Literary critics say John Updike is the ultimate old-school writer due to many reasons.
Updike called himself a dinosaur. He may be right because he did not use any modern gadgets such as mobile phones or laptops. Although he had a computer, he had no access to the Internet. He was worried whether hackers would destroy his word files. He preferred to find facts from books, magazines and newspapers. Despite his technophobia, he remained a prolific writer.
Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania in 1932. His father taught algebra in a local high school and his mother used to write novels and short stories. However, they had never been published. He learned from his mother how to draw, write and lead a noble way of living. As a teenager, he was both shy and arrogant.
He loved to write stories and draw cartoons. Being a bright student, he won a full scholarship to Harvard University where he studied English literature and passed out as a graduate in 1954. After serving Oxford University on a fellowship, he joined the staff of the ‘New Yorker’. His first book of short fiction was published in 1959. Thereafter, he published two novels ‘The Same Door’ and ‘The Poorhouse Fair.’
He continued to publish short stories, essays, poems and a play for three decades from the 1960s. He published novels such as ‘Rabbit, Run’ (1960), ‘Couples’ (1968), ‘Rabbit Redux’ (1971), ‘A Month of Sundays’ (1975) and ‘Marry Me!’(1976).
He turned his attention beyond the contemporary American urban and suburban people. He won virtually every major American literary award for his novels. His collection of short fiction includes ‘Pigeon Feathers’ (1962), ‘The Music School’ (1966), ‘Museums and Women’ (1972) and ‘Problems and Other Stories’ (1981).
Tissue of lies
Updike was heavily influenced by J.D. Salinger’s stories. He believed that fiction was a tissue of lies that refreshes and informs our sense of actuality. For him, reality was chemically, atomically and biologically a fabric of microscopic accuracies.
His blue-blooded looks and Harvard-honed bearing were sometimes deceptive. Despite his high-minded elegance, Updike’s favourite fictional characters remain popular. His novel ‘The Witches of Eastwick’ became so popular that it was turned into a film.
Updike lived in a spacious house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on Boston’s North Shore. He wrote a sequel to ‘Rabbit Run’ and ‘The Witches of Eastwick’. One of the witches describes Eastwick as a town of ‘toned-up young mothers driving their overweight boys in overweight SUVs for hockey practice 20 miles away. The young fathers castrated namby-pambies help itty-bitty wifey with the house keeping spending all Saturday fussing around the lovely home.” In a masterly stroke, he describes modern American children, their mothers and fathers.
In ‘Witches and Widows’, Updike was writing from the witches’ point of view, but he states an undeniable truth: Women bear babies and men are just appendages. The men have given up their patriarchal responsibilities.
Updike was never worried about ageing. He believed that age had been kind to him in many ways.
Even in his old age, he kept on writing. He could relax while looking at the daisies. What is more, he knew that age had brought him new pleasures. He also loved to travel as he wanted to see the world before his death. Updike’s greatest achievement was that he functioned as a writer for half a century. He wrote about ordinary Americans in an interesting manner. He never suffered from writer’s block. For him, writing every day brought him extreme happiness. As a writer, he remained a self-employed person.
Queer habits
Most writers have queer habits, and Updike was no exception. When he moved into a summer house, he had four rooms at his disposal. In one room, he had a wooden desk and a typewriter. In another room, he had a steel desk with a view of the sea. In that room, he read the proofs and wrote by hand. In the third room, he had a white desk and a computer. While sitting at the desk, he read the final drafts and longer letters. In the fourth room, Updike used to read books sitting in an easy chair.
One day, a reporter asked him, “Why do you write?” He thought for a moment and said, “The hope of doing something I’ve never done before coming up with something surprising for my faithful readers. You want to justify the resources you’re taking up and writing is the only way I know to do that. It’s wonderful to find one’s own niche.”
The key elements of Updike’s style include rich evocative language. He is known for his ability to use language beautifully often employing uncommon or sophisticated vocabulary to create vivid imagery. His descriptions are intricate. He meticulously details physical objects and environments almost like a painter capturing a scene with his words.
The internal monologues in his stories delve deeply into the thoughts and feelings of his characters providing a nuanced view of their inner lives. Much of his fiction is set in suburban America exploring the complexities of middle class life. In most of his stories, he explores religious questions and dilemmas within the characters’ lives.
Writing skills
The following extract from his ‘Wife-wooing’ brings out Updike’s writing skills: “We put the children to bed, one by one, in reverse order of birth. I am limitlessly patient, paternal, good. Yet you know. We watch the paper bags and cartons ignite on the breathing pillow of embers, read, watch television, eat crackers, it does not matter. Eleven comes.
For a tingling moment you stand on the bedroom rug in your underpants, untangling your nightie, oh, fat white sweet fat fatness.
In bed you read Richard Nixon. He fascinates you, you hate him. You know how he defeated Jerry Voorhi’s martyred Mrs Douglas, how he played poker in the Navy despite being a Quakers every fiendish trick, every low adaptation.
Oh my Lord. Let’s let the poor man go to bed. We’re none of us perfect. Hey let’s turn out the light.”
John Updike died of lung cancer at the age of 76.
