The End, My Only Friend

Coming near to the end of this semester, and subsequently this course, I am compelled to write here about the course overall. Consider this a conclusion or a mopping up of the semester. It might be choppy in some areas, but overall will explain my process and journey from this course.

First, credit where credit is due. Professor Myers has been a wonderful guide and mentor. I appreciate his knowledge not only on literature and criticism, but also on life and America through the years. We have had many conversations together and I have learned much from him. This semester went well and flowed easily from one book to another, just as we had planned. I like the stories we chose and if there was one regret I had it would be that we have run out of time and cannot complete any more stories. Professor Myers also pushed me to consider the blog format as an effective medium to share my ideas and opinions and I thank him also for that. If it wasn't for the blog, I would have been pressed into writing a research thesis about these themes and stories, something that I loathe to consider as an undergraduate student. I know that publishing your work and researching topics is the mantra of the nation's universities, but I am a man of the times and like this casual online medium. Plus, my friends and family have the opportunity to read it and I like that. So, blogs good; thesis bad. (And full disclosure, I did not write this paragraph to garner praise from Myers. He is already too full of himself to receive anymore unwarranted praise. This was my public thanks to him because he works hard and I appreciate him taking the time to mentor me as he has.)

When I came across the nucleus of an idea to do independent study Myers and I were discussing Updike, I think, and his work with the Bech novels. So it came to be that we studied Updike because he is one of my favorites and Myers knew enough about him and the contemporary style to discuss these things with me. I cannot consider another writer that I am as fond of who also has the vast library of published works that Updike has. He has enough to fill a semester and more. Sure, I could have slogged through Hemingway or debated the merits of Heller with Myers, but Updike, unassuming, details oriented writer that he is offered the best opportunity to study fiction for me. Now, I come away with something more. I hold a deeper understanding of the writer and his ideas than when I had picked up a paperback of Rabbit is Rich for the first time. I now see more than the words on the page and the characters, I understand better the themes and motivations that the author put into his works. I am glad we studied such a storied (yes, pun) author and would do it again.

As a critic and a reader, I am more astute at discerning meaning within a story. Myers has his own rules for critiquing literature and Updike had his too, which were some of the most widely known in the world of criticism. But as a reader and student I have come up with my own too. These are aimed at people like myself who don't do it for pay but have more than a passing interest in the works that they read.

1. What is the author saying? This is the most fundamental question and the one that requires the most time spent to me. As a reader your first priority is to understand what the author is saying. Now, this does not mean parrot back what is printed on the page. Things are not always what they seem. Read the words and decide what the author is saying. This can be in subtext, or in plot details but most of all see and understand what is being done on the page.

2. To whom is he speaking? As a reader, you singularly are not always the recipient of the message. The author might be speaking through his words and through you to someone else. Whether it is a person, group or society in general it helps to see 1. what the author is saying and 2. to whom is he saying it?

3. Sweat the small stuff. Authors like Updike love to throw major themes and morality judgments at you through asides, actions, plot and objects. Just because it isn't said by a character doesn't mean that it isn't important. Don't gloss over the smaller things because a master of the mundane like Updike will throw major points at you there and you will miss them.

4. Speak up. Don't like a book? Say so. Think that a novel won't have staying power into the next decade? Preach, sister. Want to demean and degrade an author for his choice of setting or flat characters? Do it. Look, in my opinion fewer people are reading novels these days. Electronic formats have driven the masses away from books in favor of news and magazine articles. This means that writers will do more in an attempt to drive sales. But do not forget quality writing in the face of more sales. My point here is this, writers need to know if they are doing their jobs well or not. How else will they know if they are writing good stories or not? When you read, talk about it with other people and express yourself. Share your opinions and back them up with your arguments.

5. Jeffrey Eugenides sucks. Actually that's not a rule, just wanted to again express my distaste over The Marriage Plot which Myers loves and has sold well. Basically its a novel about books. Yawn. The conventions that Eugenides uses are campy and outdated to me (giving characters names that point to inner attributes, quoting French metaphysics that nobody has ever heard of, and the 1980's East Coast college setting) and overall it was about 150 pages too long. More length does not a good book make.

6. Electronic or paper, just read. I have a Kindle and like it. But i still buy paperbacks sometimes. I cannot say either format is better, I just want more people to use one of either to read more novels.

Those are my rules for fiction and have come in handy as this semester went. Sometimes it is critical, especially when you keep reading stories by the same author, to get back to basics and consider the building blocks of a story. Getting the ground up approach where you take the big things first and stack the details on top helped me with some of the works that shared themes or characters because getting bogged down is no fun.

What Held Updike Back

As we finish this semester, we have explored many crevices of the life and times of one John Updike; an American author, novelist and critic who's works have outlasted his lifespan and will continue for decades to come. I have thoroughly enjoyed this study and it has made me a better reader and critic. We studied sex, the suburbs, religion and America through the decades. However, a fair assessment and conclusion is what comes at the end: a legacy. There is no doubt that Updike is a literary legend, a titan in anyone's measure. But there is a glaring flaw to his career which saddens me, this is the fact that Updike left no literary progeny. While Hemingway can point to Mark Twain as his inspiration and model as an author, Myers and I found no such relationship for Updike. He is a man who lived and wrote alone. Taking on the American suburbs with the view for the contemporary is admirable and bold. But, there is no one who does this same thing now. No one comments on America in such a fashion or centers his works on a character like Rabbit.

Why does no one hold the flame for Updike today? I have several ideas as to why but there is one that stands out more than others. Updike has no followers because in his works he held total control. When I say that I mean this: Updike's characters said and did exactly what he told them to say and do and they did no more. Never does a man like Rabbit or Nelson take on lives or personas outside of their respective typecasts. After the first two books, Rabbit's moves and mannerisms become predictable and somewhat stale. He continues the same choices that got him into the messes he started with his family and job life and does not see that the troubles continue. Updike was too afraid to relinquish control. This is tricky because all fiction is made up and characters are all written by an author; but consider this: Yossarian changed war novels forever. Period. Everyone since Heller has written about war with a cockeyed view. Long gone are the days of the stoic soldiers fighting for a cause, knife gritted between their teeth, hacking and slashing their way through nameless and faceless enemies for God and country. All Quiet on The Western Front is a beautiful novel about war and the individual, but it comes nowhere near the realization that war is an insane proposition. Those soldiers of the Kaiser fought because it was their duty and death in the field was just bad fortune. No. Today's war author considers the other guys, after all they are humans too, and sees that the "good" guys and "bad" guys want the same thing: to survive a situation in which they have little control and the forces in action are greater than themselves. Yossarian helps us to see the futility of war and its effect on the individual. Making war a farce was Heller's calling and he did it quite well. But without Yossarian none of this would be possible. Heller sort of gave his careening bombardier a push and the character took off by himself. Yossarian Lives is not just the cult slogan for those of us who love Catch 22, it is also a literary saying that Yossarian lives outside of the novel, that is his situations and personality can exist outside of the book. Updike never allowed his characters such freewill.

Also none of his characters are "smarter" than him. All of his books are written in third person. And where a smart character would say something intuitive or intelligent or do something outside of himself Updike's ever present and omniscient Narrator jumps in and offers expert analysis and commentary. Where Updike should be offering thoughts on baseball in Rabbit, Redux it is instead the Narrator acting in his stead. Rabbit would be a different and more interesting character if he were allowed to offer Updike's thoughts on baseball himself instead of the Narrator. If Rabbit offered some salient point on the national pastime or discussed how the forced interaction with his father in law and son made him feel would be better for all involved. It would make Updike look that much more benevolent as an author because he allowed his character to voice Updike instead of Updike voicing Updike, it would be better for Rabbit because it would show the audience that Rabbit is capable of complex thought and further it would be better for the audience and longevity of the work because instead of the author directly speaking he would offer his thoughts through the filter of the character which is not only more empathetic but intersting too. Its like the voice over in a sitcom or the future Ted Mosby talking to his dumbass kids in the insufferable How I Met Your Mother. (My hatred for that show deserves its own post but suffice to say that I find Ted to be laughably weak and creepily fixated on getting married, I find Robin to be an unpleasant distraction if she isn't going to end up as Ted's wife. Further I think that Jason Segal and his redheaded wife don't add anything and that Neil Patrick Harris' back must be killing him from carrying this enema of a show.) 

Further, this fits in line with Updike's fervent devotion to Realism. Updike always wrote within the realm of the real because he lacked the imagination to see outside of those walls. Why didn't Ahmad blow up the tunnel in Terrorist? Because Updike has no concept of the mind of a terrorist, and since he cannot comprehend those machinations he leaves the end of the story with no conclusion other than the tunnel is intact and our fair weather terrorist going home to live another day in Jersey. A more imaginative writer (or at least one who did his homework) could conceive Ahmad blowing up the tunnels in a tribute to his deadbeat father or as an anger fueled rejection of his mother's lax Catholicism. What I am saying is that because Updike only wrote and acted within the bounds of that which he could see and comprehend, he bungled the end of Terrorist and showed the limits of his writing prowess.

Now, it pains me to write so disparagingly about Updike. He is a great author and man in his own right and my undergraduate complaints certainly don't permeate the vast library he wrote. But don't forget that Updike only just died in 2009. He is still widely read and consulted as an expert on words and ideas. However, he has no family tree. Consider this: great coaches are measured on their wins and championships but they are also judged on how many successful coaches they produced too. Woody Hayes won championships, but guess what? He taught Bo Schembechler, Lou Holtz, Ara Parseghian and Earle Bruce. Good list, but if you take it a step further those guys brought Pete Carrol, Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel, Nick Saban and Ron Zook among others by their tutelage. Now if you add up the number of football championships that have been won because of Woody Hayes it is astounding. This is my point, success breeds success. Rarely is there one man who is successful and doesn't pass the good stuff along. Updike breaks the trend. He is the exception, the man who didn't have a protege.

Time Magazine lists are Foolhardy

Time Magazine compiled a list of the top ten Updike books. The full list can be seen here: http://entertainment.time.com/2009/01/28/top-10-john-updike-books/slide/the-rabbit-books-1960-2001/ . While researching the internet for more information on Picked Up Pieces I came across this list. I feel book lists are flawed, ranking authors by novels is a subjective procedure. This list only appeals to the following groups of people:

1. Fans of Updike-If you are already a fan of the man's works you would be inclined to view a list like this because you either want a) your opinions on the author and his works validated or b) you want to read more Updike and don't know where to find it. These people really don't need a list like this.

2. Literary Critics-This subset is responsible for book lists. They spend time compiling lists like these and reading lists by other critics. For them there is relatively little skin in the game. Right or wrong these lists don't affect them.

3. People Who Only Read What's Popular In That Moment (AKA Jonathan Franzen's entire fanbase)- These people don't have any real interest in fiction or authors. They lack the necessary skills to discern good literature from bad. These are the people who buy novels because Oprah tells them to; they are also the people who consider Fifty Shades of Grey to be a quality novel because it was popular and contained graphic sex, never realizing that the books were sensational and smut. I have little time for people like these because they don't really read fiction nor do they really understand what goes into a novel to make it work. They see an Oprah sticker or Franzen on the cover of Time with the headline "Next Great American Author" and buy his garbage without a second thought. 

Basically I don't like these lists because of what they leave in (popular works and big name authors regardless of content) and what they leave out (novels by lesser known authors that have put something real into their novels). I will now give you the entire list and my comments on each selection.

1. The Rabbit Books- Not only picking one of the tetrology, they decide to include all of the stories. I would have separated them out because I feel that Rabbit is Rich is the best of the four. Rabbit Redux is the weakest and Rabbit at Rest and Rabbit, Run fall somewhere in the middle. I think it is fitting that these books come first on the list, they are the books that not only made Updike famous but they are also the first Updike I read and loved.

2. The Early Stories 1953-1975- Now, I have not read much of Updike's short stories but those that I have are excellent with A&P being by far my favorite. Maybe ranked a little high but by writing for the New Yorker Updike gained influence, a voice and an audience. His short stories are bright and use their sparse words well providing description in a small space.

3. The Centaur- This won Updike the National Book Award and is one that I have not read, so I won't comment further. If it's good enough for the critics then it's good enough for me.

4. Couples- Excellent novel and the one that sparked the sexual revolution in America. Ranked fourth is well enough because it is not as widely known as his later works but it is influential for many reasons. Basically know this: if Couples describes the Revolution, then Rabbit is the aftermath.

5. Bech- Widely read and known trilogy of stories about a Jewish novelist, Updike really was at the height of his powers in the 1970's and this work reflects that. However, at least one working critic (and oddly enough it is my mentor D.G. Myers) argues that Bech doesn't work because Updike isn't Jewish and can't accurately describe the lives of contemporaries like Malamud, Bellow and Roth. I think this book is too high on the list not because of notoriety but because it just didn't fit.

6. Picked Up Pieces- Updike's first work of literary criticism and the first work that proved he can not only write his own works but discern in other's writing what is good and what isn't. I was working on this one this week and will write about it further down in the post. 

7. Hugging the Shore- I know nothing about this work and frankly didn't know that it existed. A shame too, because I wish that I could go further but my time is limited within the semester format.

8. Witches of Eastwick- Lame. 

9. Roger's Version- Once again not a book that I know well. Whoever compiled this list did well. Maybe my above comments are incorrect, these lists serve some purpose.

10. Just Looking: Essays on Art- AHA! Here is the art book. Of the three secret things, Updike covers all but this in the novels we have covered. Clearly we needed to do our homework next time and consider more works outside of the mainstream. After all, Updike wrote for over fifty years so naturally some works might fall between the cracks. 

So, overall this list is incomplete to me because I haven't covered all of them. But further it means that Updike was noteworthy enough to warrant a list of his own.

As far as Picked Up Pieces is concerned, to understand Updike's criticism you have to first look at his "rules for criticism." There are five of them and they go as follows:

 1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author “in his place,” making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

Basically the main thrust of these rules is technical in nature and asks the reviewer to limit the scope of the criticism to everything that the author intended. Pieces does this almost to a fault. In fact, this work of criticism is sometimes too nice and gives authors too much credit. I think this speaks to Updike being new at criticism and perhaps not wanting to step on too many toes. But he does follow his rules and consider the realizations of criticism that everything is on the table and most importantly, after recognizing the boundaries that the author created, everything is fair game.

Picked Up Pieces is the first try of a man to enter the world of criticism and I give Updike much credit for crossing the boundary into "the other side" from author to critic. It's tough for me to read but somewhat makes sense. Updike proves that he is America's man of words with this and his other criticism because he successfully expands his career into writing all sorts of genres. 

Professor Myers is a working critic and he responds to me that Updike laid out some sort of scientific process for judging books. That by leveling the field one can critique each book based on its own merit. He cautioned me to read everything with a sharp eye and realize that there is a void between the author, the work and the critic. Much like Bernie Taupin and Elton John in their early days together as singer and songwriter the author and critic don't converse when they are working. Updike is better than most at bridging the gap by considering the author's point of view and writing to educate the audience and not be overly harsh to the original writer. I enjoyed Picked Up Pieces and look forward to the end of our course with Due Considerations in a couple of weeks.

Terrorist and The End of a Career

Terrorist was published in 2006. John Updike died in 2009. This was one of his last novels and his last political novel. Obviously drawing from post-9/11 sentiment in America as well as the difficulty of Islamic issues and tensions in the country; Terrorist is the story of an Islamic youth and his struggle to become a man. Terming this novel as a bildungsroman is not exactly correct because the story is not totally a journey of coming to age. Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy is the teenage son of an Egyptian man, who abandoned his son when he was three, and Teresa Mulloy a woman lapsed in both her Irish heritage and her birthright Catholicism. Living in northern New Jersey, the young man has a strong belief in his faith and is the prized pupil of the local imam, Shaikh Rashid. Ahmad early on has a school scuffle with a boy who accuses him of having desire for the boy's girlfriend. Ahmad not only avoids the fight but also represses his sexuality toward the girl because he believes that is what God asks of him.

Continuing on, Ahmad is pushed by his guidance counselor to attend college after he completes high school. Ahmad is a good student but chooses to become a truck driver because he believes that higher leaning is dangerous and against God's plan for him. He feels that being a driver will allow him to work with his hands and keep himself closer to God.

Ahmad is drawn into an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. He will fill his truck with explosives, block the tunnel and suicide bomb the tunnel all in the name of Allah. Now, your author has several issues with the above scene and the author who created it. First, I am a proud American. I have proudly proclaimed, "God bless America; and nowhere else." This country has lost thousands of lives to international terror. Oklahoma City, New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania have all felt the scourge of terrorist action on this soil, not to mention Americans have been killed abroad in places like Somalia, Libya, Lebanon and Afghanistan fighting terror. My grandfather, great-grandfather and two uncles all served this country in the military and my great-grandfather lost his life in Korea defending out liberty. My father is a firefighter and I know he feels the sorrow and pain of FDNY losing 343 valiant men on 9/11 simply doing their jobs. In short, I have no tolerance for radical Islam. Those people hold no value for this world and their lives in it for them to do what they have done. I defend our support for the fight against global terror and the plight of Israel as they defend their sovereignty in the world.

Now, having said that, I think of Updike. And I think of The Coup where he wrote about Islam in Africa. That novel was political and included beliefs and lifestyles that are outside the norm for a chronicler of the suburbs. I feel that he did it well in The Coup but in Terrorist he is out of touch. He doesn't accurately depict what drives the young Ahmad to do what he does. Ahmad is an American and lives a good life (or as good a life can be led in New Jersey) and never in the novel do I really understand what drives him.

In the end Ahmad does not follow through with his plot, being told by his counselor that the plan is known by the FBI and they are ready to apprehend him as soon as he enters the tunnel. Again this detail is not fleshed out well by the aging Updike. It saddens me to see such a master at a loss within his own work. He forgets that the devil is in the details, and that minutiae that made him famous is lost in the work. He tries to jump on the political sentiment in the wake of 9/11 and the new opinions on Islam in this country. But, by 2006 he is somewhat late. So, a day late and a dollar short Updike publishes a novel that is short on details and long on ambitions. Melding the suburbs and a new idea like radical Islam should have been right up Updike's alley. But because he is lacking in detail the work falls short of what is promised. I wish I had never read this one because it diminishes my opinion of the author. As Kenny Loggins says, "You gotta know when to hold em, and when to fold em." And, like the proverbial cowboy having defeated the bad guys, Updike should have known when enough was enough, and he should have rode off into the sunset and left this book in his pocket. We all would have been better off.

Spiritual Iffyness

James Yerkes wrote a book about John Updike's thoughts and messages on religion. Yes, one author wrote about another and they both used printed media to spread their message. Somewhere the space time continuum is collapsing. Yerkes, whom I give credit for having studied Updike far longer and deeper than myself, quotes Updike by saying that there are three great "secret things" in humanity: they are sex, religion and art. This gives me pause; first because if I had known that two months ago all of this shit would have certainly been easier to write. The other is because of how these things are found in the Rabbit books.

Sex is not gratuitous in the Rabbit novels. There is no great love for the physical act found in Rabbit. Even in his younger days he seemed tired of sex, as though during his high school days and time in the Army he had had his fun. But these are not the sex novels. We covered sex and Updike's thoughts on the subject are contained in Couples. So, moving on.

Art. At this I shrug my shoulders. Rabbit is no art fan. Brewer is devoid of artistic culture, there is no Short North district there and no public sentiment that more art is better for the city and its denizens. I have yet to read Updike's "art" novel and I am doubting if there is one. But, the interesting thing here that leads into religion is this: Brewer, Pennsylvania is completely devoid of those sacred institutions of the spirit. This town never had an artist or a gallery. Never contained a live theater nor were there citizens who clamored for it. Hmm. I believe that I have discovered the "fatal flaw" of Harold "Rabbit" Angstrom and his universe and it is this: because there are no temples to the human spirit and no celebrations of human existence, the people lead empty lives. When they encounter hardship and tragedy, they look for answers. However, because there is no beauty and no spirituality they are left looking around for something that never existed. So, because they do not know what they never had they feel empty but do not understand why.

For the third secret thing, we have said much on religion and Updike. I am finding that because Rabbit has no real religious institution to turn to (even one he despises or forsakes) he is left at a loss when things in his life go badly. For Rabbit there is no beauty and no faith. He is caught in a spiritual iffyness because he wants to do good and be positive, but those tasks become difficult when he never knew really what was good and what was bad. It is like this: if all a person ever knew about art were paintings by Monet he would be a poor judge of art. Not because Monet is a poor artist, but because the world of art is so much wider and fuller than one artist, not to mention the forms of art that occur outside of the canvas. The same can be said for spirituality. Rabbit has never had real spiritual awareness because there is no outlet for it in Brewer. He is caught with a vague notion of what is good and no way to exercise it.