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I was and am a voracious and indiscriminate reader; my father is a slow and selective reader. I couldn't have been more than 14 when he plucked John Updike's Rabbit, Run off the shelf and handed it to me. "I think you'll like this one," he said.
He was right -- I did.
I liked it even better when I reread it in my late 20s, when I actually understood a lot of the finely-crafted underpinnings I'm sure I'd skimmed over as a young teen.
John Updike has always been one of those authors I keep going back to -- in the early days I thought reading him made me wise and worldly; and then for a while I believed he was overrated and there were plenty of better authors out there; and finally I've reached a place where I appreciate his writing as for what it is: A remarkable body of work from a man who somehow knew how to mix life and imagination and put it down on paper in a compelling way, again and again and again.
Updike passed away yesterday after a battle with lung cancer. He was 76 years old, and leaves behind a legacy of over fifty books to his name.
All around the web, fans are remembering this prolific author and the role he's played in their lives.
Heartcrossings says:
On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing.
Even if Mailer is right, I am proud to be the kind of plebeian reader who knows nothing about writing. Thanks to my ignorance, I have some of my fondest reading memories. I would never trade them for the knowledge or appreciation of good writing by strict literary standards. It is sad to think that there will never be another new Updike book to anticipate or enjoy.
Laurie Cosbey of A World in a Grain of Sand quotes Updike himself:
The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.
-John UpdikeThe essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives forever.
–John UpdikeAmen.
Maggie May of Flux Capacitor has penned an entire letter of thanks (well worth the entire read, though here's an excerpt):
I first found you in a dusty paperback, on the deeply polished mahogany chest in my parent's bedroom, four drawers high and smelling and looking like Adulthood. I was 13. I grabbed the book and immediately noticed the title- Rabbit, Run = hooked. I was hooked. You had me at ' Rabbit ', Mr. Updike, and then with the addition of ' Run ' I knew, by the quickening in my veins, I had found someone, something special. A special novel. This feeling, finding a book that I know is going to change me, is a most cherished emotion, a feeling I am hard pressed to explain, except that it is like how Lucy felt looking into the Wardrobe; it is the drawing back of a veil, a mystery, and the revealing of something entirely true and yet never before articulated or expressed in just this way. It is the looking forward to sheer, mouth watering pleasure. The pleasure may be in the beautiful lyricism of the author, it may be in the sheer weight and expression of their intellect, it may be in the unexpected and unique voice, or it may be the brilliant expression of truth...and in some, rare and miraculous cases, it may be all these. Mr. Updike, Sir, your book was all of these, and more.
Bybee of Naked Without Books! can hardly believe it:
Although it was delusional, I let myself think that he would go on forever. I just finished reading Roger's Version, a novel he wrote back in 1986. The most expensive book I own is a Franklin Library copy of Rabbit Run. Yes, I'm babbling. The news doesn't want to sink in. I felt exactly the same way when Rabbit Angstrom died at the end of Rabbit At Rest. I'm lucky that Updike was so prolific -- there's tens of volumes of his -- fiction, nonfiction and poetry -- that I haven't read yet.
Lisa L of A (really) Simple Life is saddened, as well:
I 'grew up' with John Updike. I've read every one of his books. I adore his
