Updike (74 page)
Authors: Adam Begley
446 the days before “Tina’s barbarians” sacked and pillaged: JU to MA, March 5, 1994.
446 “There is a bliss in making sets of things”:
MM
, xxiii.
446 “I have a little Bech book in the works”: JU to JCO, December 30, 1997, Syracuse.
446 “My poems are my oeuvre’s beloved waifs”:
CP
, xxiv.
447 “Well,” he asked, “why would you collect your poems”: Televised interview with Charlie Rose, October 6, 1997.
448 “John Updike is a far better poet”: X. J. Kennedy, “John Updike
Collected Poems
,”
The New Criterion
(April 1993): 62.
448 “entertainment quotient” in Updike’s verse: Thomas M. Disch, “Having an Oeuvre,”
Poetry
(February 1994): 288.
448 He was unwilling to deprive himself entirely of his “secret bliss”: JU to JCO, March 3, 1994, Syracuse.
449 “Nevertheless, the living must live, a writer must write”:
MM
, xxiii.
449 dragging behind him “like an ever-heavier tail”:
SC
, 86.
450 “That he takes up so much of my time”:
MM
, 757.
451 a process he thought of as the “packaging of flux”:
CP
, xxiii.
452 “you reach an age when every sentence you write”:
DC
, 651.
452 “You have to give it magic”: Rothstein, “The Origin of the Universe, Time and John Updike.”
453 she was raised as Essie Wilmot in a “sweet small town”:
BL
, 333.
453 secure in “her power, her irresistible fire”: Ibid., 286.
453 recognizes in her costar an “inhuman efficiency”: Ibid., 353.
454 “spouting blood . . . the hole spurting like a water bubbler”: Ibid., 483.
454 “metallobioforms,” a plague of deadly inorganic pests:
TET
, 110–11.
454 a mysterious “halo of iridescence”: Ibid., 151.
454 “quantum leaps of plot and personality”:
MM
, 833.
454 Oates, reviewing the novel in
The New Yorker
, described Ben as “morbidly narcissistic”: Joyce Carol Oates, “Future Tense,”
The New Yorker
, December 8, 1997, 117.
455 the postapocalyptic, “post-law-and-order” environment:
TET
, 271.
455 “I am safe,” he says, “in my nest of local conditions”: Ibid., 329.
455 autobiography is “one of the dullest genres”:
MM
, 834.
456 “Symmetry, fine white teeth, and monomaniacal insistence”:
TET
, 8.
456 “In her guilt at secretly wishing me dead”: Ibid., 240.
456 Gloria, in his estimation, is a “soigné vulture”: Ibid., 271.
456 her rich widow’s reward: “well-heeled freedom”: Ibid., 142.
456 immersed in “suburban polygamy”: Ibid., 136.
456 “Well, it’s your call, but you already told us, the Readers”: Notes found on
TET
manuscript, Houghton.
457 “Among the rivals besetting an aging writer”:
HG
, 5.
XI. The Lonely Fort
458 “particularly sour, ugly and haphazardly constructed”: Michiko Kakutani, “On Sex, Death and the Self: An Old Man’s Sour Grapes,”
The New York Times
, September 30, 1997, E1.
458 “It is, of the total 25 Updike books I’ve read, far and away the worst”: David Foster Wallace, “John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?”
The New York Observer
, October 13, 1997.
458 He’d learned to shrug off the “irrepressible Michiko”: JU to MA, November 16, 2004.
458 since he had seen her “blow her top” so often, it was hard to take her seriously: JU to ND, November 21, 2002, Michigan.
458 “As memento mori and its obverse, carpe diem”: Margaret Atwood, “Memento Mori—But First, Carpe Diem,”
The New York Times Book Review
, October 12, 1997.
459 “Old artists are entitled to caricature themselves”:
JL
, 82.
459 “idly constructed . . . and astonishingly misogynistic”: James Wood, “A Prick in Time,”
The Guardian
, January 29, 1998.
459 sexual obsessions “have recurred and overlapped thickly enough”: James Wood, “Gossip in Gilt,”
London Review of Books
, April 19, 2001.
460 “It seems to be easier for John Updike to stifle a yawn”: Ibid.
460 “plush attention to detail” amounted to “a nostalgia for the present”: James Wood, “The Beast in the American Ice Cream Parlour,”
The Guardian
, October 25, 1990.
460 “If Updike’s earlier work was consumed with wife-swapping”: Wood, “Gossip in Gilt.”
460 “Updike is not, I think, a great writer”: James Wood,
The Broken Estate: Essays on Belief and Literature
(New York: Random House, 1999), 193.
460 “Woods [
sic
] is a great annoyance,” Updike wrote: JU to John McTavish, June 13, 2008.
462 a subliminal message: “the time has come to retire”:
MM
, 856.
462 if Updike didn’t get the prize, it would be “the Swedes’ fault, not his”: WM, “Confidential Report on Candidate,” 1959 Guggenheim Fellowship competition.
462 “There’s no Updike at all. I’m a vanished man, a nonentity”: David Streitfeld, “Updike at Bay,”
The Washington Post
, December 16, 1998.
462 “a very hasty job”: JU to Ann Goldstein, October 22, 1998.
462 “The blatancy of the icy-hearted satire repelled me”:
MM
, 323.
462 “The book weighs in as a 742-page bruiser”: Ibid., 320.
462 “
A Man in Full
still amounts to entertainment”: Ibid., 324.
463 “cheesy,” Updike called it in private: JU to JCO, December 15, 1998, Syracuse.
463 “Wolfe not only demands to make his millions but wants
respect
, too”: Ibid.
463 Wolfe’s “final inability to be great”: Norman Mailer, “A Man Half Full,”
The New York Review of Books
, December 17, 1998.
463 Wolfe hit back, calling Updike and Mailer “two old piles of bones”: Tom Wolfe,
Hooking Up
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 152–53.
463 when Wolfe was “apotheosized”: JU to JCO, May 31, 1999, Syracuse.
463 “a minor novelist with a major style”: Bloom,
John Updike
, 7.
464 two-part parody (or “counter-parody”): Wolfe,
Hooking Up
, 252.
464 “the laughingstock of the New York literary community”: Ibid., 279.
464 Updike’s in particular: “more and more tabescent”: Ibid., 278.
464 “At this weak, pale, tabescent moment”: Tom Wolfe, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A Literary Manifesto for the New Social Novel,”
Harper’s Magazine
, November 1989, 55.
464 Wolfe urged them to “do what journalists do”: Ibid.
464 “Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument”:
OJ
, 86.
464 “Unlike journalism . . . fiction does not give us facts”: Ibid., 87.
465 the aim is to expose the “status structure of society”: Wolfe, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” 52.
465 “intimate and inextricable relation to the society”: Ibid., 50.
465 American reality “outdoing” the novelist’s imagination: Philip Roth, “Writing American Fiction,”
Commentary
(March 1961): 224.
466 “[I]t fell straight down like an elevator, with a tinkling shiver”: JU, “The Talk of the Town,”
The New Yorker
, September 24, 2001, 28.
466 “The next morning, I went back to the open vantage”: Ibid., 29.
467 “O.K., you are sitting in an airplane”: JU,
Am
.
467 “Within him his great secret felt an eggshell thickness from bursting forth”:
MT
, 94.
468 “Updike has produced one of the worst pieces of writing”: Christopher Hitchens, “No Way,”
The Atlantic
, June 2006, 117.
469 “It is to Updike’s great credit, and a proof of his long-standing and ardent interest in women”: Alison Lurie, “Widcraft,”
The New York Review of Books
, January 15, 2009.
470 “John Updike: the name is graven”: Cynthia Ozick, “God Is in the Details,”
The New York Times Book Review
, November 30, 2003, 8.
470 “These stories, I feel sure, will weather all times and tides”: Jay Cantor, “Suburban on the Rocks,”
Bookforum
(Winter 2003).
470 “It is quite possible that by dint of both quality and quantity”: Lorrie Moore, “Home Truths,”
The New York Review of Books
, November 20, 2003, 16.
471 “[I]t doesn’t do to think overmuch about prizes, does it?”: JU to JCO, September 12, 2006, Syracuse.
471 “For who, in that unthinkable future”:
EP
, 8.
471 disgusted by the “chip-power” of a desktop PC: JU,
Villages
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), 45.
472 “a method of drawing with a light pen on a computer screen”: Ibid., 132.
473 “Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote”:
DC
, 68.
473 “Without books, we might melt into the airwaves”: Ibid., 70.
473 he was arguing for “accountability and intimacy”:
HG
, 421.
474 readers and writers of books were “approaching the condition of holdouts”: Ibid., 422.
474 “Defend your lonely forts”: Ibid.
474 “Our annual birthday do”:
EP
, 19–20.
474 “How not to think of death?”: Ibid., 19.
475 “Wife absent a day or two, I wake alone, and older”: Ibid., 3.
475 “The fact that he seemed to enjoy talking to me”: Author interview, Ian McEwan, December 5, 2012.
XII. Endpoint
479 “Be with me, words, a little longer”:
EP
, 19.
479 he was nursing “a cold,” as he put it, “that wouldn’t let go”: Ibid., 21.
480 “What a great country we have here”: JU to Walter Kaiser, November 18, 2008, Houghton.
480 “Is this an end?” he asks. “I hang, half-healthy”:
EP
, 21.
480 he savored the phrase “CAT-scan needle biopsy”: Ibid., 27.
481 “My visitors, my kin”: Ibid., 23.
481 “My wife of thirty years is on the phone”: Ibid., 24.
482 “Perhaps / we meet our heaven at the start”: Ibid., 27.
482 what he called “the leap of unfaith”: JU, interview with the Associated Press, 2006.
482 “Why go to Sunday school, though surlily”:
EP
, 29.
483 the idea is “to give the mundane its beautiful due”:
ES
, xv.
483 “I felt I shouldn’t touch him”: Author interview, MW, July 15, 2012.
485 the “irrational hope” that his last book might be his best:
HG
, 7.
485 “I find producing anything fraught with difficulty these days”: JU to JCO, November 23, 2005, Syracuse.
485 never tired of “creation’s giddy bliss”:
HG
, 7.
486 “I’ve remained,” he once said, “all too true to my youthful self”:
WMRR
.
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Abernathy, Ralph, 274
Academy of Arts and Letters,
see
American Academy of Arts and Letters
Addams, Charles, 147
Adelaide Festival of Arts, 308
Adler, Renata, 250
Africa:
Updike’s travel to, 308, 309, 392
in Updike’s writing, 309–11, 381
Albee, Edward, 261, 263
Aldridge, John, 272–73, 361, 422
Alfred A. Knopf, 173–75, 180, 187n, 282, 331, 370, 416, 426
book promotion tour, 473
and Cheever, 266
Everyman’s Library, 469
first editions, 406
Jones as Updike editor, 380, 402, 408
and Updike memorial, 484
see also
Knopf, Alfred A.
Allen, Mary, “John Updike’s Love of ‘Dull Bovine Beauty,’” 379
Amado, Jorge, 174
American Academy of Arts and Letters, 386–87, 416, 434, 463;
see also
National Institute of Arts and Letters
American Book Award, 400
The American Courier,
37
American dream, 324
The American Scholar,
270
Amis, Martin, 427
Anderson, Sherwood, 61
André Deutsch Ltd., 203, 299, 385
Angell, Ernest, 111
Angell, Roger, xii, 111, 300, 380–81, 484
Angstrom, Harry “Rabbit” (fict.), 94, 264, 330, 379, 407n, 413
in
Rabbit, Run,
197–206, 207, 398
in
Rabbit at Rest,
206, 434–38, 469
in
Rabbit Is Rich,
206, 392–402
in
Rabbit Redux,
206, 332–42
Angstrom, Janice (fict.), 197, 199–200, 204, 205, 252, 337, 379, 399, 400, 413
Anguilla, vacations in, 202, 209, 297
Antaeus,
448
Antibes, Updikes’ exile in, 230, 235–37, 239, 250, 297, 357
Archibald, David, 84
Arlen, Alice, 418
Arlen, Michael, xii, 65, 66, 67, 148, 279, 377, 404, 418
Arno, Peter, 30, 147
Arp, Jean, 30
Astaire, Fred, 144
Athill, Diana, 203, 298, 305
The Atlantic,
468
The Atlantic Monthly,
110, 167n, 294
Atta, Mohamed, 467
Atwood, Margaret, 413
Auden, W. H., 275
Ayer, A. J., 149
Bailey, Anthony “Tony,” 119, 125, 135, 141, 147, 173
Bailey, Blake,
Cheever,
480n
Baker, Nicholson, 484
U and I
, xii
Baldwin, James, 339
Balliett, Whitney, 177–78
Balzac, Honoré de, 470
Barth, John, 344n
Barth, Karl, 223, 253, 380, 421, 424
Barthelme, Donald, 155, 344n
Bate, Walter Jackson, 77
BBC,
What Makes Rabbit Run?,
9, 407–10
Beattie, Ann, 384, 470
Bech, Henry (fict.), 123, 294, 315, 330
in
Bech: A Book,
296–97, 332
in
Bech at Bay,
332, 411, 446n, 472
in
The Complete Henry Bech,
469
models for, 269
in short stories, xi, 264–65, 283–84, 296–99, 303–5, 308, 380, 386, 387, 388, 401, 460–61, 462
Updike’s self-interviews with, xi, 426, 443
Beckett, Samuel,
How It Is,
271
Bellow, Saul, 269, 281, 374, 430n
Benchley, Robert, 36, 64
Benét, Stephen Vincent, “Metropolitan Nightmare,” 37n
Berdyaev, Nikolay, 253
Bernhard, Alexander, 211, 355–56, 360, 366, 387, 401
Bernhard, Martha Ruggles, 355–57
marriage to Updike, 211, 381–82;
see also
Updike, Martha Bernhard
and Nabokov, 355, 365
separation from Alex, 359
Updike’s affair with, 211, 356, 357, 442–43
Berryman, John, 139
Bessie, Simon Michael “Mike,” 162, 170n
The Best American Short Stories 1991,
433
Beverly Farms, Massachusetts:
families in, 405, 409, 439, 475
golf in, 425
Haven Hill in, 402, 403–7, 422, 455, 474, 476
lifestyle in, 415, 416, 439
St. John’s Episcopalian church, 424–25, 484
birth-control pill, 210
Black Power movement, 338–39, 340
Bloom, Claire, 279–80
Bloom, Harold, 157, 272, 411, 412, 463n
Bloom, Hyman, 78–79
Book Week,
271–72
Borges, Jorge Luis, “Borges and I,” 448–49, 450
Boston:
Gardner Museum in, 441
Hancock Tower in, 358
Kennedy Library in, 484
Museum of Fine Arts in, 417
in
Roger’s Version,
419
Updike’s apartment in, 358–61, 368, 370, 372, 403, 442
The Boston Globe,
400, 477
Boston Red Sox, 40
Braque, Georges, 30, 128
Brazil, Updike’s travel to, 315–17
Brewer, George, Jr., 324
Briggs, Austin, 165n, 191, 404–5
Brodkey, Harold, 103, 123
Brown, Tina, 138, 445–46
Broyard, Anatole, 339–40, 369, 400
Brustlein, Daniel, 30
Buchanan, James, 303, 331, 342–43, 368, 442, 443
Bunce, Doug, 69, 70
Caldwell, George (fict.), 41–42, 44, 49, 222, 262, 348–49
The Call to Arms
(film), 452
Calvino, Italo, 275
Camus, Albert, 174
Canfield, Cass, 72–73, 146, 162, 170, 171
Cantor, Jay, 470
Capote, Truman, 380
Caro, Robert,
The Power Broker,
444
Carr, John Dickson, 36
Carroll, James, 476
Carter, Jimmy, 393, 396, 397
Cary, Joyce, 116
Cather, Willa, 174, 470
The Catholic Worker,
167n
Catullus, 94
Cavett, Dick, 442
Century Association, 101
Cézanne, Paul, 134n, 266
Chandler, David, 85
Chatterbox,
37, 47, 56, 139
Cheever, John, 281, 480
death of, 269
drinking, 370–71
and National Institute of Arts and Letters, 266, 269
and
New Yorker,
110, 155, 157
O Youth and Beauty!,
99
Soviet tour of, 251, 265–68
“The Swimmer,” ix
The Wapshot Chronicle,
152–53, 371
Chekhov, Anton, 227, 470
Cher, 412
Chernow, Ron, 16
Chesterton, G. K., 108
Chicago Humanities Festival, 180
China, Updikes’ travels to, 317
Christie, Agatha, 36, 473
Citizen Kane
(film), 404
civil disobedience, 322–23, 332
civil rights movement, 255, 257, 273–75, 321, 333, 336
Clayton, Alf (fict.), 442–43
Coates, Robert, 147
Cobblah, John Anoff, 414, 423
Cobblah, Kwame, 414, 423
Cobblah, Tete, 414, 423
Cold War, 255
Collier’s,
37, 122
Commentary,
167n
Commonweal,
167n
Conant, Jerry and Ruth (fict.), 252–55
Condé Nast, 445
Connolly, Cyril, 121
Copland, Aaron, 387
Corry, John, 408
Cosmopolitan,
122
Coward, Noel, 291
Crews, Frederick, 421–22, 424
Crichton, Michael,
The Andromeda Strain,
444
Crosby, Bing, 453
Cummings, E. E., 87
da Cunha, Euclides,
Rebellion in the Backlands,
316
Danto, Arthur, 417
Davis, Bette, 324
Day, Doris, 47, 401
Day, Robert, 30
Deknatel, Frederick B., 79
Delbanco, Nicholas, 227–28, 282–84, 346, 381n
The Martlet’s Tale,
282
de Rougemont, Denis,
Love in the Western World,
240–42, 243, 254, 367
Dertouzos, Michael, 418–19
Deutsch, André, 203, 298, 304, 306, 307, 308, 342, 349, 385
The Dick Cavett Show,
408
Dickens, Charles, 435, 470
Dickinson, Emily, xiii
Dietrich, Marlene, 230
Dimitrova, Blaga, 264–65
Disch, Thomas, 448
Disney, Walt, 91, 105, 149
Donne, John, 94
Dos Passos, John, 269
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 77
Dow, Allen (fict.), 11–15, 20, 44
Eccles, Rev. Jack (fict.), 197–99, 205, 438
Ecenbarger, William, 1–8, 10, 16, 17
“Updike Is Home,” 3–4
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 134, 184, 196, 310
Eliot, George, 435
Eliot, T. S., xiii, 86, 87, 93, 139, 261–62, 298
The Waste Land,
36
Elleloû, Col. Hakim Félix (fict.), 310–11, 468
Ellison, Ralph, 387
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, xiii, 382
England, 298–307;
see also
Oxford
Esquire,
464
Everyman’s Library, 469
Exley, Frederick, 268
Fairbairn, Douglas, 69n
Fargo, North Dakota, Celebrity Walk of Fame, 431
Faulkner, William, 470
Feeney, Mark, 400
Fiedler, Leslie, 156, 167, 168
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 82, 102, 153, 422, 470
Flair,
64
Fleischmann, Raoul, 130n
Flood, Charles Bracelen, 68
Florida Magazine of Verse,
37
Fo, Dario, 461, 462
Ford, Gerald R., 442
Ford, Richard, 470
Fowler, H. W., 112
Franklin and Marshall College, 343
Franklin Library,
Rabbit, Run
“Signature Edition,” 379–80
French, Edward A., 63n
Freud, Sigmund, 1, 6, 136, 137, 155, 243, 244, 253, 294, 345, 421
Frimbo, E. M. (pseud.), 362
Frost, Robert, 88, 89
Fulbright grant, 308
Gaddis, William, 344n
Gallegos, Rómulo,
Doña Bárbera,
308
Gardner, Erle Stanley, 36
Geismar, Maxwell, 153–54, 155, 156
Georgetown, Massachusetts:
Fourth of July parade in, 435
as transition phase, 407
Updike house in, 373–76, 403
Updike lifestyle in, 385, 387, 400, 406, 409
Geraghty, James, 147
Gibbs, Wolcott, 147
Gibran, Khalil,
The Prophet,
174
Gide, André, 174
Gill, Brendan, 119, 125, 141, 147, 148–49
Ginsberg, Allen, 387
Gleason, Ted, 68
Gollancz, Victor, 149, 170, 201–3, 209, 304
Google, 473
Gottlieb, Robert, 138, 444–45, 446
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 202
Graves, Robert, 174
Great Depression, 22–23, 57, 180
Green, Henry:
Concluding,
176, 177
influence on Updike, 114–16, 150, 151, 178
Penguin Classics edition, 115
Griffith, D. W., 452
Grove Press, 202
The Guardian,
476
Guérard, Albert, 77, 94, 95, 96
Gwynne, Fred, 69, 70
Hamburger, Philip, 147
Hamsun, Knut, 174
Hannaford, Reginald, 59, 84
Harper and Brothers, 72–73, 140, 146, 161–63, 168–71, 173, 180
Harper’s,
33, 183
Harrington, Herbert, 211, 228–29, 230, 239–40, 247, 249
Harrington, Joyce:
and Alex, 211
and Herbert, 211, 228–29, 230, 239–40, 247, 249
in Ipswich crowd, 211
Updike’s affair with, 227–29, 251, 254, 258, 259, 262, 357, 367, 410
Updike’s dithering about, 230, 239–40, 242–43, 246, 261, 330, 357, 382
in Updike’s writing, 212, 233, 239, 247, 251, 254, 304
Harvard Gazette,
440
Harvard
Lampoon,
63–75
The Castle, 64, 69, 72, 73, 75
as club, 64, 122
election to, 56, 66–67
“Fools’ Week,” 65, 67–68
gag sessions in, 66, 67, 72, 135
Great Hall, 69, 72
initiation fee for, 66n
as magazine, 65
old boy network of, 72
as stepping-stone, 72–74, 91
tryouts for, 63
Updike on staff of, 68, 82
Updike’s contributions in, 66–67, 70–72, 73, 75–76, 91, 93, 138, 139
Harvard Summer School, Updike’s creative writing course in, 225–27
Harvard University:
courses in, 63, 76–79, 87–88
Eliot House, 69
Emerson Hall, 76
Fogg Museum, 79, 81, 135, 234
graduation from, 76, 78
Hollis Hall, 54, 57–58, 62
Lasch as roommate in, 58–61
Lowell House, 59, 72, 84, 87, 92–93
oral examinations for, 91
and Radcliffe, 57, 69, 81, 83
Signet, 92
social life at, 59–60, 61
social pressure at, 63, 65, 74
student body in, 57
transformation effected in, 55, 76, 100–101
Updike as outsider in, 56, 57, 63, 65–66, 81, 82, 92–93
Updike as student in, 49–51, 53–94, 126
Updike’s lectures in, 435–36
Updike’s papers in, xiii
Updike’s thesis in, 91, 93–94
in Updike’s writing, 60–63, 70, 72, 74–75, 80–82, 89, 100–101
Haven, Franklin, 403
Hawkes, John, 344n
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 321, 386
The Scarlet Letter,
323, 369, 418, 419, 421, 425, 440
Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, 476
Hearst, William Randolph, 64
Heller, Joseph,
Catch-22,
444
Hellman, Geoffrey, 147
Hemingway, Ernest, 77, 87, 103
influence of, 61, 94, 95
In Our Time,
214
Salinger compared with, 270, 271
Herrick, Robert, 91, 93–94, 96
Hersey, John, 174
“Hiroshima,” 121–22
Hicks, Granville, 205
Hitchens, Christopher, 468, 477
Hitler, Adolf, 315
Hoagland, Edward, 78n
Ho Chi Minh, 275
Holocaust, 315
Hope, Bob, 196