John Updike’s passing

John Updike’s passing

Posted on January 28th, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

I feel badly about John Updike’s passing, for several reasons. First, I regret that my one and only review of an Updike novel (at PopMatters.com) was mostly negative. The Widows of Eastwick was not his best novel, by a long shot, but I wrote about it looking back at many great books and looking forward to reviewing a better. And I regret, deeply, the passing of another great literary lion — with Bellow, Mailer, and Updike gone, that leaves only Philip Roth from the pinnacle of that great literary era I was lucky enough to live through. (Live long, Philip!) But most of all I regret that the great, protean outpouring from Updike’s pen is now stoppered. There’s probably a novel or two more finished, and another collection of non-fiction, to come, but the end is here. And that is just plain depressing news.

I met Updike at a cocktail party before a reading and he signed my copy of Brazil. (My review refers to a discussion we had related to that book.) I remember asking him about Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I was upset by Franzen’s making humor of Alzheimer’s in the book, which had struck close to home for personal reasons, and I wanted to know from Updike if he’d read it and was similarly offended. He said he hadn’t, which, considering all the hooha about it at the time, was surprising. He said, though, “Well, now I’ll have to read it.” I’ll never know if he did or not, since he’s never written about the book to my knowledge.

My favorite Updike includes the first two Rabbit books, all of the Bech stories, “S”, Brazil, Gertrude and Claudius, Marry Me, The Witches of Eastwick, The Centaur, and the many many short stories I’ve read over the years. Books like Memories of the Ford Administration, In the Beauty of the Lilies, and Villages, left me cold, but I couldn’t deny the sustained beauty of the writing even while I found the story or the structure of the books disappointing. Some have complained of Updike (and Joyce Carol Oates) that perhaps if he had written less, he might have written more great books. That, to me, is like saying if Babe Ruth had been fewer times at bat he might have hit more home runs. The home runs Updike did hit will go on forever.

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.