{"id":1696,"date":"2013-11-11T13:12:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T19:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=1696"},"modified":"2013-11-11T13:24:59","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T19:24:59","slug":"in-the-latest-southern-review-john-updike-writes-like-a-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2013\/11\/11\/in-the-latest-southern-review-john-updike-writes-like-a-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"In the latest Southern Review: John Updike Writes Like a Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>Catchy title, isn’t it? Sounds like something you’d hear on the playground, only this one appeared in a literary playground. And the purveyor of said title (or the flinger of insults, if you prefer to think of it that way) is Barb Johnson, a former New Orleans carpenter who has gained quick notice since enrolling in an MFA program at the University of New Orleans. Recently she was named the fifth recipient of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award. Her piece of nonfiction prose, “John Updike Writes Like a Girl,” appears in the latest issue of The Southern Review<\/em> (Autumn 2013)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The excerpts below suggest why Glimmer Train<\/em> named her a Best New Voice:<\/p>\n

I. In Which I Rehash the Usual Criticisms of John Updike<\/strong><\/div>\n

It\u2019s easy to dog John Updike. Reflexive, even. Anyone who has studied literature\u2014though not necessarily Updike\u2014knows to say that his sentences are either gorgeous and stunning, or, you know, totally overwritten and ostentatious\u2014awash with shimmering phrases, like bubbles that Updike has blown just to watch them catch the light: whee!\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1962, when he published\u00a0Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories<\/i>\u00a0, Updike was thirty years old.\u00a0Pigeon Feathers<\/i>\u00a0was his sixth book in five years, and his second collection of short stories. He\u2019d already published a book of poetry and two novels. Updike went to Harvard and Oxford and wrote for\u00a0The New Yorker<\/i>\u00a0while still a very young man. Of the nineteen stories here, seventeen of them had been published previously in\u00a0The New Yorker<\/i>. Let the haters hate.<\/p>\n

Throughout the stories in\u00a0Pigeon Feathers<\/i>, the always-male narrator (an easy stand-in for Updike himself) struggles to love the one he\u2019s with (\u201cWalter Briggs,\u201d \u201cWife-Wooing,\u201d \u201cShould Wizard Hit Mommy?\u201d), to reconcile himself to not being with the one he loves (\u201cThe Persistence of Desire,\u201d \u201cDear Alexandros\u201d), to quell the fear that he is not enough (\u201cFlight\u201d), and to embrace the notion that he sees more deeply than others (\u201cThe Crow in the Woods,\u201d \u201cThe Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother\u2019s Thimble, and Fanning Island\u201d).<\/p>\n

I did my best not to think of past criticism when I read\u00a0Pigeon Feathers<\/i>. I was determined to read the stories of this thirty-year-old man with a writer\u2019s eye, with a reader\u2019s love of story and language. I wanted to know what that first committee saw in this book.<\/p>\n

II. In Which I Talk About John Updike Nicely and with Great Enthusiasm Though I Have Never, in Truth, Enjoyed His Work<\/strong><\/div>\n

It has often been said that Updike is maybe a bit too much about style and beauty and not so much about meaning or depth. That\u2019s a fair statement, but what it has to do with the value or enjoyment of his work bears looking into. In one of the two experimental stories at the end of\u00a0Pigeon Feathers<\/i>, \u201cPacked Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car,\u201d the protagonist, David Kern, says:<\/p>\n

There was a time when I wondered why more people did not go to church. Taken purely as a human recreation, what could be more delightful, more unexpected than to enter a venerable and lavishly scaled building kept warm and clean for use one or two hours a week and to sit and stand in unison and sing and recite creeds and petitions that are like paths worn smooth in the raw terrain of our hearts?<\/p>\n

This is the value of\u00a0Pigeon Feathers<\/i>\u00a0taken as a whole: I am not particularly moved by it, but it is beautifully done and is, in fact, quite like a path \u201cworn smooth in the raw terrain of our hearts[.]\u201d That is, I\u00a0recognize<\/i>\u00a0it, and recognition resonates whether we like it or not. In this collection, recognition comes mostly in small moments like the one above rather than being embodied in character or drawn out in plot. With a couple of exceptions, all of Updike\u2019s characters are essentially the same man: well educated or about to be, comfortably situated, often working as a writer or about to be. Updike knows his sect. And his sect here is surprisingly feminine\u2014or what is traditionally categorized as feminine\u2014in its concerns. That is, these stories are mostly about feelings and home and relationships.<\/p>\n

More than big ideas or lofty spiritual considerations, the thing that links Updike\u2019s protagonists in\u00a0Pigeon Feathers<\/i>\u00a0is an overwhelming fear of death. There are brief, didactic moments in a few of the stories in which the protagonist weighs agnosticism against some Gnostic hitch. The character doesn\u2019t believe in God, for instance, but he\u2019s afraid of dying because maybe there\u2019s no heaven, and then what? But, more than the fear of losing faith or God\u2019s retribution (Updike is quite secular, quite reverent about the sacredness of the ordinary), the darkness that looms…<\/p>\n

Here’s a link<\/a> to order a copy of the review. And from A Room of Her Own Foundation’s website, “Meet Barb Johnson.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catchy title, isn’t it? Sounds like something you’d hear on the playground, only this one appeared in a literary playground. And the purveyor of said title (or the flinger of insults, if you prefer to think of it that way) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-publications"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}