Updike (70 page)

203 “none of the excisions really hurt”:
OJ
, 846.

203 his aim was “to write about sex”:
CJU
, 223.

204 “the creature of impulse”:
HG
, 449.

204 “With a sob of protest she grapples for the child”:
RRun
, 264.

204 “Well, I just drowned the baby”: Author interview, MW, November 1, 2011.

204 “Obviously, there was no real baby involved”:
CJU
, 132.

205 his “aesthetic and moral aim”:
HG
, 451.

205 “I once did something right”:
RRun
, 105.

206 Harry Angstrom was a “ticket,” Updike wrote:
HG
, 448.

V. The Two Iseults

207 “There is no such thing as static happiness”:
T
d.

207 he was “falling in love, away from marriage”: JU,
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu
(Northridge, CA: John Lord Press, 1977), xi.

209 a “scabby tenement” in the center of Ipswich: LP, March 27, 1960, Houghton.

209 someone “who, equipped with pencils and paper”:
AP
, 145.

209 “everything artistic is kept down here”: JU to WM, April 19, 1960, NYPL.

209 “I’ve rented a little room”: JU to VG, March 23, 1960, Orion.

210 This “weave of promiscuous friendship”:
LL
, 96.

211 “a stag of sorts,” as he wrote in his memoirs:
SC
, 222.

211 “malicious, greedy . . . obnoxious . . .”: Ibid.

214 “a new kind of fictional space”:
T
d.

215 Maxwell assured Updike: WM to JU, May 5, 1960, NYPL.

216 “I miss Grandpa, even at this distance”: LP, September 15, 1953, Houghton.

218 stitched-together, “fugal” form:
MM
, 768.

221 “under a great pressure of sadness”: JU to Edward Hoagland, January 12, 1962, Houghton.

222 “a biune study of complementary moral types”:
HG
, 449.

222 “The main motive force behind
The Centaur
”:
CJU
, 49.

222 “I’m carrying death in my bowels”:
C
, 54.

222 his “gayest” book:
CJU
, 35.

222 “I had death in my lungs”:
SC
, 96.

223 “I carried within me fatal wounds”: Ibid., 97.

223 a time of “desperation”: Ibid.

223 “[T]o give myself brightness and air”: Ibid., 98.

223 “We cannot reach Him, only He can reach us”:
AP
, 212.

223 “Ipswich belonged to Barth”:
SC
, 98.

224 “I decided . . . I
would
believe”: Ibid., 230.

224 “Religion enables us to ignore nothingness”: Ibid., 228.

224 “The choice seemed to come down to”:
BookTV.

224 “that one’s sense of oneself”:
WMRR
.

224 Once, while he was in the basement: Michiko Kakutani, “Turning Sex and Guilt into an American Epic,”
Saturday Review
, October 1981, 21.

224 “[A]s I waited, on a raw rainy fall day”:
SC
, 97.

224 what he himself called his “incessant sociability”: Ibid., 54.

225 “Egoistic dread faded within the shared life”: Ibid., 55.

225 Updike volunteered “as a favor and a lark”:
MM
, 807.

225 he was surrounded by his friends, and yet in “an elevated position”: Ibid., 809.

226 “Your literary energy has failed you here”: Author interview, Mary Webb, November 16, 2009.

227 “The first word I wrote for him”: Author interview, ND, July 28, 2011.

227 “For a beginner, you seem remarkably knowing”: JU, “Two Communications to Nicholas Delbanco,” in Frederick Busch, ed.,
Letters to a Fiction Writer
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 232.

227 “What was unforgettable,” Delbanco said: Author interview, ND, July 28, 2011.

227 Updike put the letter down: E-mail, Jonathan Penner to author, August 2, 2011.

227 agreeing to the teaching job had been “sort of foolish”: JU to WM, August 11, 1962, NYPL.

227 “I can’t make friends with twelve people”: Author interview, Mary Webb, November 16, 2009.

227 “Teaching takes a lot of energy”:
CJU
, 157.

228 “Her eyes were the only glamorous feature”:
ES
, 515.

229 Herbert had “the manner of the local undertaker”: LP, May 18, 1958, Houghton.

229 “I took the phone,” Mary remembered: Author interview, MW, July 14, 2012.

230 “He was pretty darn miserable”: Author interview, MW, July 15, 2012.

231 description expresses love:
SC
, 231.

232 “one of the most peaceful and scenic places”: LP, September 14, 1959, Houghton.

232 “a conspicuously autobiographical writer”: WM to JU, June 25, 1965, NYPL.

233 He asked that it not be put “on the bank”: JU to WM, June 15, 1963, Illinois.

233 “though the vessel of circumstantial facts is all invented”: JU to WM, July 19, 1963, NYPL.

233 stories of the “non-troublesome” variety: JU to WM, June 15, 1963, Illinois.

234 characterized by a kind of self-inflicted punishment: See William H. Pritchard,
John Updike: America’s Man of Letters
(South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2000), 122. (Hereafter cited as Pritchard,
Updike
.)

234 “No memory of any revision”:
HS
, 853.

235 “A door had opened, and shut”:
SC
, 98.

237 “we could turn what should be a happy adventure”: LGH to JU, October 25, 1962, Ursinus.

237 “people are incorrigibly themselves”: JU,
The Maples Stories
(New York: Everyman’s Pocket Classics, 2009), 11. (Hereafter cited as
JU
,
The Maples Stories
.)

237 “Richard and Joan Maple had become”:
WMRR
.

241 “mythanalysis of culture”: Denis de Rougemont,
Love Declared
(New York: Pantheon Press, 1963), 34.

241 The review, as Updike later remarked:
CJU
, 29.

241 “an etymology of the passions”: Denis de Rougemont,
Love in the Western World
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 18.

241 “form of love which refuses the immediate”: De Rougemont,
Love Declared
, 41

241 “Tristan loves the awareness”: De Rougemont,
Love in the Western World
, 41–42.

241 “disguises a twin narcissism”: Ibid., 52.

241 a “longing for what sears us”: Ibid., 50.

241 de Rougemont “hangs on their necks”: “Books: Liebestod,”
Time
, September 2, 1940.

242 “selfish and altruistic threads”:
AP
, 225.

242 de Rougemont is “dreadfully right”: Ibid., 232.

242 “Only in being loved,” he writes: Ibid., 233.

243 they “hunkered down”:
LL
, 93.

243 a man in love “ceases to fear death”:
AP
, 222–23.

243 an “angst-besmogged period”:
SC
, 99.

243 “an ingenious psychosomatic mechanism”: Ibid.

244 “invulnerably detached” and “quite vulnerable”: LP, October 1, 1963, Houghton.

246 too “crowded,” as Updike himself put it:
HS
, 854.

249 the “clangor” of the last two paragraphs: Ibid., 855.

249 say “something good” for the “sad magic”: Ibid.

250 “I was talking to someone about John Updike”: Mary McCarthy, “The Art of Fiction No. 27,”
The Paris Review
(Winter–Spring 1962).

250 “delicate symmetry and balance”: Renata Adler, “Arcadia, Pa.,”
The New Yorker
, April 13, 1963, 185.

250 “brilliantly talented and versatile”: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,”
The New York Times
, February 4, 1963, 7.

251 “Updike finds his way more accurately”: “Prometheus Unsound,”
Time
, February 8, 1963, 86.

251 “the most significant young novelist in America”: Peter Buitenhuis, “Pennsylvania Pantheon,”
The New York Times Book Review
, April 7, 1963, 4.

251 feeling “wobbly,” he told Maxwell: JU to WM, May 4, 1964, Illinois.

251 his wife, unlike her fictional avatar, was “strongly on the scene”: JU to WM, September 1, 1964, Illinois.

251 “I was not privy to
Marry Me
,” she said: Author interview, WM, November 2, 2011.

252 “unease about the book’s lack of . . . sociology”:
CJU
, 134.

254 Updike’s “obsession with adultery”: Maureen Howard, “Jerry and Sally and Richard and Ruth,”
The New York Times Book Review
, October 31, 1976, 2.

254 Updike’s “one big situation”: Alfred Kazin, “Alfred Kazin on Fiction,”
The New Republic
, November 27, 1976, 23.

VI. Couples

256 “In fact . . . the literary scene is a kind of
Medusa
’s raft”:
OJ
, 117.

256 Her husband was at the dentist:
DC
, 114.

256 “We didn’t know what gesture to make”:
CJU
, 161.

257 “The fashion that fall was for deep décolletage”:
Couples
, 357.

257 “Take, eat. . . . This is his body, given for thee”: Ibid., 386.

257 “the dancing couples were gliding”: Ibid., 375.

257 “dense reality” through thick description:
CJU
, 146.

257 “It was as if we slept from Friday to Monday”:
AP
, 96.

257 “Our private lives had become the real concern”:
CJU
, 161.

258 “[W]hat concupiscent vanity it used to be”:
SC
, 78.

259 “complicating factors” might force him: JU to AAK, April 8, 1964, Ransom.

259 it “takes place in the future”:
CJU
, 37.

259
The Centaur
after the centaur has died: Ibid., 27.

260 “a kind of chamber music”: JU to AAK, May 6, 1965, Ransom.

260 “It’s a book people mention to me”:
CJU
, 239.

260 “a little flight among imaginary moments”: LP, July 3, 1965, Houghton.

261 “underlying thematic transaction”:
PP
, 92–93.

261 “We were striking terms, and circumspection was needed”:
OF
, 174.

261 One goes so far as to cite Eliot’s dictum: Pritchard,
Updike
, 104.

262 an attempt “to show an aging mother”:
MM
, 11.

263 “Maybe in Russia,” he wrote, “I’ll learn to think big”: JU to WM, October 20, 1964, NYPL.

263 “He was so good about it,” said Luers: Author interview, William Luers, November 5, 2011.

263 felt obliged “to be a good guest of the Soviet state”:
SC
, 139.

263 “wearing abroad,” as he put it, “my country’s colors”: Ibid., 137.

263 “There I was everything I’m not here”:
CJU
, 15.

264 “the artistic indecency of writing about a writer”:
CB
, 5.

264 “a vehicle,” as he put it, “for impressions”:
PP
, 486.

264 “I am transported around here like a brittle curio”:
CB
, 147.

264 “It is a matter of earnest regret for me”: Ibid., 55.

264 “It is a great sadness for me”:
Блага Димитрова
, Събрани творби,
Т
om
2
, Лирика и Поеми,
Тих-Ивел, София
[Blaga Dimitrova,
Collected Works
, Vol. 2,
Lyrical Poems and Poems
(Sofia: Tih-Ivel, 2003), 209].

265 “almost the dark side of the moon”:
MM
, 768.

265 “this fortyish young man, Henry Bech”:
CB
, 40.

266 “No sensitive artist in America”:
MM
, 853.

266 Updike was an “unusually gifted young man”: Blake Bailey,
Cheever: A Life
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 261–62. (Hereafter cited as Bailey,
Cheever
.)

267 “Sometimes I like the thought of [Updike]”: Ibid., 347.

267 “John Cheever was a golden name to me”:
OJ
, 115–16.

267 “Aspiring, we assume that those already in possession”: Ibid., 117.

267 the diminutive Cheever was “Big John”: Bailey,
Cheever
, 348.

267 “a bright scuttle of somehow suburban characters”:
PP
, 23.

267 “a kind of Russian beauty”:
OJ
, 116.

268 “hogged the lecture platform”: Bailey,
Cheever
, 349.

268 continual “back-biting”: Benjamin Cheever, ed.,
The Letters of John Cheever
(London: Vintage, 1992), 246.

268 “I think his magnanimity specious”: Ibid., 245.

268 “Our troubles began at the Embassy”: Ibid., 248.

268 “[T]he literary scene,” he wrote by way of explanation:
OJ
, 117.

269 “I feel in this company”: JU, ed.,
A Century of Arts and Letters
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 183.

270 The anecdote, which Updike served up in an essay:
PP
, 24.

270 “As Hemingway sought the words for things in motion”:
AP
, 182.

271 “Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them”: Ibid., 183.

271 “the end of review the END of meditating”: Ibid., 248.

272 “He does not have an interesting mind”: John Aldridge, “Cultivating Corn Out of Season,”
Book Week
, November 21, 1965, 5.

272 “To me he seems a writer who has very little to say”: Norman Podhoretz, “A Dissent on Updike,”
Show
, April 1963.

272 “a minor novelist with a major style”: Harold Bloom, ed.,
John Updike
(New York: Chelsea House, 1987), 7. (Hereafter cited as Bloom,
John Updike
.)

272 a “vacuity” at the heart of his stories: Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Current Books in Short Compass,”
World
, October 24, 1972, 52.