In a July 18 post on the blog Vertigo: Where literature and art intersect, with an emphasis on W.G. Sebald and literature with embedded photographs, a writer identified simply as “Terry” considers “‘Midpoint’: John Updike’s Pointillist Poem.” 

His argument:  “The pictures [included in Canto II] speak for themselves. A cycle of growth, mating, and birth. The coarse dots, calligraphic and abstract, become faces with troubled expressions. Distance improves vision. Lost time sifts through these immutable screens.”

“Updike doesn’t seem to have made any attempt to make the photographs approximate any poetic form. There is no apparent rhythmic pattern to the way the photographs are placed on their five pages and the only organizing principle is chronology. The photographs themselves, which are reproduced as halftones, are purposely printed in such a way as to show the dots formed by the halftone screens. (Although, curiously, the halftone dots are strikingly less noticeable on three of the photographs—each of which is a head shot of Updike himself.) At first I wondered if his decision to emphasize the halftone dots might be related to the Pop Art of the time, especially Roy Lichtenstein. While it is certainly possible that Lichtenstein’s work created an awareness on Updike’s part of the underlying dots in halftone reproductions, Updike’s writing is not at all aligned with the goals of Pop Art. Rather, we should take Updike’s word for it that he sees the halftone patterns as a visual symbol of lost time and as a metaphor for distance. A halftone image—like life itself—is easier to see from afar.

Terry concludes with a final argument followed by an excerpt from Midpoint:  “The poet strives to conclude, but his aesthetic of dots prevents him. His heroes are catalogued. World politics: a long view. Intelligent hedonistic advice. Chilmark Pond in August. He appears to accept, reluctantly, his own advice.”

Reality transcends itself within;
Atomically, all writers must begin.
The Truth arrives as if by telegraph:
One dot; two dots; a silence; then a laugh.

The blog Catholic Strength, subtitled “…growth in holiness…growth in well-being…growth in knowledge,” has published a piece by Tom Mulcahy, M.A., on “A Theology of Death and Resurrection Based on Pigeon Feathers.”

“John Updike’s short story, ‘Pigeon Feathers,’ presents a striking example of a person who undergoes a death and resurrection experience in the very context of trying to understand the meaning of death,” Mulcahy writes. “In Updike’s story, David, at age 14, suddenly finds himself doubting his childhood faith at a time when the turbulence of a move to a new home has him feeling displaced and insecure. To strengthen his childhood belief in life after death, which he finds under attack after browsing through a book skeptical of Jesus’ resurrection, he turns to his parents for guidance and support. To his own surprise, David finds out that his parents’ faith in the claims of Christianity is not altogether that strong. In fact, David discovers, his father is practically an atheist!

“Still, David holds out hope that his minister, Reverend Dopson, will confirm that each person’s soul is immortal. But far from providing David with consolation, Dopson shatters David’s security in life after death by suggesting thathttps://catholicstrengthblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/bird-368924_640.jpg after death, ‘I suppose you could say that our souls are asleep.’

“Panicked and depressed about his parents’ and minister’s ‘submission to death,’ David takes a rifle out to the family barn to shoot some pigeons. With ‘splinters of light’ shining through the darkness of the barn, the barn becomes almost a micro-universe for David to work out his struggles with the issues of life and death. David then proceeds to the task of retrieving the dead pigeons he has shot in order to bury them.

“David had never seen a pigeon up close before. An examination of some of the dead pigeons up close produced a resurrection in his life. . . . David had to die to his childhood faith in order to be reborn into a deeper, more mature faith. He had to take control over his own faith life rather than living it vicariously through his parents or his minister. He had to shoot down his childhood faith in order to see how precious and costly that faith was to him. The wonderful form, symmetry and beauty of the pigeon feathers revealed to David the majestic presence of a loving God. David discovered in a moment of time a transcendent truth: that God loved him with an everlasting love.”