This poem by Evelyn Lau was published in the The Malahat Review 171 (Summer 2010), which was released in September and reprinted here by permission of both the author and the review:

Updike Redux

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth.

—John Updike, “A Soft Spring Night in Shillington”

~

The sound of rain made you happy almost to tears.

Here, it’s November again. Lightning in the night,

the neighbor’s coughing through the drywall,

the tinny sounds of late night TV.

I try to remember gratitude, the wonder you felt

as a boy crouched under a wicker chair

on a porch in Shillington, storm showers falling

all around you like a benediction.

Is it possible we never met?

Perhaps your sleeve brushed mine, once,

in the desert where you spent the winter—

among the crowds on the baked streets

of Scottsdale, the avid tourists

and fake cowboys, you a tall man with a hawk nose,

skin red from psoriasis and sun.

Or perhaps we drove past your house

in the foothills of Tucson on our way back

from the Biosphere, microwave lines of heat

radiating above the road

as we crossed the dry riverbeds

toward the saguaro forest at sunset—

the talcum kiss of the parched air,

lurid watercolours in the sky. No,

this was April, you were in Beverly Farms,

it was the last spring of your life.

Here the soil sizzles, soaking up the downpour

after the Indian summer that lingered

like it would never end. Blue days of bluster

and blown leaves. The tree in the courtyard

a massed bruise, magenta and mauve,

the maples filtering blood through their spun keys.

If it was hard to be happy then, tell me how

to survive the winter. Tell me how

to get to Plow Cemetery, where soft fistfuls

of your ashes were scattered on stone.

Clouds of ashes, the colour of smoke and dust,

Lifting above the land

You loved so much, seeding with rain.

In a New York Times story posted September 25, Charles McGrath observed the 50th anniversary of Ted William’s last game, “in which, with an impeccable sense of occasion, he hit a home run, a miraculous line drive to deep right center, in his final at-bat.” McGrath, who knew Updike well, noted that among the fans was “28-year-old John Updike, who had actually scheduled an adulterous assignation that day. But when he reached the woman’s apartment, on Beacon Hill, he found that he had been stood up: no one was home. ‘So I went, as promised, to the game,’ he wrote years later, ‘and my virtue was rewarded.'” Here’s the link to the full story, in which McGrath also pays tribute to Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” as “the most celebrated baseball essay ever.”

Rev. John Brown, who recently retired from active ministry with the United Church of Canada and became the Society’s 206th member, writes:

On Feb. 12, 1997 Updike gave a reading at the University of Toronto, promoting In the Beauty of the Lilies. I stayed awake all night thinking of questions I might ask. I was lucky. The moderator allowed me two. “Could you tell us something about the place of God and faith in your work and in your personal life?” and “Of the many sexual encounters of your characters, which one did you have the most fun writing about?” He gave generous answers to both, but provided nothing by way of identification for the second.

While he was signing Collected Poems for me, I volunteered, “I’m the guy who asked the question about sex.” “Oh, you’re the one causing all the trouble,” he said. There was quite a pause before he signed In the Beauty of the Lilies. It wasn’t until I was outside the hall when I read the inscription: “For John, Best wishes and stop thinking about sex! John Updike”

Around that time as well he was interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel on our CBC radio programme, “Writers and Company.” He had asked about Rabbit, noting how in many ways he was such an unsavory character and yet how accepting John was of him. He replied, “Well, I created him; how could I be unkind?” What a divine statement. I have quoted it in sermons many times.

Rev. John Brown

For those who may not have stumbled across it while Web surfing, here’s a link to “Remembering a round with John Updike,” written by Michael Bamberger, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, and published last fall. Thanks to Jack De Bellis for drawing it to our attention.

My own memory is NOT sharing a round. In Key West, John asked me to join him and Chris Keane at the local public course, which has tarpon in the some of the water hazards and one hole with no fairway—just a drive over mangrove swamp to a green on the other side—but I told him he’d lose all respect for me if I played a round with him.

Society member Joan Youngerman recently contributed a remembrance to the Reading Eagle in which she explains that Updike “promised not to use our names while alive, but we pretty much knew who was who in his stories.” Here’s the full story, titled “John Updike: He never forgot where he came from,” which was published on August 8.  Joan will be one of the classmates featured on a panel at the First Biennial John Updike Conference at Alvernia University this October.

This poem, “Another Dan,” comes from Daniel Hunter of Medina, Ohio:

Another Dan

I go to the library again and check out my old friend,

the late John Updike. I actually own most of his books, but

seeing him here on these public shelves gives me some sense

he’s still doing well—not breathing, obviously, but circulating.

The once we met, inscribing my book, he wrote For Dan, Best Wishes

while saying, and I quote, “Another Dan—more Dans than you can

shake a stick at.” His wild eyebrows were, if you can imagine,

even wilder in person. I think of this whenever my wife insists

I sit still for a trimming. That’s me, alright, another Dan,

but one upon whom has been bestowed best wishes.

Poet Evelyn Lau, who gained notoriety for Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989), an autobiographical account of coping in a world of drugs and prostitution in Vancouver, B.C., and also for her much-publicized alleged romantic involvement with creative writing professor and writer W.P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe, 1982), has published a poem online in The Walrus titled “Dear Updike,” which begins with an epigraph from Updike’s “On Being a Self Forever.”

Here’s the link.

In perhaps his most famous autobiographical essay, “The Dogwood Tree: A Boyhood” (Assorted Prose, 1965), John Updike, who would have been 78 today, wrote:

“When I was born, my parents and my mother’s parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree . . . was, in a sense, me.” According to Updike’s Shillington contact, Dave Silcox, John’s mother later corrected him, telling him it was planted on the one-year anniversary of his birth.

In “The Dogwood Tree,” Updike continued with a line that has more resonance today than when he wrote it:  “My dogwood tree still stands in the side yard, taller than ever . . . .”

Happy birthday.

(Photo courtesy of Jack De Bellis, taken in spring 2009)

Professor Joseph McDade, of Houston Community College, is the most recent person to join the Society—our 153rd member—and like so many he’s planning on attending the Society’s first conference in October. Also like so many, he has a fond memory of meeting John Updike. His moment came on Monday, Feb. 28, 2008, when Updike spoke at Houston’s famed Alley Theater as part of the Inprint Brown Reading Series. But his relationship to John Updike began before that. He writes,

“I am guessing my own life regarding the man is fairly common.  All through college and grad school my mother would, every Christmas, treat me to each new handsome Knopf hardback, wrapped and under the tree.  Lately my wife has continued the tradition, and this past December treated me to a copy each of Rabbit at Rest and Roger’s Version (I had mentioned these were my two favorite of his novels) from the Signed First Edition series.

“I count as one of the great moments of my life the 20 or so seconds I spent with him after his Houston reading two years ago, when I stood in a line that snaked up the stairs of the Alley Theatre to a desk on a second-floor landing.  As he signed my evening’s purchase (the Everyman’s Library edition of Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels), I told him how happy I was that he had chosen, as part of the evening’s program, to read ‘The Family Meadow,’ a story I had often heard him read on audiotape and very nearly committed to memory.  ‘It’s one of my two favorite of your stories,’ I said.  Then, wanting to note it for the record, I continued,  ‘The other is ‘The Witnesses.”

“‘The WITnesses’?” he asked, seeming slightly startled.  I could only say, ‘Oh, sure,’ and move on.”

(Photo: The Alley Theater)

Joseph McDade

Mary Houck Yuhasz was a Reading native who attended Reading High School and grew up with memories of John Updike that “skip thru our childhood and touch at various times through the years,” because Updike was a longtime friend of her family’s. Her parents and John’s were classmates at Ursinus and remained friends all their lives. In recent years, Yuhasz says she began a correspondence with Updike over the old days and she sent pictures, especially if they included images of his parents. And to the Society she sent a more recent recollection of a visit Updike made to Denver. Here it is:

John Updike Researched at Denver Museum of Nature and Science

In February 1986, John Updike was invited by the Friends of the Denver Public Library to read from some of his works. In preparation for the reading, he asked me (a lifelong friend) to take him to the then Denver Museum of Natural History. He headed for the old Dinosaur Hall and ambled around, studying the names on the exhibits. After a while I learned that what he had hoped to find was a pronunciation guide with each specimen. Since this was not included in the display, I suggested that we head back to the main information booth and ask to speak to a curator.

The person I spoke to was notably disinterested in responding to my request. John stood by, in his usual modest manner. Finally, in frustration I pointed to John and said: “Do you know who this is? John Updike, the author.” That produced a quick retreat behind the scenes and a curator arrived to discuss John’s pronunciation questions.

One of the short stories he read that evening was “The Man Who Loved Extinct Mammals,” (previously published in The New Yorker). He quoted from Harvey C. Markman’s book, Fossil Mammals. Markman had been the Curator of Geology and Paleontology from 1936 to 1954 and the Museum had published his book. John was hoping to find an answer by going to the source. In a recent interview for an article in National Geographic Updike mentioned that he had a basic knowledge in “dinosaurisms,” having written a few other such stories. Apparently such familiarity had come to him later than his 1986 reading here in Denver.

There was a bit of a dust-up over John’s visit that evening. A newspaper reporter took him to task for checking his watch too often. In his own defense, John wrote to the newspaper that he was simply trying to fall within the time period that “my sponsor and I had agreed upon.” He continued that he resented the implication that he was giving “short rations” when he had spent considerable time visiting with people after the reading. Local readers, differing with the reporter, came to John’s defense in letters to the paper afterwards. In his thanks to me he wrote of “how nicely I pronounced all those difficult terms.”

by Mary Houck Yuhasz