fiction

THE DEATH OF JOHN UPDIKE

I’d intended to write about my next project in this blog, but something far more important came up: the death of John Updike. For any serious reader of modern American fiction, Updike is a must. His quartet of novels about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom (Rabbit, Run, 1960; Rabbit Redux, 1971; Rabbit Is Rich, 1981; Rabbit at Rest, 1990) is an epic of American middle-class life: a high school basketball star marries young, sees his “future grow familiar,” to quote Lowell, flounders, recovers, becomes a successful car dealer (Toyotas, interestingly), struggles with his faith, his morality, his wife (and various other women), his son, his ingestion of booze and drugs, his health (heart trouble), and, at the end of a long and twisting road … well, in case you haven’t read these books but still might, I won’t tell you any more, except to say that Rabbit is living in a condo in Florida at the climax of Rabbit at Rest and, fittingly, basketball is involved.

As well as being a writer of consummate style, Updike was prolific. Compelled to write, he tried to produce at least one book a year. In the end, he wrote almost 30 novels, more than a dozen books of short stories, nine collections of poetry, as well as books of essays and criticism and autobiography. During 2008 alone, he published two short stories, a memoir, and three book reviews in The New Yorker Magazine. Especially poignant are his musings on getting old  in “A Desert Encounter” (20/10/08); and in his powerful short story “Outage” (07/01/08) he flexes his muscles one last time on the subject of sexual tension in suburbia. His last short story (26/06/08) was — ironically and wonderfully — called ‘The Full Glass.’ He was a writer to the end.

What Updike gave me (aside from lessons in the craft of writing: he was a master and mentor, a guide and father-figure) was this: his subject matter, as sordid as it sometimes was — the bedroom society of Couples (1968), for example — was about ordinary human behaviour; he always dealt with it candidly and non-judgmentally. He was a chronicler of our time. When I learned of his death, I felt a personal loss, as if a close friend or relative had died. And that is exactly what did happen. Although he never knew me, I knew him (or at least I believed I did, and still do) through his writing, and I loved him for his candour — for showing me that he saw the world much the way I did, and for reassuring me that despite our weaknesses as human beings, we are all still capable — as he and his characters were — of noble deeds.

See Jeet Heer’s piece in The National Post (28/01/09) and M. T. Kelly’s piece in The Globe & Mail (29/01/09) by clicking here and here.

Next Installment: My next project: Men in Groups.

Tags: Add new tag, American Odyssey, Authors, books, crime, J.D. Carpenter, John Updike, mystery, Twelve Trees

About the author

J.D. Carpenter's Campbell Young novels have been nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award, appeared on national bestseller lists (The Globe & Mail), and received critical acclaim (The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, Maclean's, Quill & Quire).