John Updike

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.

From a French 12 years girl just arrived in a US school >>.
thanks

argh.

Kids these days.

Margaux darling!? Come back! All will be revealed in a small iridescent sphere!

The Widows of Eastwick (a sequel to Witches of..) - october 2008.

The end of 2008: new updike, new Roth, new president.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081126.wbadsex1126/BNStory/Entertainment/home

The 76-year-old American novelist was a finalist for this year's Bad Sex prize for his description of an explosive oral encounter in his latest book, The Widows of Eastwick, but lost out to British writer Rachel Johnso

i find almost all updike sex = bad sex

i've never been able to read updike. don't know why. i usually love that kind of stuff. maybe when i'm older or something. everytime i've tried a novel i've ended up getting really bored.

(this is me and richard ford too.)

I know why you can't read Updike - it's because reading him is like the process of extruding a turd but backwards.

He also wrote an introduction to a book by Bruno Schulz called Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, which he seemed to like (although I admit I read it through tightly slitted eyes). It was a very bad book and it made me say very bad words and do violence at it.

last time i tried to read some richard ford short stories i saw my life flash before my eyes. sooooooo endless and tedious.

i think i just read louis auchincloss instead of updike. probably nowhere near as "brilliant", but way more entertaining.

i wanna read more cheever. i've got a really nice big fat hardcover collection of his stories that i need to get to.

Wow, Scott, you like Auchincloss? Glad to see a fellow fan.

He reminds me a bit of William Dean Howells: not a single sentence surprises, and he's so obsessed with a certain kind of professionalism that some of his scenarios aren't as conceived as fully as I'd like; but, wow, a certain kidn of professoinalism goes a long way: he publishes a book (two sometimes) a year.

and he's so obsessed with a certain kind of professionalism that some of his scenarios aren't as conceived as fully as I'd like

example of these "scenarios"? this doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. I think his sentences, on a prose level, can be quite surprising: rich and lyrical. but his novels all read the same. maybe this is what you mean? i think his rabbit books are his best work and his stories are pretty boring.

Haha -- I was talking about Auchincloss; I guess I wasn't clear.

as for Updike, if he's written a novel as good as A Modern Instance or The Rise of Silas Lapham, I've missed it.

(to be fair, Updike did much to get Howells rehabilitated in the eighties)

well "as good as" is pretty subjective--and Howells and Updike are aiming for different things, so i don't think comparing them will get us anywhere

Subjective: "as good as"
Objective: died this morning.

had to read this sentence abt 5 times in one of the pieces in self-consciousness (which is v good btw)

I seem to remember, on one endless drive back home in the dark down Route 93, while my wife sat in the front seat and her hair was rhythmically irratiated with light from the opposing headlights, patiently masturbating my back-seat neighbor through her ski pants, beneath our blanketing parkas, and taking a brotherly pride in her shudder of orgasm just as we hit the Ipswich turn-off.

!!

Hope he cracked a window.

that's precisely what I dislike about Updike: the precision with which it's overwritten.

lol turnoff

lol privilege embedded even at the grammatical level

but mainly lol turnoff

My problem is less with the writing and more just that he writes about doing kind of gross things in a self-congratulatory tone

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, October 3, 2019

"The Brown Chest" (lovely; thanks for the rec!) isn't The Afterlife.

Lord Alfred: The last paragraph of "The Brown Chest" kills me every time. For all my crankitude about JHU, that "Family, family without end" passage is crystalline and pretty much perfect.

Bastard.

Is IN The Afterlife, a later story collection.

I liked that conclusion too.

Yes! I am casting my memory back to The Afterlife, and another interesting story in that collection is "Aperto, Chiuso." It's a pretty thorny bit of misogyny that is paradoxically revealing.

The woman is being portrayed as irrational and hysterical. The guy is presenting himself as decent and well-intentioned and perplexed by her irrationality. But then on second thought, he's the viewpoint character so he's obviously sculpting the narrative; if you read it through 21st-century eyes you can see that he's actually being kind of a dick. Not sure if that's how Updike saw it but that's my current reading.

That's good that the story lets you do that: a strong. always pertinent POV, suitable for different interpretations.
xp first gondolier first gondola, I meant! Proustian Slip, but also I was trying to suppress reference to Updike as my thoughtful gondolier on this maiden voyage through his review, because too corny even for me.

But even or especially with Pinter's crisp, startling reduction, there's a sense of gliding conveyed by Updike's impressions of his reading and thinking experience.

Carefully guided, responsive gliding.

Glide, Rabbit, Glide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxkjvKBPQjo

I read RABBIT, RUN, and greatly admired its style, and was surprised and maybe even disturbed by its drama.

I have a Henry Green book signed by John Updike. The man must have put his signature in everything.

Reminds me of the time David Markson's library ended up at The Strand.

A friend of mine brought a copy of Nicholson Baker’s U and I to a reading for Updike to sign.

I saw a film trailer today for something called Living which I was sure was a Henry Green adaptation. I want to believe.

Apparently it's an Englishing of a Kurosawa movie.

Oh right.