Your Shoe's Too Big To Kickbox God

With respect to Nicholson Baker's U and I, which presents a singular "reader response" critique of John Updike's works in which Updike is quoted only from Baker's memory without any reference back to the texts, here are a few thoughts on the life and work of Updike.

As with other "celebrity" deaths, my first response to Updike's death was rather bland. But then last night I happened upon the concert/biographic movie "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man," and found myself reflecting on the similarities between Cohen and Updike. They look somewhat alike, and -- to my ear -- have exactly the same voice. They both speak softly but commandingly, with an aura of wisdom and sly humor that -- in both cases -- seems well-crafted. One can imagine Cohen (a Canadian Jew and ordained Buddhist monk, 74) and Updike (King of all WASPs, 76) critiquing each other's poems. Cohen's songwriting is best approached through other voices, I find. Similarly, Updike may be more important to me for his influence on other writers than for his own work. While thinking about all this, I got a text message from Sullivan: why am I sad that updike died? Exactly.

I've never made it to the end of an Updike novel. I had to put Memories of the Ford Administration down because I found its' sex scenes to be rediculously implausible: the young co-ed's mother comes to visit the aging professor to take him to task for sleeping with her daughter, and then -- wacka-chick-wacka -- the mother and the aging professor start getting it on. Surely the daughter was about to discover them together, and then... Afficianados of Updike call this sort of thing "One-Handed Reading." Meanwhile, a UK literary magazine awarded Updike their 'Bad Sex in Fiction" lifetime achievement award.

As a teen I tried Witches of Eastwick and Couples or maybe S.?, but had trouble with their suburbanity. I discovered John Cheever, and read everything I could get my hands on, finding him far more accessible than Updike despite the author's shared crusty-Connecticut-ness.

I enjoyed Updike's speaking voice very much. I attended a reading by him in the UW-Milwaukee Ballroom in the early nineties and, aside from being charming and droll, he read a story about a divorced father helping his family clean out their house. "Still of Some Use," if I'm remembering correctly. I fondly recall the softening of his voice when he spoke as the man's son: "Daaad?" You got the sense he really felt his stories.

Also a favorite: his book of short stories titled Problems. Some of these are very experimental, in the vein of authors like Donald Barthleme or Robert Coover. There are stories in the form of meeting minutes, unsolveable mathematics problems, and other formal games that seemed to me to loosen up the whole white protestant New England male thing. I similarly admire, though have not looked into, Updike's willingness to explore territory beyond his own, such as magical realism in his novel Brazil or the romance of Hamlet's mom in Gertrude and Claudius. Even if they may not be great works, they strike me as interesting and courageous.

Updike was also a frustrated comic strip artist, so I always enjoyed reading his essays on comics, cartoons, and a particular fine piece on the evolution of Mickey Mouse which appeared, if I remember correctly, in Best American Essays 2002. It's also very possible that the essay I'm attributing to Updike was written by the science writer Stephen Jay Gould.

I once listened to Terry Gross, of NPR's Fresh Air, interview Updike before a live audience, probably at the 92nd St Y. Gross made Updike read some of his sex scenes aloud, explaining that if he wrote them he should be able to read them in public without embarassment. Updike did so, with some good humor and without complaint.

I also read "A&P" at least once in each instance of my education -- in high school English, in college lit, and in grad school deconstruction. If you want to demonstrate the epiphany in action, "A&P" is your short story.

Finally, it should be mentioned that Updike, for good or ill, is the man who murdered J.D. Salinger. At the height of Salinger's Glassian output, Updike wrote this review of Franny & Zooey, which remains one of the most elloquent and pointed hatchet jobs ever put to print, Dale Peck not excepted. Updike was 29 at the time, Salinger 42, and among the mid-20th century New Yorker set this must have been a betrayal equal to Lando Calrissian's. (Okay, so I labored over notable betrayals here for a while. Brutus and Caesar seemed too over-worn.)

I suppose it's a testament to Updike's output and prestige that, despite all of the interactions here described, I feel like I've never read him.