John Updike
ddobbs | January 28, 2009
John Updike, 1955
Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images, via NYMag
The 'net is fairly bursting with Updike appreciations, but I especially like this one from Sam Anderson at New York, which notes that amid what can seem an intimidating body of work, Updike's essays offer an easy and richly satisfying introduction or revisit.
I always go back, first, to his essays, which strike me as the purest expression of his personality: easy, sociable, curious, smart, funny, generous, and almost pathologically cheerful. He was, for my money, one of the greatest belletrists of all time -- a master of the…
ddobbs | January 27, 2009
'Tis a smaller world now. John Updike is dead of lung cancer.
The end of Rabbit at Rest:
"Well, Nelson," he says, "all I can tell you is, it isn't so bad." Rabbit thinks he should maybe say more, the kids looks wildly expectant, but enough. Maybe. Enough.
Fifty books, countless essays, some of the best book reviews I've ever read. Maybe enough. Never too much.
The Times has a nice obit and a videotaped conversation. I have a hole in my heart.
photo credit: Robt Spencer for the Times.