Writer at rest
The death of towering literary figure like John Updike poses a problem for a jobbing hack like me. I’m no literary critic, but suddenly something happens that actually affects your inner being. It’s not quite the same as a bank bailout or even an Obama initiative on Islam.
This is someone whose work helped to smooth my way to adulthood (was it ever smooth?). I read Updike because, like so many, I had lived a sheltered life and he connected me with the experience of other people’s lives – not least their sex lives.
Updike brought their mystery to earth, earthily. I well remember reading Couples as I toiled as a farm labourer driving grain trailers between the combine and the grain silo on a farm in the Yorkshire Wolds. On blistering hot days I would sit at the wheel between runs, with the book propped up on the steering spindle.
Later I became an avid follower of his columns in the New Yorker and, more recently, the New York Review of Books (best publication in the English language). His writing, his insights…
Grrr! They’re calling my flight. I’m off to Colombia to the Hay Festival in Cartagena. There will be much Updike talk there. Amis, Rushdie and others on hand.
You may hear more from me from that quarter – maybe on the tender matter of my carbon footprint.
Links and obituaries –