{"id":1886,"date":"2014-02-20T11:41:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T17:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2014-02-24T16:59:16","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T22:59:16","slug":"updikes-first-biographer-gets-a-gold-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2014\/02\/20\/updikes-first-biographer-gets-a-gold-medal\/","title":{"rendered":"De Bellis: Updike’s first biographer gets a gold medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9780061896453.jpg\"<\/a>\u201cUpdike\u2019s First Biographer Gets a Gold Medal\u201d<\/strong>
\nBy Jack De Bellis<\/strong>
\nFebruary 20, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rev. of Adam Begley\u2019s Updike<\/i><\/a>. [New York]: HarperCollins, [2014].\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Updike famously wrote his memoir Self-Consciousness<\/i> to discourage potential biographers while he lived. Now, five years after Updike\u2019s death, Adam Begley, whose father was Updike\u2019s Harvard classmate, has given us a comprehensive, perceptive, handsomely written critical biography. Updike<\/i> owes its success to Begley\u2019s studious use of the Houghton Library\u2019s trove of Updike material, his tireless leg-work in interviewing relatives, friends, lovers, and writers, and his judicious evaluation of Updike\u2019s oeuvre<\/i>. Begley authoritatively dates Updike\u2019s canon and precisely charts his timeline. For instance, though Marry Me<\/i> was published in 1976, Begley shows it was written in 1964, and while Updike divorced in 1976, Begley reveals that he nearly left his family in 1962.<\/p>\n

Begley\u2019s exactitude is formidable: Shillington\u2019s parking meters first appeared in 1940; Updike made $1,003 from The New Yorker <\/i>in 1954; Joyce Harrington was the married woman for whom he nearly divorced in 1962; Madeline and Medea were the names of Miranda Updike\u2019s two sheep; and Rosette was the Updikes\u2019 Antibes babysitter. But does the reader need to know that an Updike Ipswich home had been owned in the thirties by George Brewer Jr. \u201cwho co-wrote Dark Victory<\/i>,\u201d later a Bette Davis film? Well, after such scholarly excavation, Begley can be forgiven his passion for detail.<\/p>\n

So Begley is factually trustworthy, and so are his informed readings of Updike\u2019s work\u2014and his observations of Updike the man, as his \u201cIntroduction\u201d discloses. In 1993 he witnessed Updike\u2019s encounter with a meddlesome woman, and Begley cleverly perceived Updike\u2019s spectrum of responses as he reacted. Right away we know we are in the hands of writer with sharp eyes and a shrewd mind. Updike<\/i> will grab casual readers and be indispensable to specialists. \u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Begley skillfully marshals facts into understandings. He has an uncanny eye for implicative details, particularly when he describes where Updike lived and worked. His Harvard Lampoon <\/i>building, fittingly \u201ccrouched like a friendly, slightly goofy sphinx with a jolly face staring out of a tower.\u201d Updike\u2019s one-room office over the Dolphin Restaurant lay ominously between the workplaces of a lawyer and a beautician\u2014foreshadowings of Updike\u2019s affairs that led to divorce lawyers. Updike\u2019s last home is a white mansion. When Begley\u2019s notes that it could have housed the Plowville farmhouse \u201ccomfortably inside, several times over,\u201d he\u2019s playfully intimating the distance from Shillington Updike had traveled with his \u201cthin pencil line.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Begley never lets Updike off easily. When Updike enthuses that Shillington is his \u201cbeing,\u201d Begley indicates that such a remark may be intended to wound his mother for having uprooted him from the town. Most significantly, Begley impatiently attacks Updike\u2019s recital of wounds in Self-Consciousness,<\/i> and his \u201cmooning\u201d and \u201cdithering\u201d in stories over his Joyce Harrington affair. He shows evident relief when Updike returns to writing realistic short stories: \u201cafter the claustrophobia . . .of the abstract-personal mode, it feels like a window thrown open.\u201d<\/p>\n

Begley frames his exploration of Updike by taking his cue from this admission in Self-Consciousness: <\/i>\u201cSome falsity of impersonation . . . forms part of myself.\u201d Updike\u2019s good friend Joyce Carol Oates, detected this \u201celement of impersonation in his character. . . hints that his modesty was exaggerated.\u201d She knew that this \u201chillbilly\u201d had managed to masquerade as a world-famous writer, and the role made him \u201cuneasy and ironic.\u201d Begley discovers Updike \u201cimpersonating the author as a wholesome family man,\u201d while posing for a Life <\/i>photographer, though instantaneously, \u201che couldn\u2019t stop being<\/i> a writer, his \u2018inner remove\u2019 apparent in the backward tilt of the head, the slight squint, the half-smile.\u201d This is real sleuthing!<\/p>\n

Such \u201cdisguise\u201d enabled Updike to give \u201ca bravura performance playing John Updike\u201d in the biopic, What Makes Rabbit Run?<\/i> \u201cRelaxed, self-assured, reasonable, and painstakingly modest, Updike floats through his scenes dispensing low-key bonhomie.\u201d The habit of posing no doubt helped him create characters that were alter-egos, like David Kern, \u201cRabbit\u201d Angstrom, and Henry Bech.<\/p>\n

Begley links this \u201cfalsity of impersonation\u201d to another aspect of Updike\u2019s creative process, \u201ccompartmentalization,\u201d Updike\u2019s ability to probe depths of his characters then spend the afternoon golfing and the evening at cards (while perhaps arranging assignations when living in Ipswich) and preparing a reading for church. Such a multi-tasker!<\/p>\n

More importantly, compartmentalization explains how Updike could transform his agony at leaving his children into art, illustrated by the story \u201cSeparating.\u201d Begley maintains that while Updike began to cry on telling them of his decision, he \u201cartfully arranged\u201d this \u201cbare fact\u201d in the story so that his alter-ego, Richard Maple, would cry the same way. Begley thus finds Updike \u201ccould sit weeping through this traumatic meal. . .all the while gathering up and filing away the detailed impressions that would later give life to a short story.\u201d Further, \u201cthe tears were his shield. . .behind which the never-resting author was busy doing his work. . . . . . a way for him to relive (and reorder) events and emotions at a slight remove from the intensity of the actual, real-time experience of announcing the end of family life as he knew it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But another such case doesn\u2019t quite convince. Begley reasons that Couples<\/i> was made possible not because of Updike affairs, \u201cbut rather because. . . what mattered most profoundly to him wasn\u2019t sex or even love; what mattered was writing.\u201d This pronouncement makes Updike cold and devious, but Begley elsewhere writes that Updike\u2019s poses were adopted because he \u201cwanted to be loved\u2014if possible, universally.\u201d And he charts, somewhat dismissively Updike\u2019s \u201cvicious circle\u201d in which \u201che fell in love, and his adulterous passion made him feel alive, but also sparked a religious crisis that renewed his fear of death\u2014so he fell in love some more and read some more theology.\u201d Writing was surely crucial to Updike, but so was love.<\/p>\n

Such investigation returns us to the \u201cIntroduction\u2019s\u201d annoying woman. Updike parried her tiresome questions by impersonating a charming writer and compartmentalizing the incident for possible use when, \u201cthe altered, fictionalized story, now freighted with significance, displaced the less dramatically compelling reality.\u201d Begley had witnessed Updike\u2019s creative process at work, and he has provided a lucid and cogent enquiry into it. This comprehensive and detailed biography will delight general readers, scholars, and students for many years to come. Updike\u2019s first biography is a winner.<\/p>\n

JD<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: The above review was written especially for The John Updike Society by Jack De Bellis, who is well known in literary circles as the editor of <\/em>John Updike: The Critical Responses to the “Rabbit Saga,” co-author of <\/em>John Updike: A Bibliography of Primary & Secondary Materials, 1948-2007, author of <\/em>The John Updike Encyclopedia\u00a0and, most recently,\u00a0<\/em>John Updike’s Early Years<\/a>.<\/a>\u00a0Jack is also a founding member of The John Updike Society and a member of the board.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cUpdike\u2019s First Biographer Gets a Gold Medal\u201d By Jack De Bellis February 20, 2014 Rev. of Adam Begley\u2019s Updike. [New York]: HarperCollins, [2014].\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 John Updike famously wrote his memoir Self-Consciousness to discourage potential biographers while he lived. Now, … 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":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","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=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1895,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/1895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}