but mainly lol turnoff
― i better not get any (thomp), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 17:22 (ten years ago) link
My problem is less with the writing and more just that he writes about doing kind of gross things in a self-congratulatory tone
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 17:31 (ten years ago) link
well i mean it's updike. that is the writing
― i better not get any (thomp), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 17:46 (ten years ago) link
xp otm
― Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 17:50 (ten years ago) link
actually I also hate "patiently masturbating" and also the fact that it's ski pants.
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 18:22 (ten years ago) link
i hate brotherly pride. . . ew!!!!!
― waterface, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 18:22 (ten years ago) link
haha oh yeah that too. Really the whole thing is about as unsexy as it could be.
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 18:27 (ten years ago) link
Google has "comradely pride"
― alimosina, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 18:42 (ten years ago) link
Google has been known to be wrong
― waterface, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 18:45 (ten years ago) link
That he's so casual and even eloquent about adultery makes the whole thing creepy and unnerving.
― More Than a Century With the Polaris Emblem (calstars), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:04 (ten years ago) link
The 60's man
― waterface, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:05 (ten years ago) link
hes an asshole, thats his thing. i read "rabbit run" again last year. still enjoyed it and i love his style. i dont think the book condones his actions if anything it points out his delusions (and his immaturity).
― Old Boy In Network (Michael B), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:12 (ten years ago) link
So does Amazon
― alimosina, Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:19 (ten years ago) link
?
― Old Boy In Network (Michael B), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:21 (ten years ago) link
lol classic xp
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 24 July 2013 19:23 (ten 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 (ten 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 (ten years ago) link
― 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 (ten 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 (ten 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 (ten years ago) link
http://i57.tinypic.com/v4xuoh.jpg
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 18 December 2014 02:24 (nine years ago) link
Hanging wit U
― calstars, Thursday, 18 December 2014 03:25 (nine 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 (nine 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 (eight 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 (four years ago) link
It's a great piece.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 3 October 2019 02:25 (four years ago) link
My day has been saved
― The Hillbilly Chespirito (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 3 October 2019 02:45 (four years 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 (four years ago) link
(the whole lrb piece, not just the lede)
― Dan I., Thursday, 3 October 2019 17:27 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years ago) link
Her book, Priestdaddy, is great.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 3 October 2019 21:27 (four years ago) link
Best revive ever
― Three Borads and the HOOS (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 3 October 2019 23:46 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years ago) link
^^^^^
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 4 October 2019 23:35 (four years ago) link
Priestdaddy is very much in the voice of her review work
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 4 October 2019 23:36 (four years 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 (four years ago) link
maybe someone should make a lockwood thread
― mookieproof, Saturday, 5 October 2019 02:09 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years ago) link
john downdog
― lag∞n, Saturday, 5 October 2019 16:49 (four years ago) link
Yeah nearly bought the Berlin book yesterday but ended up getting a Pavese reader
― plax (ico), Saturday, 5 October 2019 17:11 (four years 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 (four years 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 (four years ago) link