Robert M. Detman, who maintains a blog on The Literary, recently explored what could only be termed his ambivalence toward John Updike and his writing in a post titled “The Li(n)e Between Truth and Invention in Fiction.”
“In the recent biography Updike by Adam Begley, we learn that the celebrated writer ransacked his entire life for story material. He did it religiously, assiduously. In fact, he didn’t invent anything, he merely mined his own life,” he writes. “I found this both a surprise and a letdown. To read Updike’s stories however, the remarkable observation and acuity with detail perhaps make up for a deficiency in inventiveness.
“What I’ve learned from reading Updike is that a fiction writer needs to have a painter’s eye for detail, and this can (or used to) be enough to carry a short story. Maybe my disappointment with Updike is that he hadn’t done more than this—he made fiction look so easy just using the basic tools of life experience—admittedly not a very exciting life, at that.”
Of course, Updike isn’t the first major author to write highly autobiographical fiction. Ernest Hemingway quickly comes to mind, as does F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I’m currently reading through Philip Roth’s works, including his autobiography “The Facts.” It’s pretty clear that writing from one’s own life experiences is hardly unusual, if Updike and Roth are any indication. Readers should check out Updike’s “Brazil”, “Terrorist,” and Seek My Face” for material beyond Updike’s own life.
As Updike said himself, he is an artist of middleness, ordinariness, who wanted “to give the mundane its beautiful due.” The truest beauty and lasting relevance is in his ability to take his “ordinary life” and turn it into beautiful prose. While many of his stories mirror his life, they mirrored the lives of many middle-class, Americans during each time period.