As a small-town businessman of limited scope, Rabbit [Angstrom, the hero of four of Updike’s most famous novels] is obviously very different from his creator. Yet the two of them share a middle-American view of the world, with the difference that Mr. Updike was exquisitely self-conscious. Against the grain of his calling and temperament, he strove, like the German writer Thomas Mann, for a burgherly life.
At first I thought Mr. Lehmann-Haupt was referring to a life of recklessness or illegal activities. But (duh!) that’s burglary. Thank you, Merriam-Webster Online, for straightening me out: “burgherly = of or relating to a prosperous solid citizen.” Oh, so that’s what Updike tried to be. Here’s how he apparently strove for that:
He took up golf, which he played with passionate enthusiasm and also a writer’s eye, noting the grace notes in others’ swings and tiny variations in the landscape. He was a tall, handsome man with a prominent nose and a head of hair that Tom Wolfe once compared to “monkish thatch.” It eventually turned white, as did his bushy eyebrows, giving him a senatorial appearance. And though as a youth he suffered from both a stutter and psoriasis, he became a person of immense charm, unfailingly polite and gracious in public.
I don’t know much about golf or Updike’s golf-playing, though I read about his stuttering in his memoir Self-Consciousness. Looking at photos available online, I see how that nose and that hair do add to his appeal. And yes, young or old, the Updike I gaze at is undeniably “a person of immense charm.” Whether or not he fulfilled his burgherly aspirations, he certainly enlivened — and continues to spark — my bookish years.
Each time I think of John Updike, I deal with an onslaught of guilt. As a teenager and in my early twenties, I bought and read his books. None of these were part of my required reading as a Lit major. (We had the standard big stars like Faulkner, Ionesco, Rilke, and, of course, Shakespeare, but no Updike.) So the fact that no one was forcing me to do it must have meant a lot. I read Updike because I wanted to do. I kept buying and reading him because I wasn’t turned off by my first or second or third try. And yet, searching through every nook and cranny of my bookshelves today, I can’t find a single Updike. Where have they all gone?
Confession time. At least once in a decade I unburden myself of books that I no longer want or have to read. There simply isn't enough room anymore for all the volumes I have acquired since childhood. Now I concede to one advantage of e-books. I see how Amazon and other online booksellers have killed the traditional bookstores saddled with dwindling physical space and rising overheads. Yet I wonder if any of that will ever be a valid excuse for the kind of purging I have occasionally inflicted on my personal collections. I remain steadfast in my love — my fetish — for books with pages I can touch and smell. But have I wavered in my faith in Updike?
Funny, I still have a few of my Saul Bellows and Philip Roths. And I haven’t let go of any of my J. D. Salingers. Again, none of those three were required reading (what the heck was wrong with my college curriculum?), and yet I read them and kept them. I know for sure I had at least two of Updike’s novels (Rabbit Run and Roger’s Version), and one collection of short stories (Pigeon Feathers), his memoir Self-Consciousness, and two copies (yes, two) of his book of (mostly light) verse, Seventy Poems. But they’re all gone. No, I didn’t lend them. I gave them away.
I remember hunching over a huge box in late 2009. It was unloading time once more. My version of spring cleaning, although mine was more tedious and painful. A relative had offered to take away my old books, perhaps to keep some, the others to sell. At certain points in my life, the baggage (physical and emotional) would become too much to bear. And I'd give in to the urge to purge. So that morning I was frantically dropping books into a box, certain that if I had lingered a minute longer, if I had delayed making choices about which ones to keep and which to let go, mournfully caressing each reject like a soon-to-be-orphaned puppy, I would never have finished the job. So quickly I condemned my darlings one by one into the gas chamber. It was my Meryl Streep moment. My Sophie’s Choice. Except that in this scenario, I was both Holocaust victim and perpetrator. I had no choice but to make a choice. Choices. And that’s how I sacrificed my John Updikes to the gods of exigency. For commiting such atrocities, I know there’s no way I can aspire now to a burgherly life.
The best I can do is give myself a little credit here. (Yeah, that’s how desperate I am for validation.) Sentimenal sappy hoarder that I am, I can still be counted on to be ruthlessly practical when the need arises. So what if I've lost those Updikes? I can still buy new ones, new editions with better cover designs and sturdier, untarnished pages. But, you know, it’s not the same. Those won’t have the history and the character of the books I bought with my paltry college allowance and read with my youthful mentality.
Today my middle-age mentality offers me all sorts of reasons for my getting rid of those Updikes. Aside from lack of space, it can be lack of maturity. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for him then (in the same way that if I had read James Salter when I was a teenager, his brilliance would have been lost on me). I don’t recall any passage, character, or epiphany from any of the Updike prose works I read. I know admitting this is sacrilege, but my most memorable Updike was Seventy Poems. I love especially the one about a father who, after his divorce is finalized, stops by a dump site with his children. As I recall the context, the kids stay with their mom so this is precious time for the dad. (I Googled the poem but couldn't find it. So forgive me if I'm messing up the details here.) Surveying the trash, the kids find a broken doll or some discarded toy to admire. The father knows it won't be long till their time together is over. In the poem’s final lines, he tells his children it's okay to show affection for the abandoned toy: “Love it now, love it now, but we can’t take it home.”
That’s the Updike I love. And now, as I survey all these great photographs of him on Google Images, I am reassured that I’ll never run out of reasons to grow fonder of him. I am most grateful to the photographer and author Jill Krementz, who shares her “Fond Farewell to John Updike” on the website New York Social Diary. Look at the man smile. Look how he scratches his ear or ruminates with a finger on his lips. Look at him about to kiss his wife. Or shaving in front of the mirror. Or jumping-rope. Or looking out the window. I have been warmed and tickled by so many of these Updike images online, I sometimes forget what a serious and acclaimed writer he was. I’m so glad that journalists like Sarah Crown keep his memory and magnificence alive. In The Guardian (May 15, 2012), she asks, “Have We Fallen Out of Love with John Updike?”
I look at John Updike in the photograph I have chosen for this blog, and I know I haven’t gotten rid of him. I’m not done with my guilt, either, for having once thought I could do without his books. But seeing him smile in this picture, I feel like I have been forgiven. And morose, dopey me can’t help smiling back. At midlife, I can’t say I'm totally at ease carrying on this affair with books I no longer have. But you see, Mr. Updike, I haven’t fallen out of love with writing about those books. So I need you now. I want to read you now.
Dear Mr. Updike, it’s a good thing I have hung on to my old copy of The Paris Review Interviews, the Fourth Series, in which you come last in a line-up of fellow literary giants (Auden, Steinbeck, Nabokov, Borges, Welty — whew). The last question of the interview is: “As a technician, how unconventional would you say you were?” You begin to reply: “As unconventional as I need be. An absolute freedom exists on the blank page, so let’s use it.” Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.
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