John Updike

More discussion here: updike novels poll

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.

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 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.

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.

Jesus - I'd pretty much expunged Skeeter from my mind. OK, I'll drop Redux.

I went to a used bookstore today and they had two of old rabbit hardcovers , some short story collections , and bech hardcover. Might go back and buy them out tomorrow

The Rabbits diminish in quality over time IMO. There is some pretty fresh writing in the first 1.5, but by the end it gets dreary. And some VERY problematic race/sex shit appears.

Bech is a time capsule. If you're interested in literary life of that time period, the Bech stuff is illuminating. There are flashes of what JHU himself might have been feeling and experiencing, like signing flyleaf pages that will later be tipped in.* Bech's Jewishness is a red herring to throw you off the scent. Updike knew a lot about some things; I don't think Jewishness was one of those things.

Snag them if you want, but they are probably in a public library somewhere. I have read all of those books exactly once. Yes I probably own the hardcovers (currently in storage), but these days I mostly only buy books that I want to refer to or re-read.

* yes, I own a "signed first edition" Updike. Witches of Eastwick.

But it's not organic or rare or valuable - it was explicitly created as a "signed first edition," and marketed as such.

Sorry to be so ornery, because I do admire him as a stylist. On the short story collections: some of them are extremely good! Highly recommended: Museums and Women, Problems, and whichever one has "The Brown Chest" in it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/05/the-brown-chest/667775/

Yeah they had the hardcover of museums…tempting. A time capsule for sure

I was curious a few weeks back whether Updike (passing in 2009) had done any podcast interviews, and then enjoyed this two-part one from 2006 on Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm.

Okay despite all the usual critiques of Updike, Museums and Women is fucking amazing. There's a hilarious and expertly crafted story about amoebae going to a cocktail party. One about Japanese Jesus. One about prehistoric animals. One about advances in farming technology.

In all his vast catalog there are only a few books that manage to escape his main subject matter (drab New England WASP adultery and its dreary complications). Museums and Women is by far the best of them. Grab it.

None of those premises sound appealing to me lol

You’re saying the book is not about museums and women?

It's about women as museums.

If you think a middle-aged suburban white guy wondering whether or not to cheat on his wife is an interesting premise, but a euglena going a cocktail party isn't, I just don't know what to tell you.

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.