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I will miss John Updike, he was important to me, for some unknown, or currently undefined reason, he was a great influence, I think, but I’m not sure how.
I related to his Rabbit books, the series of four, they seemed to speak to me.
I read all of his novels, most of the stories, I think, and lots of other writings as I’d run across them.
I had a conversation with him once, memorable to me, but just a conversation. We met in line waiting to pay taxes at city hall in Beverly, MA. I told him a story about meeting Ken Davids (the coffee review king http://www.coffeereview.com/) in Beverly at the train station, and as Ken was coming up the stairs he said, “this looks like a John Updike kind of town”. I told him it was “The” John Updike town, as he lived here”. Updike laughed, and I was next, and paid my taxes.
I would write him a letter each year inviting him to speak at our graduation, and he would decline. Each time I saved his declining note, as they were a unique style, as you can see. Witty, typed and corrected by John himself.
John said this about life:
“There are two evidential arguments (for Christian Truths): one, our wish to live forever, however tedious the actual experience of eternal consciousness might be, and, two, our sensation that something is amiss-that there has been a lapse or slippage in the world and things are not quite as they should be.
We feel made for a better world, and the fault is ours that this is not Eden. The second may be more solid evidence, since fear and loathing of death can be explained as, like pain, a survival device selected and refined by Darwinian evolution. Because we fear death, we try harder to live.
As long as our genes get through, Nature doesn’t care how we suffer.
A third super naturalist argument could be that belief, with a pinch of salt, ….benefits the health: repeated medical studies bear this out. An anxiety –relieving faith conduces to worldly efficiency and success.”
Villages – John Updike
I related to his Rabbit books, the series of four, they seemed to speak to me.
I read all of his novels, most of the stories, I think, and lots of other writings as I’d run across them.
I had a conversation with him once, memorable to me, but just a conversation. We met in line waiting to pay taxes at city hall in Beverly, MA. I told him a story about meeting Ken Davids (the coffee review king http://www.coffeereview.com/) in Beverly at the train station, and as Ken was coming up the stairs he said, “this looks like a John Updike kind of town”. I told him it was “The” John Updike town, as he lived here”. Updike laughed, and I was next, and paid my taxes.
I would write him a letter each year inviting him to speak at our graduation, and he would decline. Each time I saved his declining note, as they were a unique style, as you can see. Witty, typed and corrected by John himself.
John said this about life:
“There are two evidential arguments (for Christian Truths): one, our wish to live forever, however tedious the actual experience of eternal consciousness might be, and, two, our sensation that something is amiss-that there has been a lapse or slippage in the world and things are not quite as they should be.
We feel made for a better world, and the fault is ours that this is not Eden. The second may be more solid evidence, since fear and loathing of death can be explained as, like pain, a survival device selected and refined by Darwinian evolution. Because we fear death, we try harder to live.
As long as our genes get through, Nature doesn’t care how we suffer.
A third super naturalist argument could be that belief, with a pinch of salt, ….benefits the health: repeated medical studies bear this out. An anxiety –relieving faith conduces to worldly efficiency and success.”
Villages – John Updike
It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
‘Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise - depths unplumbable!
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
‘I thought he died a while ago.’
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
*************************
Were I to die, no one would say,
‘Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise - depths unplumbable!
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
‘I thought he died a while ago.’
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
*************************
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