Updike and conspiracy theories

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 3.45.07 PMRobert Matzen published a piece on his blog titled “Umbrella Man,” in which he talks about maybe writing about the fate of TWA Flight 3 and recalls the book Six Seconds in Dallas buy Josiah Thompson and John Updike’s response to reading it.

Six Seconds in Dallas appeared in 1967, nearly 50 years ago, and now Tink [Thompson] is advanced in age, but he popped up in a fascinating Youtube video that had been forwarded to me, and I delighted in the concept he described—a concept developed by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike in response to reading Thompson’s book.”

“The truth about those seconds in Dallas is especially elusive,” Updike wrote in 1967; “the search for it seems to demonstrate how perilously empiricism verges on magic.”

And now Thompson is quoting Updike. “‘In historical research,’ says Thompson of the Updike position, ‘there may be a dimension similar to the quantum dimension in physical reality. If you put any event under a microscope, you will find a whole dimension of completely weird, incredible things going on. It’s as if there’s the macro level of historical research, where things sort of obey natural laws and the usual things happen and unusual things don’t happen, and then there’s this other level where everything is really weird.'”

Blogger Matzen writes, “Seeing the YouTube video and reading Updike’s original think piece [in The New Yorker] hit me like a pumpkin to the head because I had spent years trying to sort out the circumstances leading up to the crash of Flight 3— circumstances that should have been sortable and explainable but read like Fiction 101. The crash of Flight 3 and the reasons why Carole Lombard died on the plane with 21 others fit perfectly with Updike’s subatomic realm because the more we apply the rules of man’s physical world, the less the story makes sense.”

Here’s the entire article: “Umbrella Man.”

UK journal considers Updike’s posthumous reputation

In “Cast Aside: John Updike’s posthumous reputation,” The Skinny: Independent Cultural Journalism, a teaser reads,

“As John Updike biographer Adam Begley appears at Manchester Literature Festival this month[Tuesday, Oct. 14, 6 p.m.], we consider the posthumous reputation of one of America’s best-known writers. It’s arguably never been at a lower ebb, but should this be so?”

Never mind that it’s debatable Updike’s reputation has ebbed, because he’s always had  admirers and detractors.

For a springboard, writer Jim Troeltsch uses Updike himself.

“John Updike, speaking in 2005, four years before his death: ‘Reputations do subside, is one of the conclusions I’ve drawn. Your life as a famous writer, like your life as a human being, is limited, and now that we all live so long, a lot of us live to see ourselves become faded reputations. I don’t know if that’s true of me or not—I try not to think about it too much.’ The subtext’s pretty transparent; even then Updike knew his reputation, at least as a novelist, was waning.”

Never mind that Troeltsch may have been reading too much into Updike’s statement. What follows is a discussion that begins with often-cited dismissals by James Wood, Harold Bloom, and Gore Vidal and a subsequent dismissal of the charges that Updike is a misogynist without much else to say.

“To label Updike a misogynistic narcissist and leave it at [that] is surely to miss the point. Was Proust a longwinded snob? Joyce a drunken lech? Céline a crazed anti-Semite? Yes; but do such things really matter when it comes to judging their work on its own terms (even when such odious traits are shared by their characters)?

“The novel’s a container of consciousness—the author’s. And when the consciousness, as in Updike’s case, is so great as to allow us to apprehend the world anew, to actually augment our reality—to really do this; to make us see the tea-soaked sugar cube in the shaded sandstone farmhouse—then perhaps we should put the faults to one side and say: yes, maybe this really is enough.”

Vintage Centaur review is anything but kind

In a review of The Centaur published in the February 1, 1963 issue of The New York Review of Books, now online, Jonathan Miller takes Updike to task for “a poor novel irritatingly marred by good features.”

Such as?

“Updike’s didactic allegory suffers by contrast with the delicacy with which Joyce uses the myth of Daedalus. . . . Updike’s quotations, his pretentious index, and interpolated episodes of mythical narrative simply provide an irritating distraction.”

One has to wonder what Miller’s reaction was when The Centaur was awarded the National Book Award. And John Updike Society members who listened to Adam Sexton gush about how his students at the Parsons School of Design really respond to The Centaur will wonder if Miller read the same book.

Here’s the whole review:  “Off-Centaur.”

Reading Eagle reports on David Updike’s conference talk

Screen Shot 2014-10-11 at 8.32.33 AMThe Reading Eagle and its online counterpart Berks-Mont News posted an article on David Updike‘s plenary presentation at the 3rd Biennial John Updike Society Conference at Alvernia University.

“Through a journey of personal photographs and insight, David Updike, son of Pulitzer Prize winning author and Shillington native John Updike, spoke about his father’s childhood Oct. 2. . . .

“A slide show of photographs from John’s childhood accompanied Updike. Very few images of the inside of his father’s Shillington home exist, but the remnants of John Updike’s creativity survive. . . .

“‘Very early on he was aware of his authorship,’ he said, standing before a projection screen showing a photograph of his father’s practice signatures from when he was a boy. . . .

“‘His mother must have been startled and had to understand that this is no ordinary child,’ David said. ‘She kept his early works in a notebook.”

Here’s the whole article: “David Updike shares stories of father’s past.”

Act Two Magazine profiles Always Looking

always_looking-80x80Act Two Magazine, with its tagline “Living the second half of life,” profiled “Updike on Art” with a mini-review of Always Looking: Essays on Art.

“Updike creates a perfect balance between his text and the art so that the reader can see what he saw as he analyzed it, a counterpoise between his personal love of art and the historical perspectives about these works he admired.”

Updike makes another worst list

Screen Shot 2014-10-11 at 7.21.00 AMThe editors of The American Scholar decided to out “famous and infamous writers” for “first sentences of a novel, either overwrought or just plain embarrassing, that elicit a groan or a smack of the forehead,” and included among them is John Updike’s opening to The Widows of Eastwick:

“Those of us acquainted with their sordid and scandalous story were not surprised to hear, by way of rumors from the various localities where the sorceresses had settled after fleeing our pleasant town of Eastwick, Rhode Island, that the husbands whom the three Godforsaken women had by their dark arts concocted for themselves did not prove durable.”

Also making the list is a novelist with whom Updike “competed” all of his writing life. Philip Roth was upbraided for his opening line to The Breast: “It began oddly.”

The editors’ “highly subjective list” is titled “Ten Worst Opening Lines.”

German Ambassador hosts Begley at Third Berliner Salon

Screen Shot 2014-10-10 at 7.57.19 AMGermany’s Ambassador Peter Wittig and his wife Huberta von Voss-Wittig have been hosting The Berliner Salon—a series of literary events—since they first took up residence in Washington, D.C. The events have typically featured German and American authors, and on October 8 they hosted John Updike . . . via biographer Adam Begley.

According to the German Missions in the United States website, “Begley’s biography ‘Updike’ offers a fascinating portrait of beloved American author John Updike. ‘Updike’ is Begley’s first biographical work, and it has been met with wide critical acclaim, including sweeping praise from Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. . . . Mrs. von Voss-Wittig moderated the event and led a lively discussion with Begley and the audience about the life and work of Updike. Over 65 guests took part in the Berliner Salon, among them his father the novelist Louis Begley with his wife the author Anka Muhlstein; PBS-Executive Editor Jim Lehrer and his wife Kate; President and CEO of National Geographic Gary Knell and his wife Kim Larson; former Executive Editor of the Washington Post Marcus Brauchli and his wife, journalist Maggie Farley; and New Times correspondent Adam Liptak and his wife Jennifer Bitman.”

“Adam Begley Discusses ‘Updike” at Third Berliner Salon”

Writer connections don’t sell houses, the Globe says

The Boston Globe printed an article today titled “A famous writer slept here, but do house buyers care?” in which Updike’s Beverly Farms house was mentioned.

“What does a literary reputation do for the value of a house? Not much, according to local brokers. Although news that Salinger’s house is for sale has gone global, the listing broker, Jane Darrach, said that the words written by an unknown wordsmith trump best-seller status: ‘Location, location, location.'”

“And yet . . . if the seller is willing to name drop (not all are, the broker selling John Updike’s Beverly Farms house, following his death, in 2009, had to sign a confidentiality agreement), brokers say it can’t hurt.”