{"id":4011,"date":"2017-07-05T08:05:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T13:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=4011"},"modified":"2017-07-05T08:05:36","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T13:05:36","slug":"u-and-i-and-ian-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2017\/07\/05\/u-and-i-and-ian-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"U and I and Ian Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Globe and Mail<\/em> recently published a summer reading feature and asked staff to share “The book that changed me.”<\/a><\/p>\n

“Nicholson Baker\u2019s U and I: A True Story<\/em> changed the way I thought about books, writers, writing, reading and what it meant to be honest on the page. That\u2019s quite a lot for one book to have\u00a0accomplished.<\/p>\n

“U and I<\/em> is a (short) book-length essay about Baker\u2019s obsession with John Updike \u2013 a writer his mother admired (she once laughed out loud at Updike\u2019s<\/span> description, in describing a golf game, of a ‘divot the size of an undershirt’), and whom Baker thereupon wanted to emulate. The book begins with Baker deciding not to write about Donald Barthelme<\/span>, who had just died, but to write about Updike instead, because the stakes in writing about a living writer seemed higher, more\u00a0consequential.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“At that point, the book departs from convention completely: Baker admits, for instance, that he has only read half a dozen of Updike\u2019s<\/span> more than 20 novels (he wrote nearly 60 books, in total). But lack of familiarity never stops a young writer from being obsessed by an older one! In fact, it\u2019s lack of familiarity that stokes the obsession. And how obsessive he is! Baker wants to be<\/em> Updike: He notes that, while he doesn\u2019t golf, they both have psoriasis, both on their penises \u2013 which Baker desperately hopes gives them something in common. Of course, as the always hilarious, brilliant, stylish and readable Baker eventually reveals, what they really share is the ability to experience the world\u00a0ecstatically.<\/p>\n

“Baker somehow manages to take an ancient, rather pompous genre \u2013 the literary essay of writerly<\/span> appreciation \u2013 and turn it into something it has never been before, an utterly candid, and therefore shocking, examination of the way we really read, and use books, as opposed to the way we pretend to read, loaded down by all our cultural pretensions. Baker thinks the stuff we forget we\u2019ve read is more important than what we remember: Throughout the book, he keeps quoting Updike from memory, and then exposing how shoddy his memory is, by revealing the actual passage he thinks he\u2019s\u00a0remembering.<\/p>\n

“And it\u2019s very funny, and the story never flags. But I guess what I admire most about U and I<\/em> is its compassion: for Updike, his industriousness and his failures; for the impossible challenge of writing \u2013 and living \u2013 honestly, and how often we fail at both; for, most of all, readers, via Baker\u2019s assumption that every reader will want to admit the truth about themselves and books, and therefore feel freer than they were when they started the book. That\u2019s what reading\u2019s all about, isn\u2019t\u00a0it?”<\/p>\n

Amazon link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Globe and Mail recently published a summer reading feature and asked staff to share “The book that changed me.” “Nicholson Baker\u2019s U and I: A True Story changed the way I thought about books, writers, writing, reading and what … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011","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\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4014,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions\/4014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}