It’s an unfortunate fact of life — or, rather, of death — that it takes the passing of a great artist for many people to first become acquainted with his work. So be it. If you haven’t yet read any John Updike, or know of him primarily from his somewhat, though not entirely, unfair reputation as a horny chronicler of suburban marital disfunction, you owe it to yourself to discover what an effortlessly insightful, memorable, and clever (in the best sense of that word) writer he was. 

Fortunately, it isn’t difficult at all to make his acquaintance, because he was at his best when his writing was most compressed. The Rabbit novels had their moments, but for pure spine-tingling genius, there is no substitute for his short stories.  

I discovered just how amazing his short stories are when I was a freshman in college. I was majoring in psychology at the time, for reasons I no longer can recall, when I happened to read one of his stories in a beat-up paperback collection. I also can’t remember the story’s title, but there was a paragraph in there — something to do with a brief encounter between a man and a woman in an apartment doorway — that contained more insight into human behavior than all of my psychology classes put together. 

Within days, I’d switched my major to English. 

Since then, I’ve read almost everything he’s written, except for some of his lesser novels (and there were a few too many of those, unfortunately.) Second only to his short stories is his incredibly generous literary criticism, which cast its glow over some of the greatest writers of our time, including some that you and I would otherwise never have heard of.   

It’s sad, in a way, that there is nobody like Updike around today to write a proper appreciation of Updike himself. But at least we still can savor Updike’s appreciations of his fellow writers — even if, in most cases, his genius far outshone theirs.

Tweet  Print This Post

Tags: books & writing // 1 Comment »