John Updike’s Dead: Do We Still Have To Pretend To Like His Books?
by Ben ShapiroFor the last few years, we have been treated to a bevy of columns and articles lionizing John Updike. It is certainly a tragedy that he is gone – he had massive literary potential. But since the media has been busy writing his eulogy for years, it does not seem unfair to add a note of reality: Updike was not a great writer. He was not even a very good one.
It has always puzzled me how the media selects “great writers.” I, for one, would consider Frederick Forsythe’s driving, brilliant action novel “The Day of the Jackal” far better literature than Don DeLillo’s pointless and meandering “Underworld.” I think Leon Uris’ “Mila 18″ is far more compelling than the Cormac McCarthy’s purposefully obscure “Blood Meridian.” It isn’t that I don’t enjoy the occasional psychological novel – it’s tough to argue with either Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. But the gauge of authorial greatness shouldn’t be the ability to pen 600 pages of plot-less description of characters who would bore you to death or repulse you in real life.
What, then, makes John Updike such a god to the media? It certainly isn’t his writing, which vacillates from the tedious to the atrocious. His style falls somewhere between Thomas Hardy and Kate Chopin on the soporific scale. Take the opening passage from his highly-praised “Rabbit Redux”:
“Men emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them. In winter, Pine Street at this hour is dark, darkness presses down early from the mountain that hangs above the stagnant city of Brewer; but now in summer the granite curbs starred with mica and the row houses differentiated by speckled bastard sidings and the hopeful small porches with their jigsaw brackets and gray milk-bottle boxes and the sooty ginkgo trees and the banking curbside cars wince beneath a brilliance like a frozen explosion.”
If you dug that supreme ejaculation of adjectives, there is a good shot you think that “2001: A Space Odyssey” is subtle, understated, and too short. And yet the ‘New York Times’ called this book, which focuses on Updike’s typical target, middle class conservative suburbia, a “novel by an awesomely accomplished writer at his peak.”
While I can admit Updike’s over-utilized power of description, it is clearly a gift that comes and goes. Updike actually won a lifetime achievement award from the UK’s “Literary Review” for his bad sex writing. Take this gratuitous description of oral sex from his latest epic nothing, “The Widows of Eastwick”: “She said nothing then, her lovely mouth otherwise engaged, until he came, all over her face. She had gagged, and moved him outside her lips, rubbing his spurting glands across her cheeks and chin … God, she was antique, but here they were. Her face gleamed with his jism in the spotty light of the motel room, there on the far end of East Beach, within sound of the sea.” This isn’t exactly Herman Melville. In fact, there’s a good shot that Melville would slap Updike around for writing this bit of pathetic purple pornography.
Updike’s characters range from the unbelievable to the unbelievably patronizing. First, the unbelievable. I cannot claim to have read every novel Updike wrote – few can, since he wrote 25 of them – but his major works are stuffed to the gills with characters who speak as no person has ever spoken. In “Terrorist,” Ahmad, an American, half-Irish, half-Egyptian high school graduate seduced by Islamism, states, “There is nothing in Islam to forbid watching television and attending the cinema, though in fact it is all so saturated in despair and unbelief as to repel my interest.” Ahmad is American. No American speaks like this, even an American unlucky enough to fall in with the wrong mosque crowd.
And then there are the patronizing. Rabbit is Updike’s most famous creation, the subject of four of his novels. Rabbit is an adulterous creep, a selfish hedonist who has no concern for his wife or family. And, yes, Rabbit is a political conservative; in “Rabbit, Redux,” Updike makes a point of Rabbit’s support for the war in Vietnam and his flag decal. As Updike stated in a 2004 interview:
“People ask me what would Rabbit think of 9/11, what would Rabbit think of George W. Bush, and I just can’t say … I think Rabbit would probably have the same reaction to the invasion of Iraq that he had to Vietnam, that it may be a mistake but it’s our duty to see it through. If he were alive, he’d probably be in Florida most of the year by now and he might have a stars-and-stripes sticker on his car. After 9/11, he certainly would have put the flag up.”
The rube.
Updike himself was a political liberal. In 2007, he wrote a review of Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man” in “The New Yorker,” in which he castigated Shlaes for her criticism of FDR: The impression of recovery—the impression that a President was bending the old rules and, drawing upon his own courage and flamboyance in adversity and illness, stirring things up on behalf of the down-and-out—mattered more than any miscalculations in the moot mathematics of economics.” This is tremendous nonsense. There is little doubt FDR was a great politician, a phenomenal PR man. But Shlaes’ argument – that FDR lengthened the Great Depression – does not call for a rebuttal based on anecdotal reminiscences.
Updike was a novelist, not an economist. But the politics with which he infected his craft made him a star.
The media loved Updike because Updike was unsparingly critical of the United States. He castigated it for its greed, its stupidity, its xenophobia. He saw Americans as a group of know-nothing conservatives consumed with money-lust and more typical lust. He saw everyday Americans as hypocrites who thumped both Bibles and the minister’s wife.
Updike has been hailed as one of the great American writers. When it comes to American writers, no one surpasses Mark Twain. In his famously brilliant essay, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” Twain took James Fenimore Cooper, author of “The Last of the Mohicans,” to the woodshed. His words fairly describe Updike:
“A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are — oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language. Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.”
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60 Comments
No. And neither do you have to pretend not to be stupid. Oh happy day.
Too early and totally tasteless.
This article is right up there with the folks to took Tony Snow’s death as an opportunity to attack his life’s work.
Mr. Breitbart, I have never advocated for the removal of a post in my life, but articles like this are going to give your site a bad name. Please remove it.
I remember Tom Wolfe ripping Updike’s writing in his 2000 book “Hooking Up.” He criticized Updike for being insular, unrealistic, and boring.
Bravo. You are exactly correct, and thank you for citing Twain’s assessment of Cooper. You might also note Mark Twain’s views of Jane Austen, which are the same.
A truly GREAT author can be successful and still write great stories: think Jack London. Most people think all London did was to write a few interesting animal stories. No…London was a socialist giant of his time, a celebrity on the level of Barack Obama, translated into all major languages during his lifetime, published worldwide. His essays, articles, and editorials (along with his short stories and news reporting on everything from wars to prize fights) were greatly in demand. “The Iron Heel” was and is still considered one of the best arguments for socialism (though he renounced his membership in the party at the end of his life).
OTOH, you have writers who seem to think that books by the pound, linked together with cliffhangers, sex, violence, and absurd social interactions (think Stephanie Myers or J.K. Rowling) are the height of the written word.
Great writers are rare, good writers less so, and average writers abound. Updike made his mark but by no means does he share the rare honor reserved for London, Mark Twain, or Thoreau. Thank you for saying this.
John, in fairness, Tom Wolfe has ripped just about every writer not named ‘Tom Wolfe’ for just those sins. His Atlantic article, ‘Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast” is famous for its attack on the modern novel generally, and modern novelists not named “Tom Wolf” specifically.
So there’s that.
I’ll never forget Florence King’s essay on the time she was asked to review Updike’s writing. It’s hilarious.
GLENN KENNY – January 28th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Nope, you’re right. I made a comment to that effect already, but it’s in “awaiting moderation” purgatory. As, I assume, this one will soon be.
In general, I think it’s bad form to bash someone’s life’s work the day after they die. You don’t have to pretend to like it, but this strikes me as one of those situations where, as your mother probably told you, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
I do agree with you on the weirdness of those selected as “the great authors of our time.” In general, I ignore the judgment of the elites on these matters and figure that time will sort them out.
Reasonsjester..
First, it’s ‘bated breath.’ Common error, no big deal. (Unless of course you’re a worm-eater. Then I suppose your breath could be ‘baited.’)
I had no idea we were talking about neofascist psyches. I was talking about John Updike.
I can’t imagine anything less insidious, less, than wanting to work where you want, doing what you want, and then buying what you want. And I can’t imagine, again, why it would be a conspiracy for anyone to get a job.
As for Updike, there’s a weird and false line that some folks draw between ‘popular’ and ’serious’ novelists. As if Updike and Stephen King don’t belong in the same room. I think that’s crap. The fact that young Ben is simply swinging that bias from the opposite direction doesn’t make it any less vapid.
Bravo back at ya.
I got a kick out of Twain’s remarks on Cooper — read them years ago. Cooper isn’t as bad as Twain paints him, but it wouldn’t be funny if Twain were to be coldly even-handed.
Updike was good writer. The first excerpt quoted shows that Updike was skilled at creating a mood. The mood he always created in me was something like depressed boredom accompanied by a desire to read something else. I did not care for Updike’s world view. I also found Crime and Punishment and Les Miserables dark and troubling, for example, but I was uplifted by the redemptive elements. Different world view. See the second excerpt.
Glenn Kenny, did Ben Shapiro say anything mean about Updike as a person? He simply offered a reasonable critique of his work and questioned the media’s view of it. Is what is said about Updike’s stance toward the United States incorrect? If so, correct it.
some choose to define themselves by what they love, while others choose to define themselves by what they hate . . .
Somehow it takes more strength, yet it’s more fulfilling to aspire to the former.
I’m just sayin’
I thought he was a fine writer but I bogged down quickly in his novels. His smaller pieces and essays are often delightful. For one, his piece on the north shore branch of the creaky old Boston-Maine commuter line.
I reject the idea we to wait a decent interval after a subject’s death to offer up critique, or that such critique’s are off limits for any reason. Updike’s defenders have every opportunity to present their position, or hagiography. This is freedom.
Love the title and the pic – those alone make this blog deserving of praise. Article was good and brings up one of those questions the media doesn’t like verbalized – “What, then, makes [insert media fixation here] such a god to the media?”
Jeff Tacoma – January 28th, 2009 at 8:48 am
“This article is right up there with the folks to took Tony Snow’s death as an opportunity to attack his life’s work.”
He must have taken it out. Sounded good, too. Tony Snow was no different than Goebbels. Selling war through propaganda. I bet Snow’s voice was sillier, though. Just because he died doesn’t make him any less of a traitor by selling war for Israel.
I could never get into Updike’s novels, but there is a poem of his I loved as a kid, “Pop! Smash! Out of Echo Chamber.”
it started out something like “Oh, Truly, Lily was a lulu”
I think it was about the death of a Hollywood starlett. It was just so intriguing and always fun to recite.
Haha, Carolyn, I am no saint! (but, YOU know that, because I’m just dragging around a measly floor lamp instead of having something huge and more powerful like the sun behind me)
As far as the Updike hatin’ goes, my God, I wouldn’t have known Updike died if I didn’t visit this site. If the coverage of his death is so God-awful, turn the TV on. Geez-Louise, we have CHOICES people!
Carolyn, I miscommunicated. My earlier post about the sun was self-deprecating. I should have been more clear. Guess I should take some lessons in writing from Updike, huh? Haha. Maybe not, since both of us don’t care for him, for the most part.
And, just for the record . . .
I’m a second bass.
And I haven’t lived with my mother in over ten years.
“Rabbit at Rest” is the best book I’ve ever read, and while Updike was inconsistent I firmly believe he was a great writer.
Sadly, his last decade marked a steady decline in his skills. His book “Terrorist” had far too much sympathy for the jihadists … and his last major release, “The Widows of Eastwick,” was a bore, plain and simple.
Reasonsjester,
It’s ‘Saul’ Alinsky, not ‘Sal.’ But I’ll take your word for it that you know who he is.
Also, I’ll disagree with you when you post something I disagree with. Right now you’re ascribing a series of opinions to me that I do not hold. Sorry.
My main complaint is that Young Ben is engaged in a kind of lackwitted reverse-elitism when it comes to Updike, fueled in part by the usual, and by now wearisome, ideological grudges.
As for Carolyn’s missing comments, this only goes to show that there some things that even the internet cannot abide.
Bilwick,
While MEMOIRS OF THE FORD ADMINISTRATION sounds like it might be a worthwhile book, your quote makes me very glad that I didn’t grow up in the 70s. To quote an author I prefer:
“There had been plenty of sex in her day, not talked about so much, but enjoyed far more. Though usually labeled ’sin,’ she couldn’t help thinking that was preferable to what it was now, a kind of duty.”
Hilarious and eye-opening. Thanks for writing this. I’ve never read any of Updike’s books, but I’ve had writing teachers who practically swooned over him.
In today’s LATimes, Updike is veritably deified. So the skepticism and clear-mindedness of this post, presented civily and respectably, is timely, and appreciated.
Not a bad article, I don’t agree with all of it, certainly not the pornographic rehash of one of the inane sex scenes…totally unnecessary for anyone who know’s Updike’s writing. Overall you’re on target: Updike is as overrated an author as ever has been. I was forced to read a couple of the “Rabbit” books in college; even then, I thought they were trash. Many of my classmates were among those swooning sheep who ‘found something amidst nothing.’ After reading two of his books, I came away thinking that they were the literary equivalent of taking photographs of garbage dumps and them framing them under the pretense that they were in some way “art.” ON the other hand, I think Cormac McCarthy is a hack, too, so there you go!
Ben Shapiro,
You make yourself look bad by posturing with contempt over the casket of a man had an impressive record of productivity sustained over decades;
a man whose output was highly appreciated by so many people.
Do all those people have your permission/approval to enjoy something which you disdain?
Or are you going to tell other people what to like and what to dislike?
Your sneering attitude toward Updike’s work prompts the question
“And what have YOU achieved?”
FYI, I am not a huge fan of Updike, but I’ve enjoyed some of his fiction.
His work which I liked best was his books of collected essays and criticism, such as the one titled Hugging the Shore. These books contain some very rewarding writing.
Updike explained the title of Hugging the Shore something like this:
‘Writing criticism is to writing poetry or fiction
as hugging the shore is to sailing out to sea in an open boat.’
Hmmm… Interesting concept, eh Ben?
I have tried some Updike, but books about the angst of the suburbanite simply don’t appeal to me. Call me shallow, but I much prefer a good mystery.
“Your sneering attitude toward Updike’s work prompts the question
“And what have YOU achieved?””
“Ben Shapiro was born in 1984. He entered UCLA at the age of 16 and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in June 2004 with a BA in Political Science. He graduated Harvard Law School cum laude in June 2007.
Shapiro was hired by Creators Syndicate at age 17 to become the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the U.S…”
Ben, I share your dislike for Updike’s writing, and while the title of this article was a little crude, I don’t think it was wrong to publish it now. In fact, it was perfectly appropriate.
Ben,
This was an excellent critique of why liberals love decadent and libertine writers. Many conservatives are more focused and involved in hard sciences and economics, not liberal arts. Critiquing what the liberal arbitrators of our culture call “good art” is an excellent service to those of us who do not have the time or the inclination to do so, but realize that if you do not have a left leaning point of view you will never be considered great by the media and intelligentsia of this is country. Thank you.
Briefly, I’m not sure where Updike’s reputation as a liberal — and therefore bad writer — comes from. He was, like most people, far more complex than the label Young Ben would affix to him.
Just a couple examples. Updike may have been the only writer of stature to support the US intervention in Vietnam. (Ben, if it’s unfamiliar to you, google ‘Vietnam War’ for context on the latter.) He also evinced, over the years, serious doubt about the rationale behind government funding for the arts.
JFTR.
Terry, do we have to do this again? I have already had enough of cleaning up the mess you left in the 24 thread, and now this?
“he must have taken it out. Sounded good, too.”
All I can say is “HUH?” I have no idea what you are talking about, and I doubt many others would either.
“Tony Snow was no different than Goebbels.”
Which one? Hans, Maria, Konrad, Elizabeth, Magda, Harald, Helmut, Helga, Hildegard, Hedwig, Holdine, Heide, or Josef (just for fun, I will have you guess which one we both know you were referring to)? In any event, you would be wrong, if for no other reason then the only person “no different” from Reichminister Goebbels… was Reichminister Goebbels. In addition, I failed to note where Tony Snow and his wife killed their children, and then committed suicide. In addition, I do not believe Mr. Snow was born in Germany.
“Selling war through propaganda.”
Um, I hate to tell you this, Terry, but I don’t think propaganda means what you THINK it means. Yes, by the strictest definition of your sentence, you would be correct. However, you and I both know that is not what you are touching on.
I was in the 8th grade when I first heard the idea that “everything is an argument.” How old were you? The point being is that propaganda is defined as something that gives a lop-sided perspective in order to try and persuade someone on an issue. The thing is that reality IS lop-sided, and even something that is 100% true is propaganda (for example, the famous “Hague Posters” listing of German WWI atrocities were by definition propaganda to sway the Dutch on an upcoming case (the Germans were complaining that shotguns- which were heavily used by the Wested Allies and particularly by the Americans- were against the laws of war) in spite of the fact that each and every single thing they said was either true or even UNDERSTATED, a rarity for WWI propaganda).
You read propaganda. I read propaganda. It may be entirely true and factually just, but it is still propaganda. You likely read Anti-Israeli or Isolationist propaganda designed to sell Pacifism or Isolationism, while I read the opposite.
It doesn’t change the fact that both are propaganda.
“I bet Snow’s voice was sillier, though.”
Actually, having audio recordings of both men, I have to say that the opposite was true, PARTICULARLY in the Reichminister’s last months, were he completely LOST it. But that is just my personal evaluation and opinion.
“Just because he died doesn’t make him any less of a traitor by selling war for Israel.”
And HERE we go with the tired, overdone “War for Israel” tripe. Firstoff, you DO realize that Iraq was probably the one Arab Muslim nation with a relatively STABLE relationship with Tel Aviv outside of the chaotic Lebanon, and that- the whole “shooting SCUDs into Israel” thing during Desert Storm aside- that things were, relatively speaking, at a “low simmering” in contrast to the “low” or “high” boiling that the others have.
In addition, I might address the point that Iraq was far LESS of a threat then- say- Syria (the other main target we considered) because the former “merely” funneled weapons and money to the Islamists, while the latter funneled weapons, money, Intel, played back-up for them, and allowed them to use the nation as a staging point for attacks on Israel.
But then again, I guess that knowing all this would require you to have actually STUDIED the region, now wouldn’t it?
You are pathetic on this issue.
Now that I have finished ripping Terry a new one, I guess I will now get back on topic.
All I can say is that I disagree with Shapiro’s universal nailing of him. Yes, he certainly was not the best of the best, and I found his quality quite uneven.
That being said, having read through a few of his books, all I can say is that when he hit it, he REALLY hit it, and when he didn’t he dropped like a rock.
And yes, I do find it somewhat in bad taste to be doing this on the very day he died.
Evidence of an important author’s death hits the market within hours of the press release. At Amazon, sales ranks for reading copies of Updike’s books are increasing daily. We’ll see them level off within a few weeks and then gradually decline to previous levels.
The best Updike first edition bargains have already disappeared from the market and market values on his most prized editions are increasing rapidly as many are purchased and others are repriced by savvy, experienced booksellers.
I’m a professional bookseller, and in my experience, death *always* has far more market significance than a reissue of a significant author’s complete works. Death piques public curiosity, as a known phenomenon.
What’s unknown to me, and strange, is the superstitious concept that only favorable reviews should be published out of respect for the dead! Who wrote that rule?
One purpose of reviews is to help a curious public make purchasing decisions. This review and its comments form a service that has far more value today than it would have even 2-3 months from now.
Updike won Pulitzers but there are strong differences of opinion about his work. This isn’t his funeral; it’s merely a good opportunity to decide whether it’s time to read his books. (Or try.)
A good critique of Updike.
Who pretended to like his works but leftist progressives anyway?
Wolfe is a much better writer, and if he criticizes all other American Novelists, yeah, it may be a bit much, but he’s stuck knowing he’s the best and frankly, the rest is politicized socialist narrative to our life today.
A revisionist, deconstructed writer does us no good.
What can we learn about ourselves from them?
Updike taught me nothing but contempt for him.
I’ve learned who I am not through him but through some other vehicle.
It’s the self-centered, self-important views our leftists put in literature to distort our reality and skew our culture to them that make their books’ values no more than paperweights.
They’re a cliche.
Like Updike.
“When I write my memoirs.”
Heh.
Shapiro is it? Wow, you’re incredible. You can criticize a true artist. Updike’s work wasn’t loved by everyone, but very few literate people would not at least know about it. Good luck matching that. When you get there feel free to continue belittling your peers, but until then you are basically a nobody. Don’t worry. You’re not all alone. Few people achieve what Updike did.
Incidentally, I never liked Updike’s work. My comment isn’t really about your taste in literature. I tend to agree with some of what you said, but I don’t feel you have the credentials to really deconstruct Updike’s accomplishments. Of course you’re a Republican, so you should be given some leeway, much the way special needs children should not be scolded for violating rules they do not understand.
J S Day:
Here’s a grand’s worth of free advice:
WATCH IT!
You were doing well up until you started to smear all of us (including many of us who at least partially agreed with you, I might add!) by the “special needs children” tripe (have you ever DEALT with special needs children?).
Why?
Because in addition to being juvenile and- bluntly- idiotic, it is also self-defeating, because it turns the target off of Shapiro (or whoever you are criticizing) and onto yourself by alienating even those who would concur with you on this case.
So, my friendly advice is to LOOK AT WHO YOU ARE SHOOTING, because however nice it may be to make blanket smears, it usually does NOT make up for the fact that it sets the entire beehive on you.
So, I beg of you that you please heed this warning.
Because there are those far less sympathetic then I on this site.
And they are unlikely to grant you tips such as this.
As Updike admitted in a 1990s interview, he never really had a real job nor served in the military. He admitted that this made it hard to write about such things and others that he had never experienced. He was in fact, a writer about life for most of his entire life.
Perhaps he never had an intimate relationship, which would answer some of the questions about this element of his writing?
“Perhaps he never had an intimate relationship, which would answer some of the questions about this element of his writing?”
Given that Updike was married twice and had four children, which about three seconds of using teh Google would tell you, either you’re really stupid, or perhaps you’re referring to Ben instead of Updike.
I think that Ben Shapiro is an undeniably bright kid with the desire to be the center-right version of Ezra Klein- bright, opinionated, articulate, and put in the spotlight way too early, before having actually done anything whatever in life other than go so school. This trend- young and very green people whose ambitions are to become famous pundits, but in too much of a hurry to actually go someplace and obtain, well, er, experience in the real world- is probably going to be the death of our society. The foremost recent example is sitting in the White House now, having never held a real job in the real world. Ben needs to go get a few non-commentator jobs for about 5 to 10 years- work in a cornfield for a summer, then as cashier at a gas station for a year, then in a factory, then selling something in a grocery or discount store. Not on either coast or in Chicago.
Updike is a great writer, and like virtually all great writers, his literary output is uneven (and as with many, he was an old-fashioned idealistic liberal who never got over the Depression). Sometimes the writing is terrific, other times it is pedestrian and obtuse. But you go into a mine and chip off the rock to get to the gold.
Updike- sorry Betsy, females won’t ever “get” this, males will- as his most frequent topic, described better than anyone else the conundrum of the ordinary man who believes in and fears God, but is also sexually driven and falls in his frail carnality (e.g., the reverend in “A Mnth of Sundays”, Piet Hanema in “Couples”). On the right, we pretend it doesn’t exist, notwithstanding Swaggart, Bakker, Haggard, Tim Hutchinson, Rev. Anderson, many others. On the left, they exacerbate the issue with gender feminism and then celebrate the problem by defining the only issue as being the removal of the guilt.
I can’t wait to read Ben on the topic of Christopher Hitchens, another brilliant man who is uneven in his output.
“Perhaps he never had an intimate relationship, which would answer some of the questions about this element of his writing?”
Given that Updike was married twice and had four children, which about three seconds of using teh Google would tell you, either you’re really stupid, or perhaps you’re referring to Ben instead of Updike.
You are of course assuming a lot here about the quality of Updike’s relationships, which of course, can’t be known to any of us. Perhaps you should look up the words “Perhaps” and “intimate?” I posed this a possibility, the thought of which moved you to irritation.
I get it. You like Updike. You are entitled!
Thank you, thank you for saying what you did.
I remember when I was younger picking up a book by Upike(his pr was great at the time and everyone was reading him)I thought it was terrible.
At the time I thought I must be nuts because his reviews were great and the media loved him. Thank you for confirming what I thought all along.
“the emperor has no clothes.”
( my son goes to public school and unfortunately, he(Updike) is required reading in American Lit class. He is considered one of the 20th centuries best writers)
“I get it. You like Updike. You are entitled!”
Actually, I’ve read exactly one of his novels, which was OK (Memoirs of the Ford Administration, if you care). What I’ve read of his short work is much better.
I stand by my original assessment, though.
I completely disagree about Updike, but that’s not why I’m writing. I just looked at Ben’s bio. Very impressive. But all that prestigious education failed to teach Ben one basic rule of grammar: you don’t graduate college. You graduate FROM college. Updike wouldn’t have made such a mistake.
Ben, you should stick to writing about something you know about if there is such a thing.
“I am sorry, but reading books is what I do, and I have read literaly thousands of them.”
Yet you’ve never read a book by this two time Pulitzer and two time National Book Award winner? What kind of books do you read among those “literaly (sic) thousands”? Sorry if I can’t stop laughing.
I had never read any Updike (immigrant, no exposure to him, and most of my reading was drawn from the Western Canon anyway). My wife was horrified. Bought me the Rabbit compendium.
I made it about halfway through the first novel (Run?), and quit. The writing didn’t impress, and I absolutely LOATHED the main character.
Have tried to do it, several times, since then. Failed each time.
And… I had no idea of Updike’s politics, either. I just found him unreadable.
“I made it about halfway through the first novel (Run?), and quit. The writing didn’t impress, and I absolutely LOATHED the main character.”
Well there’s your problem Kim. Most of your readers had a lot in common with Rabbit Angstrom.
Can someone teach TBOGG how to be clever?
Politics aside, Updike was a meandering, mind-numbing, formulaic, grossly overrated windbag. Let’s see…. suberbanites… check; moral struggle… check; hypocrisy… check; sexual tension… check. YAWN. Got it. Moving on…
[...] don’t know quite where to start with this exquisite faceplant by Ben Shapiro on John Updike, who, we learn, was a writer unfit to work even on dime novels or [...]
Terry compared Snow to Goebbels? How ironic, since I took her to be a great admirer of Goebbels. His opinion of the Jews was identical to hers.
Harley: John Steinbeck was a hawk in the ’60’s. I believe both his sons served in Vietnam. Steinbeck’s literary rep has sunk, but he was certainly considered a writer of stature back in the day.
Reasonsjester – January 28th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Harley, I’m not going to tear into you because I once had a cute mini Dobie named Harley. He was old, and had cataracts, but definitely had less tunnel-vision than you. As far as Tom Wolfe goes, congratulations on being the first critic to write Tom Wolfe and Mark Twain in the same sentence without using the worn saw “Tom Wolfe is no Mark Twain!” A tip of the hat to you for your typical ostentatious display of vapidity and I await with baited breath your penetrating insight into the perverse and dark recesses of the conservative Republican/neofascist psyche. There is nothing more insidious than wanting to work where you want doing what you want and then buying what you want. (Shudder) It takes a true visionary to see that it is a deep right-wing conspiracy to get a job. Bravo.
Mr. Reasonsjester (or ms): I don’t want to offend you or anything because I can tell you’re a highly intelligent, probably highly-paid important person; I can tell by your writing, especially that you have a well-deserved exalted opinion of yourself…
but “await with baited breath ” …it’s ‘bated.’
(Middle English, short for abaten to abate Merriam-Webster)
Please forgive me for causing you to doubt your importance, or lose some of that obviously well-earned self-esteem, if this should cause you to feel humbled, or anything, cause I’m sure you’re probably an important scriptwriter or something…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/7855562.stm
I put up the link to Ian McEwan’s discussion on Updike because I thought Updike deserved it – especially today and most especially from McEwan as opposed to someone who thinks The Day of the Jackal is literature. Reminds me of Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV…(which was played for laughs.)
Next up from Benjy: why this “Vermeer” guy ain’t a patch on a *real* painter like Thomas Kinkade.
“Updike himself was a political liberal.”
Change the word liberal to conservative and Ben’s viewpoint turns 180 degrees.
I haven’t fallen in love with all of Updike’s work, but i do love his candid writing style; his passing is a sad loss indeed
It’s probably not fair of me to respond to your opinion, because I honestly didn’t read everything you had to say.
The fact is, you have an opinion. So does everyone else.
Ego check, dear man. Ego check.
So this is what ignorance looks like.
None of you, even if given weeks to write and revise it, could turn out a paragraph as meaningful and lovely as one by Updike.
And the numerous grammatical and spelling mistakes I spotted as I scrolled down this page just reminded me how Conservatives were never very good writers – or readers, I suppose.
Never mind his literary worth (he was okay), Updike supported the Vietnam War when he was far older than this BEN Shapiro.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/on-not-being-a-dove-7529
You see?
What a pinko liberal scumsucker!
This BEN Shapiro’s opinion on the likes of Dostoevsky seem to be confused too. If I recall, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment were both 600/700-page novels with huge psychological content.
I don’t think this BEN Shapiro has read many novels to be honest. He probably cited every single one he read in this column.
[...] and speaking … Modern technology has definitely makes the process of dissertation writing John Updike’s Dead: Do We Still Have To Pretend To Like His Books? – bighollywood.breitbart.com 01/28/2009 by Ben Shapiro For the last few years, we have been treated [...]
[...] Artist Formerly Known As The Virgin Ben: John Updike’s Dead: Do We Still Have To Pretend To Like His [...]
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