Updike (74 page)

446 the days before “Tina’s barbarians” sacked and pillaged: JU to MA, March 5, 1994.

446 “There is a bliss in making sets of things”:
MM
, xxiii.

446 “I have a little Bech book in the works”: JU to JCO, December 30, 1997, Syracuse.

446 “My poems are my oeuvre’s beloved waifs”:
CP
, xxiv.

447 “Well,” he asked, “why would you collect your poems”: Televised interview with Charlie Rose, October 6, 1997.

448 “John Updike is a far better poet”: X. J. Kennedy, “John Updike
Collected Poems
,”
The New Criterion
(April 1993): 62.

448 “entertainment quotient” in Updike’s verse: Thomas M. Disch, “Having an Oeuvre,”
Poetry
(February 1994): 288.

448 He was unwilling to deprive himself entirely of his “secret bliss”: JU to JCO, March 3, 1994, Syracuse.

449 “Nevertheless, the living must live, a writer must write”:
MM
, xxiii.

449 dragging behind him “like an ever-heavier tail”:
SC
, 86.

450 “That he takes up so much of my time”:
MM
, 757.

451 a process he thought of as the “packaging of flux”:
CP
, xxiii.

452 “you reach an age when every sentence you write”:
DC
, 651.

452 “You have to give it magic”: Rothstein, “The Origin of the Universe, Time and John Updike.”

453 she was raised as Essie Wilmot in a “sweet small town”:
BL
, 333.

453 secure in “her power, her irresistible fire”: Ibid., 286.

453 recognizes in her costar an “inhuman efficiency”: Ibid., 353.

454 “spouting blood . . . the hole spurting like a water bubbler”: Ibid., 483.

454 “metallobioforms,” a plague of deadly inorganic pests:
TET
, 110–11.

454 a mysterious “halo of iridescence”: Ibid., 151.

454 “quantum leaps of plot and personality”:
MM
, 833.

454 Oates, reviewing the novel in
The New Yorker
, described Ben as “morbidly narcissistic”: Joyce Carol Oates, “Future Tense,”
The New Yorker
, December 8, 1997, 117.

455 the postapocalyptic, “post-law-and-order” environment:
TET
, 271.

455 “I am safe,” he says, “in my nest of local conditions”: Ibid., 329.

455 autobiography is “one of the dullest genres”:
MM
, 834.

456 “Symmetry, fine white teeth, and monomaniacal insistence”:
TET
, 8.

456 “In her guilt at secretly wishing me dead”: Ibid., 240.

456 Gloria, in his estimation, is a “soigné vulture”: Ibid., 271.

456 her rich widow’s reward: “well-heeled freedom”: Ibid., 142.

456 immersed in “suburban polygamy”: Ibid., 136.

456 “Well, it’s your call, but you already told us, the Readers”: Notes found on
TET
manuscript, Houghton.

457 “Among the rivals besetting an aging writer”:
HG
, 5.

XI. The Lonely Fort

458 “particularly sour, ugly and haphazardly constructed”: Michiko Kakutani, “On Sex, Death and the Self: An Old Man’s Sour Grapes,”
The New York Times
, September 30, 1997, E1.

458 “It is, of the total 25 Updike books I’ve read, far and away the worst”: David Foster Wallace, “John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?”
The New York Observer
, October 13, 1997.

458 He’d learned to shrug off the “irrepressible Michiko”: JU to MA, November 16, 2004.

458 since he had seen her “blow her top” so often, it was hard to take her seriously: JU to ND, November 21, 2002, Michigan.

458 “As memento mori and its obverse, carpe diem”: Margaret Atwood, “Memento Mori—But First, Carpe Diem,”
The New York Times Book Review
, October 12, 1997.

459 “Old artists are entitled to caricature themselves”:
JL
, 82.

459 “idly constructed . . . and astonishingly misogynistic”: James Wood, “A Prick in Time,”
The Guardian
, January 29, 1998.

459 sexual obsessions “have recurred and overlapped thickly enough”: James Wood, “Gossip in Gilt,”
London Review of Books
, April 19, 2001.

460 “It seems to be easier for John Updike to stifle a yawn”: Ibid.

460 “plush attention to detail” amounted to “a nostalgia for the present”: James Wood, “The Beast in the American Ice Cream Parlour,”
The Guardian
, October 25, 1990.

460 “If Updike’s earlier work was consumed with wife-swapping”: Wood, “Gossip in Gilt.”

460 “Updike is not, I think, a great writer”: James Wood,
The Broken Estate: Essays on Belief and Literature
(New York: Random House, 1999), 193.

460 “Woods [
sic
] is a great annoyance,” Updike wrote: JU to John McTavish, June 13, 2008.

462 a subliminal message: “the time has come to retire”:
MM
, 856.

462 if Updike didn’t get the prize, it would be “the Swedes’ fault, not his”: WM, “Confidential Report on Candidate,” 1959 Guggenheim Fellowship competition.

462 “There’s no Updike at all. I’m a vanished man, a nonentity”: David Streitfeld, “Updike at Bay,”
The Washington Post
, December 16, 1998.

462 “a very hasty job”: JU to Ann Goldstein, October 22, 1998.

462 “The blatancy of the icy-hearted satire repelled me”:
MM
, 323.

462 “The book weighs in as a 742-page bruiser”: Ibid., 320.

462 “
A Man in Full
still amounts to entertainment”: Ibid., 324.

463 “cheesy,” Updike called it in private: JU to JCO, December 15, 1998, Syracuse.

463 “Wolfe not only demands to make his millions but wants
respect
, too”: Ibid.

463 Wolfe’s “final inability to be great”: Norman Mailer, “A Man Half Full,”
The New York Review of Books
, December 17, 1998.

463 Wolfe hit back, calling Updike and Mailer “two old piles of bones”: Tom Wolfe,
Hooking Up
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 152–53.

463 when Wolfe was “apotheosized”: JU to JCO, May 31, 1999, Syracuse.

463 “a minor novelist with a major style”: Bloom,
John Updike
, 7.

464 two-part parody (or “counter-parody”): Wolfe,
Hooking Up
, 252.

464 “the laughingstock of the New York literary community”: Ibid., 279.

464 Updike’s in particular: “more and more tabescent”: Ibid., 278.

464 “At this weak, pale, tabescent moment”: Tom Wolfe, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast: A Literary Manifesto for the New Social Novel,”
Harper’s Magazine
, November 1989, 55.

464 Wolfe urged them to “do what journalists do”: Ibid.

464 “Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument”:
OJ
, 86.

464 “Unlike journalism . . . fiction does not give us facts”: Ibid., 87.

465 the aim is to expose the “status structure of society”: Wolfe, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” 52.

465 “intimate and inextricable relation to the society”: Ibid., 50.

465 American reality “outdoing” the novelist’s imagination: Philip Roth, “Writing American Fiction,”
Commentary
(March 1961): 224.

466 “[I]t fell straight down like an elevator, with a tinkling shiver”: JU, “The Talk of the Town,”
The New Yorker
, September 24, 2001, 28.

466 “The next morning, I went back to the open vantage”: Ibid., 29.

467 “O.K., you are sitting in an airplane”: JU,
Am
.

467 “Within him his great secret felt an eggshell thickness from bursting forth”:
MT
, 94.

468 “Updike has produced one of the worst pieces of writing”: Christopher Hitchens, “No Way,”
The Atlantic
, June 2006, 117.

469 “It is to Updike’s great credit, and a proof of his long-standing and ardent interest in women”: Alison Lurie, “Widcraft,”
The New York Review of Books
, January 15, 2009.

470 “John Updike: the name is graven”: Cynthia Ozick, “God Is in the Details,”
The New York Times Book Review
, November 30, 2003, 8.

470 “These stories, I feel sure, will weather all times and tides”: Jay Cantor, “Suburban on the Rocks,”
Bookforum
(Winter 2003).

470 “It is quite possible that by dint of both quality and quantity”: Lorrie Moore, “Home Truths,”
The New York Review of Books
, November 20, 2003, 16.

471 “[I]t doesn’t do to think overmuch about prizes, does it?”: JU to JCO, September 12, 2006, Syracuse.

471 “For who, in that unthinkable future”:
EP
, 8.

471 disgusted by the “chip-power” of a desktop PC: JU,
Villages
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), 45.

472 “a method of drawing with a light pen on a computer screen”: Ibid., 132.

473 “Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote”:
DC
, 68.

473 “Without books, we might melt into the airwaves”: Ibid., 70.

473 he was arguing for “accountability and intimacy”:
HG
, 421.

474 readers and writers of books were “approaching the condition of holdouts”: Ibid., 422.

474 “Defend your lonely forts”: Ibid.

474 “Our annual birthday do”:
EP
, 19–20.

474 “How not to think of death?”: Ibid., 19.

475 “Wife absent a day or two, I wake alone, and older”: Ibid., 3.

475 “The fact that he seemed to enjoy talking to me”: Author interview, Ian McEwan, December 5, 2012.

XII. Endpoint

479 “Be with me, words, a little longer”:
EP
, 19.

479 he was nursing “a cold,” as he put it, “that wouldn’t let go”: Ibid., 21.

480 “What a great country we have here”: JU to Walter Kaiser, November 18, 2008, Houghton.

480 “Is this an end?” he asks. “I hang, half-healthy”:
EP
, 21.

480 he savored the phrase “CAT-scan needle biopsy”: Ibid., 27.

481 “My visitors, my kin”: Ibid., 23.

481 “My wife of thirty years is on the phone”: Ibid., 24.

482 “Perhaps / we meet our heaven at the start”: Ibid., 27.

482 what he called “the leap of unfaith”: JU, interview with the Associated Press, 2006.

482 “Why go to Sunday school, though surlily”:
EP
, 29.

483 the idea is “to give the mundane its beautiful due”:
ES
, xv.

483 “I felt I shouldn’t touch him”: Author interview, MW, July 15, 2012.

485 the “irrational hope” that his last book might be his best:
HG
, 7.

485 “I find producing anything fraught with difficulty these days”: JU to JCO, November 23, 2005, Syracuse.

485 never tired of “creation’s giddy bliss”:
HG
, 7.

486 “I’ve remained,” he once said, “all too true to my youthful self”:
WMRR
.

Index

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

Abernathy, Ralph, 274

Academy of Arts and Letters,
see
American Academy of Arts and Letters

Addams, Charles, 147

Adelaide Festival of Arts, 308

Adler, Renata, 250

Africa:

Updike’s travel to, 308, 309, 392

in Updike’s writing, 309–11, 381

Albee, Edward, 261, 263

Aldridge, John, 272–73, 361, 422

Alfred A. Knopf, 173–75, 180, 187n, 282, 331, 370, 416, 426

book promotion tour, 473

and Cheever, 266

Everyman’s Library, 469

first editions, 406

Jones as Updike editor, 380, 402, 408

and Updike memorial, 484

see also
Knopf, Alfred A.

Allen, Mary, “John Updike’s Love of ‘Dull Bovine Beauty,’” 379

Amado, Jorge, 174

American Academy of Arts and Letters, 386–87, 416, 434, 463;
see also
National Institute of Arts and Letters

American Book Award, 400

The American Courier,
37

American dream, 324

The American Scholar,
270

Amis, Martin, 427

Anderson, Sherwood, 61

André Deutsch Ltd., 203, 299, 385

Angell, Ernest, 111

Angell, Roger, xii, 111, 300, 380–81, 484

Angstrom, Harry “Rabbit” (fict.), 94, 264, 330, 379, 407n, 413

in
Rabbit, Run,
197–206, 207, 398

in
Rabbit at Rest,
206, 434–38, 469

in
Rabbit Is Rich,
206, 392–402

in
Rabbit Redux,
206, 332–42

Angstrom, Janice (fict.), 197, 199–200, 204, 205, 252, 337, 379, 399, 400, 413

Anguilla, vacations in, 202, 209, 297

Antaeus,
448

Antibes, Updikes’ exile in, 230, 235–37, 239, 250, 297, 357

Archibald, David, 84

Arlen, Alice, 418

Arlen, Michael, xii, 65, 66, 67, 148, 279, 377, 404, 418

Arno, Peter, 30, 147

Arp, Jean, 30

Astaire, Fred, 144

Athill, Diana, 203, 298, 305

The Atlantic,
468

The Atlantic Monthly,
110, 167n, 294

Atta, Mohamed, 467

Atwood, Margaret, 413

Auden, W. H., 275

Ayer, A. J., 149

Bailey, Anthony “Tony,” 119, 125, 135, 141, 147, 173

Bailey, Blake,
Cheever,
480n

Baker, Nicholson, 484

U and I
, xii

Baldwin, James, 339

Balliett, Whitney, 177–78

Balzac, Honoré de, 470

Barth, John, 344n

Barth, Karl, 223, 253, 380, 421, 424

Barthelme, Donald, 155, 344n

Bate, Walter Jackson, 77

BBC,
What Makes Rabbit Run?,
9, 407–10

Beattie, Ann, 384, 470

Bech, Henry (fict.), 123, 294, 315, 330

in
Bech: A Book,
296–97, 332

in
Bech at Bay,
332, 411, 446n, 472

in
The Complete Henry Bech,
469

models for, 269

in short stories, xi, 264–65, 283–84, 296–99, 303–5, 308, 380, 386, 387, 388, 401, 460–61, 462

Updike’s self-interviews with, xi, 426, 443

Beckett, Samuel,
How It Is,
271

Bellow, Saul, 269, 281, 374, 430n

Benchley, Robert, 36, 64

Benét, Stephen Vincent, “Metropolitan Nightmare,” 37n

Berdyaev, Nikolay, 253

Bernhard, Alexander, 211, 355–56, 360, 366, 387, 401

Bernhard, Martha Ruggles, 355–57

marriage to Updike, 211, 381–82;
see also
Updike, Martha Bernhard

and Nabokov, 355, 365

separation from Alex, 359

Updike’s affair with, 211, 356, 357, 442–43

Berryman, John, 139

Bessie, Simon Michael “Mike,” 162, 170n

The Best American Short Stories 1991,
433

Beverly Farms, Massachusetts:

families in, 405, 409, 439, 475

golf in, 425

Haven Hill in, 402, 403–7, 422, 455, 474, 476

lifestyle in, 415, 416, 439

St. John’s Episcopalian church, 424–25, 484

birth-control pill, 210

Black Power movement, 338–39, 340

Bloom, Claire, 279–80

Bloom, Harold, 157, 272, 411, 412, 463n

Bloom, Hyman, 78–79

Book Week,
271–72

Borges, Jorge Luis, “Borges and I,” 448–49, 450

Boston:

Gardner Museum in, 441

Hancock Tower in, 358

Kennedy Library in, 484

Museum of Fine Arts in, 417

in
Roger’s Version,
419

Updike’s apartment in, 358–61, 368, 370, 372, 403, 442

The Boston Globe,
400, 477

Boston Red Sox, 40

Braque, Georges, 30, 128

Brazil, Updike’s travel to, 315–17

Brewer, George, Jr., 324

Briggs, Austin, 165n, 191, 404–5

Brodkey, Harold, 103, 123

Brown, Tina, 138, 445–46

Broyard, Anatole, 339–40, 369, 400

Brustlein, Daniel, 30

Buchanan, James, 303, 331, 342–43, 368, 442, 443

Bunce, Doug, 69, 70

Caldwell, George (fict.), 41–42, 44, 49, 222, 262, 348–49

The Call to Arms
(film), 452

Calvino, Italo, 275

Camus, Albert, 174

Canfield, Cass, 72–73, 146, 162, 170, 171

Cantor, Jay, 470

Capote, Truman, 380

Caro, Robert,
The Power Broker,
444

Carr, John Dickson, 36

Carroll, James, 476

Carter, Jimmy, 393, 396, 397

Cary, Joyce, 116

Cather, Willa, 174, 470

The Catholic Worker,
167n

Catullus, 94

Cavett, Dick, 442

Century Association, 101

Cézanne, Paul, 134n, 266

Chandler, David, 85

Chatterbox,
37, 47, 56, 139

Cheever, John, 281, 480

death of, 269

drinking, 370–71

and National Institute of Arts and Letters, 266, 269

and
New Yorker,
110, 155, 157

O Youth and Beauty!,
99

Soviet tour of, 251, 265–68

“The Swimmer,” ix

The Wapshot Chronicle,
152–53, 371

Chekhov, Anton, 227, 470

Cher, 412

Chernow, Ron, 16

Chesterton, G. K., 108

Chicago Humanities Festival, 180

China, Updikes’ travels to, 317

Christie, Agatha, 36, 473

Citizen Kane
(film), 404

civil disobedience, 322–23, 332

civil rights movement, 255, 257, 273–75, 321, 333, 336

Clayton, Alf (fict.), 442–43

Coates, Robert, 147

Cobblah, John Anoff, 414, 423

Cobblah, Kwame, 414, 423

Cobblah, Tete, 414, 423

Cold War, 255

Collier’s,
37, 122

Commentary,
167n

Commonweal,
167n

Conant, Jerry and Ruth (fict.), 252–55

Condé Nast, 445

Connolly, Cyril, 121

Copland, Aaron, 387

Corry, John, 408

Cosmopolitan,
122

Coward, Noel, 291

Crews, Frederick, 421–22, 424

Crichton, Michael,
The Andromeda Strain,
444

Crosby, Bing, 453

Cummings, E. E., 87

da Cunha, Euclides,
Rebellion in the Backlands,
316

Danto, Arthur, 417

Davis, Bette, 324

Day, Doris, 47, 401

Day, Robert, 30

Deknatel, Frederick B., 79

Delbanco, Nicholas, 227–28, 282–84, 346, 381n

The Martlet’s Tale,
282

de Rougemont, Denis,
Love in the Western World,
240–42, 243, 254, 367

Dertouzos, Michael, 418–19

Deutsch, André, 203, 298, 304, 306, 307, 308, 342, 349, 385

The Dick Cavett Show,
408

Dickens, Charles, 435, 470

Dickinson, Emily, xiii

Dietrich, Marlene, 230

Dimitrova, Blaga, 264–65

Disch, Thomas, 448

Disney, Walt, 91, 105, 149

Donne, John, 94

Dos Passos, John, 269

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 77

Dow, Allen (fict.), 11–15, 20, 44

Eccles, Rev. Jack (fict.), 197–99, 205, 438

Ecenbarger, William, 1–8, 10, 16, 17

“Updike Is Home,” 3–4

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 134, 184, 196, 310

Eliot, George, 435

Eliot, T. S., xiii, 86, 87, 93, 139, 261–62, 298

The Waste Land,
36

Elleloû, Col. Hakim Félix (fict.), 310–11, 468

Ellison, Ralph, 387

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, xiii, 382

England, 298–307;
see also
Oxford

Esquire,
464

Everyman’s Library, 469

Exley, Frederick, 268

Fairbairn, Douglas, 69n

Fargo, North Dakota, Celebrity Walk of Fame, 431

Faulkner, William, 470

Feeney, Mark, 400

Fiedler, Leslie, 156, 167, 168

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 82, 102, 153, 422, 470

Flair,
64

Fleischmann, Raoul, 130n

Flood, Charles Bracelen, 68

Florida Magazine of Verse,
37

Fo, Dario, 461, 462

Ford, Gerald R., 442

Ford, Richard, 470

Fowler, H. W., 112

Franklin and Marshall College, 343

Franklin Library,
Rabbit, Run
“Signature Edition,” 379–80

French, Edward A., 63n

Freud, Sigmund, 1, 6, 136, 137, 155, 243, 244, 253, 294, 345, 421

Frimbo, E. M. (pseud.), 362

Frost, Robert, 88, 89

Fulbright grant, 308

Gaddis, William, 344n

Gallegos, Rómulo,
Doña Bárbera,
308

Gardner, Erle Stanley, 36

Geismar, Maxwell, 153–54, 155, 156

Georgetown, Massachusetts:

Fourth of July parade in, 435

as transition phase, 407

Updike house in, 373–76, 403

Updike lifestyle in, 385, 387, 400, 406, 409

Geraghty, James, 147

Gibbs, Wolcott, 147

Gibran, Khalil,
The Prophet,
174

Gide, André, 174

Gill, Brendan, 119, 125, 141, 147, 148–49

Ginsberg, Allen, 387

Gleason, Ted, 68

Gollancz, Victor, 149, 170, 201–3, 209, 304

Google, 473

Gottlieb, Robert, 138, 444–45, 446

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 202

Graves, Robert, 174

Great Depression, 22–23, 57, 180

Green, Henry:

Concluding,
176, 177

influence on Updike, 114–16, 150, 151, 178

Penguin Classics edition, 115

Griffith, D. W., 452

Grove Press, 202

The Guardian,
476

Guérard, Albert, 77, 94, 95, 96

Gwynne, Fred, 69, 70

Hamburger, Philip, 147

Hamsun, Knut, 174

Hannaford, Reginald, 59, 84

Harper and Brothers, 72–73, 140, 146, 161–63, 168–71, 173, 180

Harper’s,
33, 183

Harrington, Herbert, 211, 228–29, 230, 239–40, 247, 249

Harrington, Joyce:

and Alex, 211

and Herbert, 211, 228–29, 230, 239–40, 247, 249

in Ipswich crowd, 211

Updike’s affair with, 227–29, 251, 254, 258, 259, 262, 357, 367, 410

Updike’s dithering about, 230, 239–40, 242–43, 246, 261, 330, 357, 382

in Updike’s writing, 212, 233, 239, 247, 251, 254, 304

Harvard Gazette,
440

Harvard
Lampoon,
63–75

The Castle, 64, 69, 72, 73, 75

as club, 64, 122

election to, 56, 66–67

“Fools’ Week,” 65, 67–68

gag sessions in, 66, 67, 72, 135

Great Hall, 69, 72

initiation fee for, 66n

as magazine, 65

old boy network of, 72

as stepping-stone, 72–74, 91

tryouts for, 63

Updike on staff of, 68, 82

Updike’s contributions in, 66–67, 70–72, 73, 75–76, 91, 93, 138, 139

Harvard Summer School, Updike’s creative writing course in, 225–27

Harvard University:

courses in, 63, 76–79, 87–88

Eliot House, 69

Emerson Hall, 76

Fogg Museum, 79, 81, 135, 234

graduation from, 76, 78

Hollis Hall, 54, 57–58, 62

Lasch as roommate in, 58–61

Lowell House, 59, 72, 84, 87, 92–93

oral examinations for, 91

and Radcliffe, 57, 69, 81, 83

Signet, 92

social life at, 59–60, 61

social pressure at, 63, 65, 74

student body in, 57

transformation effected in, 55, 76, 100–101

Updike as outsider in, 56, 57, 63, 65–66, 81, 82, 92–93

Updike as student in, 49–51, 53–94, 126

Updike’s lectures in, 435–36

Updike’s papers in, xiii

Updike’s thesis in, 91, 93–94

in Updike’s writing, 60–63, 70, 72, 74–75, 80–82, 89, 100–101

Haven, Franklin, 403

Hawkes, John, 344n

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 321, 386

The Scarlet Letter,
323, 369, 418, 419, 421, 425, 440

Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, 476

Hearst, William Randolph, 64

Heller, Joseph,
Catch-22,
444

Hellman, Geoffrey, 147

Hemingway, Ernest, 77, 87, 103

influence of, 61, 94, 95

In Our Time,
214

Salinger compared with, 270, 271

Herrick, Robert, 91, 93–94, 96

Hersey, John, 174

“Hiroshima,” 121–22

Hicks, Granville, 205

Hitchens, Christopher, 468, 477

Hitler, Adolf, 315

Hoagland, Edward, 78n

Ho Chi Minh, 275

Holocaust, 315

Hope, Bob, 196