind: the last paragraph of Rabbit Redux has something along the lines of "In the air above them, all sorts of winged presences were making themselves felt." Magnificent.
There is a shortish short story called "The Brown Chest," I think it is in the collection called The Afterlife, that goes "the sweetish deep cedary smell, undiminished, cedar and camphor and paper and cloth, the smell of family, family without end."
My grudging affection for Updike resides more in these little bits of crystal-perfect language than in anything to do with the themes and plots and ideas.
That said, Roger's Version and The Centaur are undeniably good novels. Museums and Women is my favorite of his story collections, mostly because of the piece "Under the Microscope" which envisions a cocktail party attended by single-celled organisms.
His light verse is also quite delightful if you like that sort of thing. Here's one:
LAMENT, FOR COCOA
The scum has come.My cocoa's cold.The cup is numb,And I grow old.
It seems an ageSince from the potIt bubbled, beigeAnd boiling hot.
To hot to beToo quickly quaffedAccordingly,I found a draft
And in it placedThe boiling brewAnd took a tasteOf toast or two.
Alas, time flies,As oft time willMy cocoa liesDull brown and still
How wearisome! In likelihoodThe scum, once come,is come for good.
― The Mad Puffin (The Mad Puffin), Thursday, 13 January 2005 16:16 (fourteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 13 January 2005 16:50 (fourteen years ago) link
It's no surprise that I like him most when a gimmick takes him out of that milieu (like finding God with a computer in Roger's Version, having mythological characters run a high school in The Centaur, partying with amoebas in "Under the Microscope.")
Like I said, he can be quite infuriating and overblown but every once in a while he comes up with something so heartbreakingly beautiful that I forgive him (temporarily).
― The Mad Puffin (The Mad Puffin), Thursday, 13 January 2005 17:09 (fourteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 13 January 2005 17:42 (fourteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 13 January 2005 17:43 (fourteen years ago) link
Nasty!
― the bellefox, Thursday, 13 January 2005 17:58 (fourteen years ago) link
― David Elinsky (David Elinsky), Thursday, 13 January 2005 19:36 (fourteen years ago) link
― Steven Groth (fitch12), Friday, 14 January 2005 16:23 (fourteen years ago) link
― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Saturday, 15 January 2005 11:18 (fourteen years ago) link
― j c (j c), Sunday, 16 January 2005 18:20 (fourteen years ago) link
― W i l l (common_person), Tuesday, 18 January 2005 19:54 (fourteen years ago) link
― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 18 January 2005 20:21 (fourteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 18:48 (fourteen years ago) link
― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 22:23 (fourteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 22:42 (fourteen years ago) link
In general = in Updike, in literature, or in general general (i.e. a joke -- I have not spent much time with children while not a child myself so maybe I expect consistency where there shouldn't be) ?
although I'll have to consult my notes
A joke, then? Or you're a better reader than I.
― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 23:31 (fourteen years ago) link
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 19 January 2005 23:37 (fourteen years ago) link
― the bellefox, Thursday, 20 January 2005 17:42 (fourteen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 January 2005 15:55 (fourteen years ago) link
― W i l l (common_person), Saturday, 22 January 2005 00:31 (fourteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 25 January 2005 00:19 (fourteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, 25 January 2005 00:21 (fourteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 27 January 2005 22:18 (fourteen years ago) link
― W i l l (common_person), Friday, 28 January 2005 17:54 (fourteen years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Monday, 4 April 2005 12:56 (fourteen years ago) link
― frankiemachine, Monday, 4 April 2005 15:11 (fourteen years ago) link
― frankiemachine, Monday, 4 April 2005 15:14 (fourteen years ago) link
But at the same time, Bech is not much of a character--more a conduit for Updike to express certain things about the writing life that would have been problematic for him to say with his own mouth.
By which I don't mean that Bech = Updike; rather that Updike used Bech both as a surrogate and as a point of contrast. He's Updike's mouthpiece when he needs him to be, but different enough (Jewish, hornier, less modest) to allow Updike a sort of playground.
― The Mad Puffin (The Mad Puffin), Monday, 4 April 2005 16:29 (fourteen years ago) link
― On the bass, 57 7th, he wrote this (calstars), Monday, 16 May 2005 12:05 (fourteen years ago) link
― David N (David N.), Tuesday, 17 May 2005 23:12 (fourteen years ago) link
― Luis Gonzalez, Thursday, 15 December 2005 22:31 (thirteen years ago) link
― Collardio Gelatinous (collardio), Tuesday, 20 December 2005 05:12 (thirteen years ago) link
From a French 12 years girl just arrived in a US school >>.thanks
― Margaux, Wednesday, 25 January 2006 22:40 (thirteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 22:49 (thirteen years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 23:42 (thirteen years ago) link
?
― Old Boy In Network (Michael B), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:21 (six years ago) link
lol classic xp
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:23 (six years ago) link
maybe it's changed to comradely in later editions - i verbatim copied it out of the copy of the book i have - hardcover, tho sez First Trade Edition 1989 hm
― johnny crunch, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:28 (six years ago) link
not that it makes me like it, but "comradely" is much better than "brotherly" there and adds a lot of meaning to the passage -- it implies conspiracy and secret revolt rather than incest
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:38 (six years ago) link
The 60's man
― waterface, Wednesday, July 24, 2013 3:05 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is otm btw. the very next sentence (which tbf is a new paragraph), he talks abt smoking pot and wearing dashikis. the essay is abt him being the least liberal/dove-ish of his circle of peers
can a lil bit hear his voice saying 'do you take advantage of the new freedoms?'
― johnny crunch, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:58 (six years ago) link
That single sentence really is quintessential Updike. Vermeer with ski-pants and a hard-on.
― only dogg forgives (Eazy), Thursday, 25 July 2013 02:07 (six years ago) link
http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/john-updike-life-in-fiction-adam-begley.html
― johnny crunch, Friday, 28 March 2014 12:15 (five years ago) link
http://i57.tinypic.com/v4xuoh.jpg
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 18 December 2014 02:24 (four years ago) link
Hanging wit U
― calstars, Thursday, 18 December 2014 03:25 (four years ago) link
70s swinger look new england division. also is that a bust of the author over the door? the shades made me think of andy warhol
― Pontius Pilates (m coleman), Thursday, 18 December 2014 11:39 (four years ago) link
Messy depths had opened under me, where poverty and government merged. You sleep with someone in a moment of truth and the obligations begin to pile up nightmarishly.
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 14 November 2015 00:20 (four years ago) link
bury me in this lede https://t.co/YGsHFb3nlr pic.twitter.com/GWBw5zQ9fU— rachel syme (@rachsyme) October 2, 2019
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 2 October 2019 20:20 (two months ago) link
It's a great piece.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 3 October 2019 02:25 (two months ago) link
My day has been saved
― The Hillbilly Chespirito (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 3 October 2019 02:45 (two months ago) link
It's so good. I guess I'm going to have to get over the creepy-sounding title of her book, because I want to read more like that.
― Dan I., Thursday, 3 October 2019 17:26 (two months ago) link
(the whole lrb piece, not just the lede)
― Dan I., Thursday, 3 October 2019 17:27 (two months ago) link
i hadn't known about the foster wallace-mary karr thing she obliquely refers to o_O
― mookieproof, Thursday, 3 October 2019 18:03 (two months ago) link
When he is in flight you are glad to be alive. When he comes down wrong – which is often – you feel the sickening turn of an ankle, a real nausea. All the flaws that will become fatal later are present at the beginning. He has a three-panel cartoonist’s sense of plot. The dialogue is a weakness: in terms of pitch, it’s half a step sharp, too nervily and jumpily tuned to the tics and italics and slang of the era. And yes, there are his women. Janice is a grotesquerie with a watery drink in one hand and a face full of television static; her emotional needs are presented as a gaping, hungry and above all unseemly hole, surrounded by well-described hair. He paints and paints them, but the proportions are wrong. He is like a God who spends four hours on the shading on Eve’s upper lip, forgets to give her a clitoris, and then decides to rest on a Tuesday. In the scene where Janice drunkenly drowns the baby, it wasn’t the character I felt pity for but Updike, fumbling so clumsily to get inside her that in the end it’s his hands that get slippery, drop the baby.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 October 2019 18:14 (two months ago) link
ftr I admire Updike's criticism: thanks to him, I discovered Henry Green and Muriel spark, among others. And he was generous toward Cheever. But I could never finish his fiction, not once. The facility, the complacency of the descriptions -- it had a lulling effect. He and Cheever get bound together, but Cheever was fuckin' weird.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 October 2019 18:15 (two months ago) link
Her book, Priestdaddy, is great.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 3 October 2019 21:27 (two months ago) link
Best revive ever
― Three Borads and the HOOS (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 3 October 2019 23:46 (two months ago) link
apart from her lrb pieces, has she been doing criticism elsewhere, because its much better than her other writing. I have her most recent book of poems and it was v disappointing. haven't read priestdaddy though.
― plax (ico), Friday, 4 October 2019 08:58 (two months ago) link
her piece on lucia berlin was good but i haven't read any lucia berlin
― plax (ico), Friday, 4 October 2019 08:59 (two months ago) link
Lucia Berlin is good. Believe the hype.
― Three Borads and the HOOS (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 4 October 2019 11:39 (two months ago) link
^^^^^
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 4 October 2019 23:35 (two months ago) link
Priestdaddy is very much in the voice of her review work
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 4 October 2019 23:36 (two months ago) link
well written crit def, i still like updike idk i think hes true to himself/honest in a misogynist & outdated way
― johnny crunch, Friday, 4 October 2019 23:56 (two months ago) link
maybe someone should make a lockwood thread
― mookieproof, Saturday, 5 October 2019 02:09 (two months ago) link
that was a fantastic piece, yeah. especially loved this: "he grows up, in short, but not into a real adult, just into a country club member."
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 5 October 2019 06:24 (two months ago) link
It’s almost as if she absorbed his novelistic style and used it against him and absorbed his critical style as well and used it to restore the balance, to give some semblance of fairness.
― Three Borads and the HOOS (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 October 2019 15:06 (two months ago) link
Which is awesome
I myself used could never pull off such a feat, I used way too many “ands” in that sentence, just to name one thing.
― Three Borads and the HOOS (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 5 October 2019 15:12 (two months ago) link
“If you were worried that somewhere in this sweeping tetralogy Rabbit wasn’t going to ejaculate all over a teenager and then compare the results to a napalmed child, you can rest easy.”
― calstars, Saturday, 5 October 2019 16:47 (two months ago) link
john downdog
― lag∞n, Saturday, 5 October 2019 16:49 (two months ago) link
Yeah nearly bought the Berlin book yesterday but ended up getting a Pavese reader
― plax (ico), Saturday, 5 October 2019 17:11 (two months ago) link
i've only read the first of the rabbit books -- tbh the descriptions and quotes from the later ones in that article sound horrific
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 5 October 2019 21:50 (two months ago) link
Redux is pretty terrible, a mess, but is Rich is his best book, I'd say.
― fetter, Monday, 7 October 2019 11:36 (two months ago) link
Probably the best in this genre of "young woman reviews old white man" that you see a lot of editors in various publications throwing up. Its both a waste of her energies and yet one of her best essays, possibly one of the best things Lockwood will ever write. Which could be depressing.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 8 October 2019 21:04 (two months ago) link
I suspect editors don't really know what to do with her, she's clearly a very talented writer but does not really fit into post huffpo content genres very easily and sits awkwardly between cerebral and literal on one hand and "refreshing" and unpretentious on the other. Some of her poetry is terrible and her interests are so much about style and genre to the extent that when she turns to "real world issues" she can seem very half formed.
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 8 October 2019 21:33 (two months ago) link
Is priestdafdy a real memoir or part fiction ?
― calstars, Tuesday, 8 October 2019 23:05 (two months ago) link
piece is prob the best i've ever read on updike-- always liked the DFW one but it's v slight (+ the line lockwood quotes as its takeaway is iirc a footnote in the voice of a "female acquaintance"); the real previous champ was the vidal essay quoted towards the end, a long and largely biographical piece of character assassination i love to reread
Although Updike seems never to have had any major psychic or physical wound, he has endured all sorts of minor afflictions. In the chapter "At war with my skin," he tells us in great detail of the skin condition that sun and later medicine would clear up; for a long time, however, he was martyr to it as well as a slave to his mirror, all the while fretting about what "normal" people would make of him. As it proved, they don't seem to have paid much attention to an affliction that, finally, "had to do with self love, with finding myself acceptable ... the price high but not impossibly so; I must pay for being me." The price for preserving me certainly proved to be well worth it when, in 1955, he was rejected for military conscription, even though the empire was still bogged down in Korea and our forces were increased that year from 800,000 to three million--less Updike, who, although "it pains me to write these pages," confesses that he was "far from keen to devote two years to the national defense." He was later to experience considerable anguish when, almost alone among serious writers, he would support the Vietnam War on the ground that who am I "to second-guess a president?" One suspects that he envies the clear-skinned lads who so reluctantly fought for the land he so deeply loves.
he also says that in the beauty of the lilies would better be titled the evening dews and damps
anyway, a great long-running lil genre
― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 8 October 2019 23:53 (two months ago) link
I like the Gilbert Sorrentino takedown of him, but coterie writer of little distinction so not many have read it
― Beware of Mr. Blecch, er...what? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 9 October 2019 00:06 (two months ago) link
I assume Priestdaddy features some fictionalized elements but I also assume that some of the most ridiculous parts are true.
― JoeStork, Wednesday, 9 October 2019 00:08 (two months ago) link
sorrentino is a better and more important writer than updike
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Wednesday, 9 October 2019 01:33 (two months ago) link
idst
More discussion here: updike novels poll
― Beware of Mr. Blecch, er...what? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 9 October 2019 01:42 (two months ago) link
In the end Wallace loved the sinner, as Updike wanted us to love Rabbit Angstrom. And part of the problem with our 360-degree view of modern authors is knowing where to put any of it. Wallace’s vivisection of Updike’s misogyny seems calm and cool and virtuous, and then you remember that to the best of anyone’s knowledge Updike never tried to push a woman out of a moving car.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 9 October 2019 05:50 (two months ago) link
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 8 October 2019 bookmarkflaglink
I've yet to read anything beyond what she's written for the LRB (apart from her tweets) but I think it's working out well. iirc it began as writing on women -- her piece on Cusk was almost necessary because there's a lot of people that can't deal with her -- and the Updike is something else yet you can see the trajectory.
It's the LRB at 40 issue, and a good way to match to Empson on Skakey all the way back.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 9 October 2019 08:48 (two months ago) link
I think I'd still take Of the Farm, the first 3 Rabbit books and a few stories with me (wherever that may be). There's something about his rendering of moment-to-moment perception that I like (albeit he's no Nabokov, and Alfred's point about the 'complacency' of his descriptions is naggingly correct). Ach, maybe Lockwood is right and it was just sheer propulsion that dragged me along.
Will look up her memoir, for sure.
― Life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering...save string (Chinaski), Saturday, 12 October 2019 15:30 (two months ago) link
Jesus - I'd pretty much expunged Skeeter from my mind. OK, I'll drop Redux.
― Life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering...save string (Chinaski), Saturday, 12 October 2019 15:35 (two months ago) link