ON LINE opinion, Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate, today published a piece on “Updike!”by Peter Sellick, who begins by saying that Updike’s death “precipitated a dilemma” in his household because for so many years his wife would buy him the latest Updike book for Christmas. But he quickly turns to observation, some of it based on his rereading of the LOA short stories and the Begley bio:
“Updike served up his immediate experience; all was grist for his mill. So much so that after telling his children that he was leaving the family of his first marriage, a painful episode for all, he published, soon after, an episode in the Maple stories, ‘Separating’ that was drawn with little disguise from the event. One wonders at the facility of a writer who could do such painful things to his family and then serve it all up in a short story to the New Yorker for a fairly large amount of money. One wonders about his facility for detachment! For Updike all of experience was fodder for his literature. He could be called the Vermeer (one of Updike’s favorite artists) of American letters, so intent was he on the gravity and beauty of the everyday. The glory of the small town of Shillington where he grew up was often celebrated in his short stories as if it were the centre of the universe.”
Sellick later talks about Updike’s faith and religiosity. “Can the church claim Updike as a son and does it matter?” he asks. “There have been American writers that are called ‘Catholic’ like Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy in whose writings we may find an orientation that is distinct from the surrounding culture, an alternative vision that may be described as Christian. I must say that I do not find a similar alterity in Updike. What we do find is a stunning facility for description of the world and for feeling. . . . But his description of contemporary life, its drives and urges and uncertainties, the place of the person in time opens up to a theological analysis that is sorely wanting and surely earns him a place at least among the minor saints. After all, if we damned artists who did not live up to theological or moral standards where would we be?”
“How should we understand Updike in relation to faith? He stands in the line of Protestantism in his love of every ordinary thing. The world for Updike is shot through with God. His celebration of sex is the celebration of the joys of the body, a celebration of incarnation, of fleshliness. However, the boundaries that ensure the continuity of love and the care of children are overreached and damage is the order of the day. In the second creation story in Genesis we are told that the man leaves his mother and father and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh. The truth of this is the truth of family life and human flourishing. Updike understands this even though in his first marriage he flouts it and he and his family suffer the consequences. Judgment comes.”
Read the full article, “Updike!”