Showing posts with label john updike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john updike. Show all posts
9.10.10
Chin Stroking Between Updike and Wallace
I've had a tab open for weeks now with this article by Barrett Hathcock on the Quarterly Conversation on Nicholson Baker as the "missing link" between John Updike and David Foster Wallace. I finally read it this morning, and whilst problematic in a number of ways (I think it simplifies DFW, and pays too much heed to the privileged position of the artist/writer/observer, amongst other things), it is certainly thought-provoking and wide-ranging and context-providing. A good chin-stroker of an article.
5.7.10
Updike's Easy Terrorist
I'm reading John Updike's Terrorist at the moment, as sort of background reading for the dissertation. There are blurbs all over it saying how great it is, the Mail on Sunday says how "masterly" the prose is, and Ian McEwan saying how he's "the finest novelist writing in English today" and John Banville saying "no one else I know of, simply no one, writes this well" and the publisher's own blurb saying how Updike is "America's foremost writer on the times we live in". It's all so gushy, gushy, gushy.
And when you start reading it, you get this calm feeling, you imagine a sea and a little breeze, maybe you're on a beach and you have a little drink next to you, and every now and again you put down the book, open still but face down on your tummy, and look out to the sea and watch people swimming and people in little boats. Because it's all so easy, this book, it's like Updike wrote it whilst half-asleep. Every word seems to be there so perfectly, like he imagined the whole thing in one go and it just appeared on the page, without any thought or anything, without any crises or deletions or redrafts or shifts from the first to the third person and then back again. It's sleepwalking literature masquerading as edgy and contemporary. There's no questioning in this, no doubt or anything, not of literature's ability to portray things, not of his own ability, not of anything - there are no problems here for Updike, this book was probably a breeze to write. Come to think of it, he probably wrote it sitting on a lounger on a beach every now and again putting his notebook down to look out at the sea to watch people swimming and people in little boats.
And when you start reading it, you get this calm feeling, you imagine a sea and a little breeze, maybe you're on a beach and you have a little drink next to you, and every now and again you put down the book, open still but face down on your tummy, and look out to the sea and watch people swimming and people in little boats. Because it's all so easy, this book, it's like Updike wrote it whilst half-asleep. Every word seems to be there so perfectly, like he imagined the whole thing in one go and it just appeared on the page, without any thought or anything, without any crises or deletions or redrafts or shifts from the first to the third person and then back again. It's sleepwalking literature masquerading as edgy and contemporary. There's no questioning in this, no doubt or anything, not of literature's ability to portray things, not of his own ability, not of anything - there are no problems here for Updike, this book was probably a breeze to write. Come to think of it, he probably wrote it sitting on a lounger on a beach every now and again putting his notebook down to look out at the sea to watch people swimming and people in little boats.
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Me
- Mark
- I am writing a PhD at the University of Glasgow entitled "The Poetics of Time in Contemporary Literature". My writing has been published in Type Review, Dancehall, Puffin Review and TheState. I review books for Gutter and The List. I am also an editor and reviewer at the Glasgow Review of Books.