# John Updike - author? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 5, 2004, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552 "2004-05-05T00:02:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SailleCinza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@SailleCinza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailleCinza)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/1 "2004-05-05T00:02:10Z")
I wanted to start a discussion about John Updike - the _amazing_ author who tends to take life and give it another… dimension. I think I read that on the back of one of his, books, though. Which just goes to show how true it is, because that phrase just stuck to my brain like that. Anyways, I’m new to the boards as well - my name’s Alyssa, and I’m 13 years old and in 8th grade. Erm - if anyone cares, I also ride dressage and LOVE to talk about it with others, especially those from other disciplines. :smack: Okay, well about John Updike. I’ve read his anthology, _Pigeon Feathers_ and recently purchased _Toward the End of Time_, but haven’t started it yet. Has anyone else read him? What’s your opinion? I’m dying to see other’s views - my mother doesn’t care for him, but she’s the only other person I know who has read him. It seems like people feel that short stories are inconclusive, and though obviously some are meant to be this way - or to have meanings that aren’t convenient and obvious… I’ve noticed this trend in a few. Admittedly, the conclusion could be over my head. I’m not denying that. Some just seem to hit home more than others. I couldn’t get over _The Doctor’s Wife_ and the _Blessed Man_ , the former for the casual trend of the story, even though there were all these EMOTIONS underneath, but it seemed to me that they were buried finely under something… the same way the characters in the book lightly buried their emotions. The Blessed Man’s ending was just mint. hehe - mint. Nobody says that anymore. I aspire to be an author as wonderful as John Updike, and it’s amazing to me to see that he, too, has shortcomings that he wishes to overcome. He admits this, in elegant prose, and it hits a nerve. I’m not a particularly great writer, but I know what it’s like to want to describe absolutely everything - to capture a certain feeling that jumps away just as you try to catch it, and you’re left with an inconclusive jumble of words that drones on into… something. And you’re not sure what that something is, but it SURE it’s what you want to say. It’s sloppy. And John Updike says: _…It would be days, the evocation of the days… the green days.The tasks, the grass, the weather, the shades of sea and air. Just as a piece of turf torn from a meadow becomes a Gloria when drawn by Durer. Details. Details are the giant’s fingers. He seizes the stick and strips the bark and shows, burning beneath, the moist white wood of joy._ GOD. Exactly. That’s exactly it. He just TAKES that feeling that it seems like everyone has, that need to put something ineffable on paper, and just smacks it right on the nose. Just as a piece of turf torn from a meadow becomes a Gloria when drawn by Durer. “An elusive feeling becomes tangible when written by John Updike.” Yeah, that’s exactly it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/2 "2004-05-05T00:06:58Z")
Moving this to Cafe Society. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/3 "2004-05-05T00:08:26Z")
> [@SailleCinza](#): > > John Updike - author? Yes. Next question. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/4 "2004-05-05T00:36:55Z")
😃 @ **tracer** And, **SailleCinza** , welcome. I think you might be the youngest member. I could be wrong though. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/5 "2004-05-05T00:46:28Z")
Welcome to the Boards, **SailleCinza**. If you’re really 13 you’re going to be disappointed a lot here, because you’ll find that the vast majority of the adults are your inferiors when it comes to writing ability and understanding of literature. And I’m not sure I’m excepting myself. I’ve read several of Updike’s novels over the years, but very few short stories. I’ve liked almost everything of his that I’ve read (with the exception of _The Centaur_) because his ability to create and demark a world is phenomenal. But he’s never been one of my favorite writers because his worlds are observed at a distance; there is a clinical perfection about his selection of images and characters that is easy to admire but hard to like. That kind of casual brilliance works better in his non-fiction, which is to be recommended. He’s read everything and everyone, and has something penetrating to say about them all. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/6 "2004-05-05T00:57:54Z")
I don’t like him. I _tried_ to read **The Witches of Eastwick** and I wanted to throttle him for his bizarre…I don’t actually know what to call it, chatter maybe? Whatever it is, it’s annoying as hell. " ’ And oh yes’ Jane Smart said in her hasty yet purproseful way; each s seemed the black tip of a just extinguished match held in playful hurt, as children do, against the skin… ’ From New York,'Jane hurried on, the last syllable almost barked, its r dropped in Massachusetts style… [ftr, you **don’t** drop the r in the middle of a word, just the end, and not always then. Grrr, for example, a sound that comes to mind reading this dialogue, does have a distinct “r” sound to it] ‘Sukie wasn’t so sure.’ Jane said swiftly, her s’s chasting…" Good Lord, there’s only so much of that type of thing a reader can sanely endure. :rolleyes: Although, it might not come off sounding as badly to someone who wasn’t born in the same state as his weird Jane. On the other hand, I was big on John Steinbeck at your age and he’s an acquired taste too, at least judging from the merest mention of “the Pearl” to most people 😛 ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/7 "2004-05-05T02:19:10Z")
I’ve read only a little Updike, liking **Rabbit, Run** (though it’s been a long time) and his poetry (which is phenomenal). I’m also quite fond of _Of the Farm_. Aside to **Exapno** – you should read it. It proves conclusively that Updike has actually read science fiction, because He describes Alfred Bester’s “Adam and No Eve.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/8 "2004-05-05T03:05:15Z")
Well, I said he read _everything_, didn’t I? But even a desultory search beings up a bunch of hits: sf stories and poetry from the [Locus database](http://www.locusmag.com/index/s749.html#A17917): ```auto * The Chaste Planet, (ss) New Yorker Nov 10 1975 The World Treasury of Science Fiction, ed. David G. Hartwell, Little Brown 1989 * I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying, (nv) Playboy Sep 1969 Playboy Stories, ed. Alice K. Turner, Penguin/Dutton 1994 * The Indian, (ss) New Yorker Aug 17 1963 Triumph of the Night, ed. Robert Phillips, Carroll & Graf 1989 The Mists from Beyond, ed. Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz & Martin H. Greenberg, Penguin/Roc 1993 * Jesus on Honshu, (ss) New Yorker Dec 25 1971 Twilight Zone Jun 1987 * Loving the Sox, (ar) Lord John Ten, ed. Dennis Etchison, Northridge, CA: Lord John Press 1988 * October, (pm) 1965 Cricket Oct 1991 * Sonnet to Human Grandeur, (pm) Lord John Ten, ed. Dennis Etchison, Northridge, CA: Lord John Press 1988 ``` sf book review: Books: Science Fiction, New Yorker 66(2): 126-130. February 26, 1990. more [Science fiction poetry](http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/sfpo-7pt0.html): > [@](#): > > John Updike, whose science fiction poetry has appeared in Scientific American and other unlikely places (also cited by Anne McCaffrey), “Ode to Rot” The Atlantic Monthly Jan.1985, “Cosmic Gall”, “White Dwarf”, “Seven Stanzas at Easter”; and the mathematical symbolism in the long autobiographical title poem of Midpoint and Other Poems, New York: Knopf, 1969; “The Moons of Jupiter”, American Scholar, Vol.51, pp.483-486, Autumn 1982; “Jesus on Honshu” was reprinted in The New Yorker from Twilight Zone! F&SF has reprinted a number of stories that first appeared in mainstream magazines, but this has to be unique. And I point out that some of his Scientific American poems have classic status. And to unhijack this, _Witches_ most certainly does not have classic status. Although he has been accused of misogyny on more than one occasion. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/9 "2004-05-05T08:23:49Z")
I am not a big Updike fan. I’m never certain whether he is an author in search of a plot or an author with so many plots that he loses himself in them. Who knows? maybe both. As someone said before, I prefer his novels to his short stories. Which is strange, because with many authors it is just the reverse. But that being said I often find that he spends a great deal of time and ink getting no place and then having his characters be comfused about it. Probably just me though. TV ---
**Author:** ![Dogzilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2004, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-updike-author/243552/10 "2004-05-05T13:39:25Z")
I was about to accuse him of misogyny. I put him right up there with Ira Levin, who appears to HATE women, judging by his novels. Perhaps that’s just me. Try some Poe, honey. That’s good stuff.