{"id":2612,"date":"2014-11-10T15:57:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T21:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=2612"},"modified":"2014-11-10T15:57:14","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T21:57:14","slug":"updike-readers-share-discoveries-and-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2014\/11\/10\/updike-readers-share-discoveries-and-recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike readers share discoveries and recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conferences are fun\u00a0reunions, but they also inspire people to attempt new projects. Shortly after the Third Biennial John Updike Society Conference in Reading, Pa. this past October, John McTavish<\/strong> thought it would be a great idea to do a round-up of members who would share their first exposures to Updike and important discoveries, as well as any recommendations they would have for would-be readers of Updike. Below are the fruits of his labor:<\/p>\n

John Updike Readers Share Discoveries and Recommendations<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOnly a very tiny list of writers comes to mind when you think of the finest American novelists,\u201d Dick Cavett once noted, \u201cand John Updike is certainly upon that very short list.\u201d The British novelist Ian McEwan went even further recently claiming that \u201cUpdike at his best is\u2026 a great observer. He never ceases to surprise and delight me. I love the intelligence of the sentences with that odd little hard-to-define spring\u2026 an extra beat that quickens my pulse. Who else does that? Shakespeare, Milton and many, many other poets. Bellow does. Calvino. There\u2019s no end of them, really. But never so copiously as Updike. One can read him at random and find some felicity on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is high praise indeed from some pretty reputable sources. But the fact that Updike wrote over sixty books (compared with, let\u2019s say, four for Salinger and nine for F. Scott Fitzgerald), makes it hard to say which is his best book or short story. Hence the variety of testimonies and recommendations here from a variety of readers all of whom have no hesitation in saying how much we appreciate that \u201codd little hard-to-define spring\u201d in John Updike\u2019s sentences.<\/p>\n

First Exposures<\/strong><\/p>\n

We begin with DON GREINER, the dean of Updike criticism, who discovered the writings of John Updike while he was a student at the University of Virginia: \u201cBecause those were the days after the deaths of Hemingway and Faulkner, Frost and Eliot, etc. we used to gather in a pub after leaving the library around 10 pm to drink a few beers and to argue about which current American writer would take the place of the recently deceased American modernists. Bellow was mentioned a great deal, but most of us put our money on Salinger. We did not know, of course, that Salinger had vowed not to publish again, a vow that he kept. But one of our group of beer-drinking \u2018intellectuals\u2019 insisted that I read his copy of Pigeon Feathers<\/em> and then decide. I have been reading Updike ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was one of those stories collected in Pigeon Feathers<\/em> that first turned JAMES PLATH onto Updike: \u201cLike so many, my first exposure to Updike came in high school, when I encountered a short story vaguely reminiscent of J. D. Salinger\u2019s that began, \u2018In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.\u2019 With that first sentence, Updike grabbed the attention of every pubescent boy in every high school in America \u2013 even the back-row jocks who leaned in their chairs against the wall. \u2018A & P\u2019 appeared in the Points of View<\/em> anthology, and it was easily one of the most accessible yet resonant stories we read in Honor\u2019s English. \u2018You know,\u2019 the 19-year-old narrator says, \u2018it\u2019s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet padding along naked over our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cApart from Salinger\u2019s Catcher in the Rye<\/em>, I couldn\u2019t recall reading any literature with a capital \u2018L\u2019 where even a word like \u2018naked\u2019 or \u2018bra\u2019 appeared, much less a description of \u2018the two smoothest scoops of vanilla\u2019 inside it. Like the more graphic sexual descriptions which would follow in Couples<\/em>, the Rabbit novels, and countless others, the metaphor seemed so startlingly right. But I also thought Updike perfectly captured the disconnect, the unrequited love between high school boys and girls that, at this stage in their lives, might as well have been Greek goddesses, for all their inaccessibility. Other Updike passages from other novels and short stories resonate, but you never forget the very first time that a writer speaks not just to you, but for <\/em>you.\u201d<\/p>\n

JACK De BELLIS stumbled upon Updike in 1962 while teaching a freshman comp\/lit course at UCLA and searching for a book that would show the world of Holden Caulfield as a grown-up, a person who couldn\u2019t be saved from adulthood by the catcher in the rye: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI thought Rabbit, Run<\/em> was perfect, and it was. Later I did a 45-minute radio review of the book; much later I published two articles: \u2018Oedipal Angstrom\u2019 and \u2018Names in the Rabbit Trilogy,\u2019 and of course went on to teach the book many times.\u201d<\/p>\n

BILJANA DOJCINOVIC was 15 or 16 years old when she went to the municipal library in Belgrade to borrow the recently translated novel everybody was talking about — Couples<\/em>. But the librarian thought that she was too young for such a book, and refused to hand it to her, saying that Couples<\/em> was a sociological study:<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, she gave me Rabbit, Run<\/em>\u2026. The recognition of closeness came in the scene when Rabbit comes back home and finds Janice, pregnant and alcoholic in their messy apartment. Before he goes out again to fetch Nelson from his mother, Janice calls from the kitchen, \u2018And honey, pick up a pack of cigarettes, could you?\u2019 Her voice awakens in Harry a strange sensation: \u2018Rabbit freezes, standing looking at his faint yellow shadow on the white door that leads to the hall, and senses he is in a trap. It seems certain. He goes out.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was this image of the character in the trap, between the door leading back to the hall\/hell and the one which was seemingly the exit, that made the deepest impression on me. Anti-hero Angstrom, obviously marked by existential Angst, facing the classic either\/or of going with the family, problems and all, or moving outside and risking the loneliness and cold — spoke to my not-quite-conscious youthful dilemmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeems to me, WILLIAM PRITCHARD recalls, \u201cthat one of the first, perhaps the <\/em>first time I became really aware of Updike\u2019s presence as a writer was at the end of \u2018The Happiest I\u2019ve Been,\u2019 the final story in The Same Door<\/em>. John Nordholm and his friend are driving to Chicago, and on the Pennsylvania Turnpike John\u2019s friend Neil let him take the wheel while he sleeps. The following great sentence raised my consciousness:<\/p>\n

There was the quality of the 10 a.m. sunshine as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thin overcast, blessing irresponsibility \u2013 you felt you could slice forever through such a good pure element \u2013 and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespread pride: Pennsylvania, your state \u2013 as if you had made your life.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI found attractive earlier parts of the story, a post-high school gathering of John and his friends, but it was the ending that took off, and I felt as exhilarated as our hero.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERNARD RODGERS initially encountered Updike via \u2018A & P\u2019 in a high school English class: \u201cI was 15 or so, and I already knew that I wanted to be a college professor of literature because of my discovery of writers like Updike whom I enjoyed so much. This seemed then, and still seems more than fifty years later, to be an amazing way to make a living: getting paid for doing what I love \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0— reading good books — and then having the chance to share that with young people\u2026. There was just something about Updike\u2019s tone of voice, and the beauty of his language, not to mention his subjects, that captured me from the beginning, even as an adolescent, and has never let go. Yesterday, I went back to Higher Gossip<\/em> to reread some of the pieces for a few hours in front of my fire in the midst of the snowstorms here, and, as always, there was the charm, wit, and easy grace I find so congenial and welcoming. Such a pleasure to be in the company of his well-informed and inquisitive mind!\u201d<\/p>\n

KATHLEEN VERDUIN read Updike in her junior year at Hope College: \u201cA good friend who had (gloriously, I thought) gone on to graduate school dropped me a line. \u2018If you get a chance,\u2019 he wrote, \u2018take a look at Updike\u2019s collection Pigeon Feathers<\/em>, especially the short story \u2018Lifeguard.\u2019 When I saw the Fawcett Crest paperback edition of Pigeon Feathers<\/em> for sale on the bookrack of the local drug store, I bought it immediately — probably for something like fifty cents. I liked \u2018Lifeguard\u2019 very much, but I was most taken by the title story. Born on a farm, I could appreciate its rural setting; an avid reader since childhood, I sympathized with young David Kern\u2019s frantic running back and forth from book to book, from his mother\u2019s copy of H. G. Wells to his grandfather\u2019s worn Bible to the shallow platitudes of his catechism workbook; and of course I was moved by the circumstances of his sudden and personal confrontation with mortality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was in the fall of 1963: Updike\u2019s name was still new, but his star was definitely rising, even — or maybe especially — at a small church-related college like Hope. The next Updike book I bought was Rabbit, Run<\/em>, and there was enough campus interest for me to review it for the student newspaper. When I finally (and rather to my surprise) found my way to a graduate program myself, I settled on Updike for the topic of my M. A. thesis. Couples<\/em> had just come out to great acclaim (naturally I bought the issue of Time<\/em> magazine featuring a portrait of Updike on the cover), and I felt that I somehow understood it. It was partly that Updike\u2019s protagonist, Piet Hanema, came from a Dutch Reformed background like mine; but more than that, I recognised a kind of longing in him, a stubborn drive for some kind of happiness, and the excitement I felt as I finished the thesis made even my cramped apartment endurable in the sweltering heat of a Washington D. C. summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still like these two books, Pigeon Feathers<\/em> and Couples<\/em>, very much, and they are probably the titles I would recommend to new readers of Updike. They present already the poles that famously define much of Updike\u2019s writing: the refreshing theological literacy that set him apart from the first but also the unflinchingly honest depictions of sexuality as it was playing out in what one of his characters calls \u2018the post-pill paradise.\u2019 Couples<\/em> retains for me an earnestness, a sense of the potential tragedy in human relations: there is very little of what seems to me the self-consciously puckish sexual banter of some of the later fiction (as when the Rev. Thomas Marshfield, in A Month of Sundays<\/em>, quips that women in his congregation swoop unerringly toward the scrotal concealed in the sacerdotal).<\/p>\n

\u201cPigeon Feathers<\/em> and Couples<\/em> contain as well some stunning examples of what is probably Updike\u2019s signature theme, the existential conviction of personal mortality: as when David Kern envisions the empty, gaping pit of a grave or Piet Hanema contemplates the vertiginous abyss of the night sky: \u2018Amid these impervious shining multitudes he felt a gigantic slipping; sinking upwards, he gripped the dim earth with his eyes.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

GLEN SMITH also cites Couples<\/em> as a favorite: \u201cI remember it well, a paperback in pinkish red color. The main character: Piet \u2013 roaming the streets of Tarbox (in his construction man\u2019s pickup on which someone has inscribed, in its dust, WASH ME), bedding all the nubile, young, willing wives of the town and finally settling on the newcomer; and Foxy– the earthy woman for whom Piet abandons his angelic wife Angela. Couples<\/em> is a sexy book, of course, but the sex in Couples<\/em> is real, its emotional context utterly convincing. This eloquent teller of home truths is the Jane Austen of the latter part of the 20th<\/sup> century.\u201d<\/p>\n

BARBARA KAY is pretty sure the first book of Updike she read was Pigeon Feathers<\/em>: \u201cAll the Maple Family stories captivated me. Couples<\/em> certainly had me riveted, and the Rabbit<\/em> series was tremendous. But I also loved his critical writing. I remember Hugging the<\/em> Shore<\/em> \u2013 the essays just kept astonishing me with his insights, gorgeous writing and incredible referential range in literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after JONATHON HOULON moved to Pennsylvania in 1992, he remembers asking a fellow graduate student in American literature who he would suggest was the most significant writer from the Keystone state: \u201cMy friend growled, \u2018John Updike,\u2019 as if there could be any other answer. I picked up a copy of Rabbit, Run<\/em> and it really knocked me out. It might have been my age (close to Harry\u2019s in that particular book) but I think it was mostly the lyrical writing. I am a musician. I hear books as much as I read them. There is not a false note in the Rabbit Tetralogy — an incredible accomplishment considering its length. I continue to learn from Updike and his painterly voice and apply the lessons to my song writing. I\u2019ve read a fair amount of JU at this point. And there\u2019s certainly more to recommend than Rabbit. But, really, that\u2019s where I\u2019d tell someone to start. If you want to learn about what it means to be an American — \u2018criminal yet never caught\u2019 is one way Updike describes his \u2018hero\u2019 — start with Harry Angstrom.\u201d<\/p>\n

CHRISTOPHER BIGELOW is another reader who was turned on first by Rabbit, Run<\/em>, a book that he read as an undergraduate at Emerson College in Boston. Updike has been his favorite author ever since: \u201cOne of the things I most anticipate is eventually rediscovering the Rabbit tetralogy and Couples<\/em>, 30-plus years after reading them. Other standouts for me have included The Witches of Eastwick,<\/em> S.,<\/em> In the Beauty of the Lilies,<\/em> Toward the End of Time<\/em>, and the memoir, Self-Consciousness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m also fascinated by the man and his career, all the more so after devouring the new Begley biography. As a sixth-generation Mormon, I used to be involved with some Mormon literary groups, and for many years I called for a \u2018Mormon Updike,\u2019 but such an author would likely portray too much sex (and other expressions of realism) for Mormon readers and too much Mormonism for outside readers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Pigeon Feathers\u2019 is the story that brought Updike into LARRY RANDEN\u2019S reading life: \u201cThe story of this young boy struggling with faith, doubt, and other weighty questions about death and eternal life spoke to me with staying power. I had no idea that a writer could be so profound and yet so joyous, poetic, in a word, readable.\u201d<\/p>\n

A college friend once handed JOHN McTAVISH a copy of Rabbit, Run<\/em> in the hope of disabusing McTavish of making noises about becoming a minister: \u201cInstead the novel simply knocked me over with its stunning mix of emotional realism and poetic beauty. Granted, the ministers in Rabbit, Run<\/em> are terrible role models: one an exasperatingly wishy-washy liberal and the other a painfully unbending conservative. But it wasn\u2019t too hard to see that Updike is using these two clerical clowns as illustrations of how the motions of grace can reach us through even the most unlikely channels, recalling the novel\u2019s epigraph from Pascal: \u2018The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circumstances.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Favorite Updike Books and Stories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of the Farm<\/em> is DON GREINER\u2019S favorite Updike book: \u201cThe prose is exquisite, of course, but I like the contrast between the lovely prose and the intensity of the debates between Joey and his mother, debates that are certainly not \u2018lovely\u2019 particularly when Joey betrays Peggy to his mom. Although the novel is written in the first person, I find the novel to be Updike\u2019s \u2018James novel,\u2019 although I realize that James generally disparaged the use of first person narration. Updike persuades me to have extreme reactions to Mrs. Robinson: sympathy for her loneliness, but distaste and even detestation for her selfish and dominating treatment of her son. I can only nod when Joey says, \u2018I think of myself as a weak man.\u2019 I don\u2019t know who \u2018wins\u2019 at the end, but I know, with regret, that Peggy loses.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

BRUCE McLEOD notes that in the shrinkage of bookshelves occasioned by their move to a condo years ago, \u201cI lost some old friends, but hung on to some special ones like Pigeon Feathers<\/em> and Roger\u2019s Version<\/em>. Picking up the latter today, I notice many margin marks and underlinings, especially in the early part of the book.<\/p>\n

I think I was attracted by the interrupting student way back in 1986. Only later did I begin to appreciate the deeper insights of Pascal and others, that the world provides \u2018enough light for those who desire to see and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.\u2019 And of course Updike\u2019s passing comments — like \u2018The pious often, I have noticed, have a definiteness that in others they would judge rude\u2019 were always worth a margin stroke.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlong the way, I loved his playing with words and images like Glenn Gould plays with notes and keys. I loved his \u2018noticing\u2019. Or \u2018paying attention\u2019 where we look away quickly. I long ago marked a favorite paragraph in Roger\u2019s Version<\/em> \u2013 his memorable description of the pipe-smoker (having once been one myself!):<\/p>\n

\u2018The pleasures of a pipe. The tapping, the poking, the twisting, the cleaning, the stuffing, the lighting; those first cheek-hollowing puffs, and the dramatic way the match flame is sucked deep into the tobacco, leaps high in release, and is sucked deep again. And then the mouth-filling perfume, the commanding clouds of smoke. Oddly I find the facial expressions and mannerisms of other men who smoke pipes stagy, prissy, preening, and offensive. But ever since I, as an unheeded admonition to Esther some years ago gave up cigarettes, the pipe has been my comfort, my steeplejack\u2019s grab, my handhold on the precipitous cliff of life.\u2019 Who else would notice that, describe it so exactly, or deepen it to a comment on despair!!\u201d<\/p>\n

ELIZABETH UPDIKE COBBLAH states that she reads what crosses her path, largely on the recommendations of others, or what strikes her fancy at the moment, adding, \u201cmy father\u2019s work included.\u201d She goes on to say, \u201cI suppose that makes me a grazer. I have to be careful reading my father\u2019s work as it is alluring and might also take me to a raw nerve of familiarity or feeling — potentially anything having to do with domestic life does so. It can also be comforting to read his work — a poem here, a snippet there — it brings him back, I hear his voice and the cadence of his sentences. Whatever feelings are evoked by the subject, I am always transported to a place of awe by the beauty of his words, his sensitivity and his ability to capture the essence of something.\u201d<\/p>\n

MICHAEL UPDIKE reports that at the time of his father\u2019s death he set out to read all of his father\u2019s fiction, poetry and essay collections: \u201cI had read the Rabbits<\/em>, Marry Me<\/em>, S.,<\/em> Brazil<\/em> and Gertrude and<\/em> Claudius<\/em>. In addition to the novels completed there were some that I stopped reading before page fifty. I got stalled in Roger\u2019s Version<\/em> reading the science-can-prove-God-exists theory. Memories of the<\/em> Ford Administration<\/em> was put down early when a scene involving cunnilingus presented itself. Nor did I have better luck with Seek My Face<\/em>. I had read about a third of the short stories. As each new book arrived by mail or in person after a round of golf, it felt like required reading. I had the best intention of getting to it before the reviews came out but I usually didn\u2019t and the reviews, good or bad, would convince me that there was no hurry. It always seemed that I was about to open the last book when a new one would arrive. The joke between my siblings was \u2018\u2026. another book from father? I\u2019m not finished not reading the last one.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIn tackling the long list of unread Updike here is what I enjoyed. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I have put the Rabbits aside. The Centaur<\/em> was fabulous as a novel and I learned many things about my grandfather. Of the Farm<\/em> is my favorite. It is such a spooky little gem that captures my Grandmother\u2019s \u2018ways\u2019 on that claustrophobic farm. Roger\u2019s<\/em> Version<\/em> was very enjoyable. I have aspirations to repeat the walk that the character takes down Mass Ave. Memories of the Ford<\/em> Administration<\/em> wasn\u2019t so bad. I enjoyed S.<\/em> It was very funny and doesn\u2019t deserve the anti-women charge. The Coup<\/em> needs to be made into a movie. It was hilarious. Toward the End of Time<\/em> worked for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

PETER SELLICK has read all of Updike\u2019s fiction but comes back to Couples<\/em> every couple of years: \u201cI think it is his most theologically deft work. The novel is centred around four main characters: Piet Hanema the earth man, his wife Angela who is divine and abstracted, Foxy Whitman, earthy and real, and the dentist Freddy Thorne, demonic and nihilistic. The essence of the book is the outworking of the relationships between these four. After an agreement that Freddy would sleep with Angela in exchange for arranging an abortion for Foxy, Freddy proves impotent. The demonic may not penetrate the divine! The activities of the couples are judged by an act of God who strikes the Congregational Church with lightening releasing a shower of old sermons, one of which Piet reads. It shows how America has not lived up to its original hopes. In the end, Piet and Foxy, the incarnate couple, leave town, and the life of the couples reverts to the ordinary. Couples<\/em> rewards re-reading because of, among other choice felicities, its theological complexity and insight.\u201d<\/p>\n

GARY RIGG cites not a book or passage but a favorite moment in one of Updike\u2019s interviews with Charlie Rose: \u201cPushed for a \u2018why\u2019 concerning his churchgoing, Updike, seeming a little uncomfortable about making any sort of avowal one way or another, replied, in his very droll fashion, \u2018It\u2019s the only place where they\u2019ll let me sing.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

BRIAN KENNEDY cites a short story from Problems<\/em> as his favorite: \u201c \u2018Minutes of the Last Meeting\u2019 sticks in my mind. It has great insight into human nature and makes me chuckle every time I think of it. The story concerns the narrator\u2019s account of the minutes taken at a church committee meeting, but it\u2019s applicable to many of the meetings that many of us attend over a lifetime. I\u2019m chuckling now just remembering it.\u201d<\/p>\n

JACK De BELLIS\u2019S most cherished book is \u201cRabbit, Run<\/em> with The Centaur<\/em>, Rabbit is Rich<\/em>, Rabbit at Rest<\/em>, Roger\u2019s<\/em> Version<\/em>, S<\/em> and The Witches of Eastwick<\/em> on the novels-short-list. Afterlife<\/em> and Pigeon Feathers<\/em> among the story collections, Picked-Up Pieces<\/em> and Just Looking<\/em> among essay collections, and The<\/em> Collected Poems<\/em> and Endpoint<\/em> among the poetry collections.\u201d<\/p>\n

In connection with Rabbit, Run<\/em>, De Bellis adds, \u201cI was stunned when I first read it. Like most others, I was floored by the language, but also by the description of the failure of the institutions from church to family to support a weak marriage \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(I had just gone through a divorce). I was also stunned by Updike\u2019s courage in drowning the baby and depicting male desire so honestly. And I loved the open-ended ending, the dreams, and Updike\u2019s ability to notice <\/em>and to know <\/em>so much about people.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Recommendations<\/strong><\/p>\n

JACK De BELLIS again: \u201cI\u2019d go with J U\u2019s own recommendation and say Olinger Stories<\/em>. They are easier for a first reader and amply demonstrate Updike\u2019s genius with language, his three-dimensional characters, and his knowingness<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

DON GREINER\u2019S recommendation consists of six short stories: three stories with conventional form, three with more experimental form: \u201cPigeon Feathers,\u201d \u201cThe Bulgarian Poetess,\u201d and \u201cA Sandstone Farmhouse\u201d; and \u2013 the experimental stories \u2013 \u201cLeaves,\u201d \u201cHarv is Plowing Now,\u201d and \u201cThe Music School.\u201d<\/p>\n

ANDREW FAIZ: \u201cThe Rabbits.\u201d<\/p>\n

BRUCE McLEOD: \u201cThe poems always grab, and sometimes stick like burrs. They\u2019re not sweet; always (or often) a dark edge. I love \u201cBaseball\u201d \u2013 \u201cinvented in America, where beneath\/the good cheer and sly jazz the chance\/of failure is everybody\u2019s right,\/ beginning with baseball\u201d. Also, \u201cThe Rockettes\u201d for sheer precision of word choice. And, of course, \u201cReligious Consolation\u201d: \u201c\u2026 Strange, the extravagance of it, who needs\/ those eighteen-armed black Kalis, those musty saints\/whose bones and bleeding wounds appall good taste,\/ those joss sticks, houris, gilded Buddhas, books\/ Moroni etched in tedious detail? We do; we need more world. This one will fail.\u201d<\/p>\n

JOHN McTAVISH recommends Marry Me<\/em> \u201cwith its diadem-shaped structure, reader-friendly dialogue and unsparing portrayal of the irresolvable nature of eros<\/em>. Interestingly, Adam Begley\u2019s biography suggests that Marry Me<\/em> is Updike\u2019s most underrated book. It is certainly a radical love story showing Jerry Conant \u2018destroying his wife and wading through his children\u2019s blood\u2019 in order to marry his — for the moment — great love.\u201d<\/p>\n

RYAN ROBERTS offers, as favorites, not so much books as particular moments and sentences:<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Updike came at me like a fog that hovers over my personal literary landscape. I remember no clear moment of introduction and have no original story to tell. Instead, I have moments of reading that cling to me. I remember the sound I imagined as \u2018Cars licked by on the asphalt\u2019 in a \u2018Soft Spring Night in Shillington.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember my wonder at his description of a sidewalk in Terrorist<\/em>: \u2018cracks in the concrete hold crabgrass and mullein and dandelions and ridges of the minute particles, shining like coffee grounds, of the underlying earth which ants have brought to the surface.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the alliteration and the poetry of his prose in Rabbit,<\/em> Run<\/em>: \u201cHe feels the faded night he left behind in this place as a net of telephone calls and hasty trips, trails of tears and strings of words, white worried threads shuttled through the night and now faded but still existent, an invisible net overlaying the steep streets and in whose center he lives secure in his locked hollow hutch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the pain I felt for the Maples and their sometimes\u00a0\u00a0 awkward and demanding love as they unmarried in Rome.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the uncertainty Updike made me feel about myself and my personal history. That our memories are but moments in time lost to the past. And what are we to know about that past? \u2018After all, doesn\u2019t history demonstrate over and over how hard it is to say what actually did<\/em> happen\u2026? \u201d (Memories of the Ford<\/em> Administration<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember all these things and more, but Updike\u2019s greatest gift seems to be his sustained quality, so even with a dozen or more books thumbed and shelved, so much remains to discover.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Contributors<\/strong><\/p>\n

–Christopher Bigelow is a freelance writer, editor, and publisher from Provo, Utah.
\n— Elizabeth Updike Cobblah is an art teacher and John Updike\u2019s oldest child.
\n–Jack De Bellis is a JUS director and has published several books on John Updike including the recent John Updike\u2019s Early Years<\/em>.
\n–Biljana Dojcinovic is Professor of Literature, Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade in Serbia.
\n–Andrew Faiz is a playwright and editor of The Presbyterian Record in Toronto.
\n–Donald Greiner is a JUS director and has published several books and articles on John Updike including John Updike\u2019s Novels<\/em>.
\n–Jonathon Houlon is a singer and songwriter based in Philadelphia.
\n–Barbara Kay is a columnist for the Canadian national broadsheet The National Post.
\n–Brian Kennedy operates an antiquarian book business in Glen Williams, Ontario.
\n–Bruce McLeod lives in Toronto, Ontario and is a former Moderator of the United Church of Canada.
\n–John McTavish lives in Huntsville, Ontario and is the compiler of these reflections on John Updike\u2019s work.
\n–James Plath teaches English at Illinois Wesleyan University and is the President of the John Updike Society.
\n–William H. Pritchard is the author of Updike:<\/em> America\u2019s Man of Letters <\/em>and a specialist in British poetry and contemporary fiction.
\n— <\/em>Larry Randen is a retired minister of the United Church of Christ and former Updike researcher and contributor to The Centaurian.
\n<\/em>–Gary Rigg is a retired engineer and avid reader who rates Updike highest on his list of all time favorite authors (followed by Isaac Singer and probably Hemingway).
\n–Ryan Roberts is a College librarian and maintains the official websites of Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan.
\n–Bernard Rodgers is an English professor and the editor of Critical Insights: John Updike<\/em>.
\n–Peter Sellick is an Anglican Deacon and lives in Perth, Australia.
\n–Glen Smith is a lawyer in Huntsville, Ontario.
\n–Michael Updike is a sculptor and John Updike\u2019s youngest son.
\n–Kathleen Verduin is an English professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conferences are fun\u00a0reunions, but they also inspire people to attempt new projects. Shortly after the Third Biennial John Updike Society Conference in Reading, Pa. this past October, John McTavish thought it would be a great idea to do a round-up … 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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612","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=2612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2613,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions\/2613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}