‘A Standard Of Beauty’

Something new in my heart.

I'm going to
believe that
everything shines
in the light
of a footprint,
with a loving
desire, in the
sound of the
darkness.....

Francesco Sinibaldi

What was everyone's favorite John Updike piece?

The first piece I ever read by John Updike was his short story "A&P"; it was mandatory reading issued my sophmore year of highschool. I admired his ability to capture the attempts of the teenage store clerk to "stick it to the man", if you will, while fantasizing that in doing so he would suddenly become the knight in shining armour to the two girls in bathing suits. Oh how blissfully ignorant we are when we're young; "A&P" captures a moment in the life of your average teenage boy perfectly.

His collection of work is a great contribution to American literature, both fiction and non-fiction. He will be sorely missed.

I am going to be in the minority but I found his writing to be boring.

This is off the cuff, which I regret since a force of Updike's singularity deserves some measure of the careful, precise thoughtfulness he himself applied, apparently to every detail of the world he observed. But I just don't understand how you can not connect with Updike's fiction if you like the piece on Williams. "Gorgeous prose but nothing much to say with it?" That to me is a confession of inattention. Updike's fiction is littered with passages equal to the one you quote at length. They are "fiction" but their realism is as exacting, as unflinchingly honest and precise and self-aware as any of his nonfiction. "Not much to say" is in its own right a swing-and-a-miss. He didn't write didactic fiction. He observed. He peeled back the skin of our lives and made us look. But the beauty of his prose made it bearable. Next time you read his fiction (my favorites are The Centaur, Roger's Version, & Memories of the Ford Administration, the latter (a textbook in postmodern historiography if you want one) slow down, turn up the power of your mental microscope, and I think you will "connect." Updike was a genius, and he was our national tutor in self-awareness.

I had a similar relationship with Updike's writing. It was in a intro to Literature class that I first read his short story "A & P." While reading it and discussing it in class my passion for Literature was born - literally. I changed my major from Psychology to English within a matter of weeks. But never again did I connect with any of his fiction the way I did with "A & P." I always felt a sense of angst about that, like somehow I was missing out on a classic treasure. I have tremendous respect for his body of work. It will be strange to no longer see him in The New Yorker. Peaceful journey Mr. Updike.

Beautiful piece, Mr. Malcolm - owencraft

Beautiful piece, Mr. Jones ...

Sometimes we forget what living monuments are. My father fouht across the Pacific during WWII and all I know of him is that he rolled his own cigarettes, liked Sinatra and worked night shifts. I saw pdike once, up close actually, I sat 2 rows behind him at a San Diego State student production of "Buchanan Dying", a play Updike always insisted he'd written to be read, not acted out. He struck me, 35 years ago, as a monument. Red faced from a San Diego afternoon of tennis and drink. A contained man, at home with himself. Maybe a little amused at the attention. If the biggest criticism one can ever heap on another is that he "never won the Nobel", then you're really dealing in greatness.