I waited on Amazon’s virtual Internet line to buy one of
the first copies shipped of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike. Any reader of my blog knows he is my favorite
author, I think the best of the late 20th century, along with Philip
Roth. But unlike most of his
contemporaries, he flourished in all venues, poetry, short story, novels, as
well as being a brilliant man of letters. As George Gershwin was to American music,
Updike was to American Literature.
I wondered whether any biographer would be up to the task
of capturing the breadth of his accomplishments. The literary biography bar had already been set
very high by the relatively recent biographies of other important late twenty
century writers, Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life, Blake Bailey’s Cheever,A Life, and also by Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty; The Life and Work of Richard Yates.
In fact, I thought Blake Bailey would emerge as the ideal
biographer of John Updike (but he is now working on a biography of Philip Roth which will round out the pantheon of “my” authors). Adam Begley may have had an inside track. His father, Louis Begley, another author I admire,
knew Updike. They were at Harvard
together as undergraduates, although Begley went in a totally different career direction
upon graduation, into the law, until he found himself writing novels towards
the end of his career and now into retirement. For me, there is an uncanny
connection between Louis Begley and John Updike as social commentators,
capturing the times I’ve lived. I
explained my case here and here, so no sense going into further detail in this
entry.
And so back to Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike,
who I felt I “grew up with” and admired from afar, reading most of his
incredible output with such admiration and wonder that one person could write
so prodigiously and with such high literary quality. Like Roy Hobbs, Updike was a “natural.” He made poetry out of the quotidian.
Begley’s biography is superb, treating Updike with both
reverence and objectivity. In fact, my
rose colored glasses of Updike were somewhat removed by the biography. To my surprise, Updike was less than a perfect human being! And he indeed lived
the life he described in the novel so often associated with him, Couples.
I don’t make this observation as a moral criticism, but more as an
abandonment of a certain naiveté I’ve had about Updike. It doesn’t change my love of his work or my
assessment of his importance to the world of American literature. In fact, I think Begley’s biography will go a
long way in assuring his place as one of the most important American writers,
period.
Begley well documents Updike’s four stages of life, his
cloistered childhood in Shillington and Plowville, PA, his Harvard years where
he acquired “a monumental erudition,” the period of his first marriage to Mary
during which time they raised a family of four children in Ipswich, MA and he established
himself as a writer of consequence, and his second marriage to Martha during
which time he wrote from the perspective of an acknowledged senior statesman of
American literature.
Although Updike finally left his home town of
Shillington, PA, that town never left him or his fiction, nor did his later
residence in Ipswich MA after he graduated from Harvard (and married in his
Junior year, just as I did). But before
Ipswich, he worked at The New Yorker for
a while and lived the life of a young NY writer. The New
Yorker and Updike were inseparable during his entire career. In fact there
were generations of Updikes published in that venerable magazine, some of his
mother’s short stories and stories by his son, David. All three mined autobiography for their
fiction and Updike felt a little “crowded” by his mother and then son appearing
in the same pages (although their contributions were minimal compared to his).
Having left New York, as well as Shillington, he
developed two alter egos to deal with “what might have been.” He imagined a life of Harry Angstrom in his
Rabbit tetrology….a high school basketball star in PA, but then what? And in a number of short stories he imagined
a life of Henry Bech, a writer from the “New York school of writing.” The Maple short stories, on the other hand,
closely chronicled his deteriorating first marriage even detailing his own
children. In fact if there was anything
that stands out in Begley’s biography it is how Updike extracted fiction from his
personal experiences; absolutely nothing escaped his omniscient eye.
After his second marriage, Updike and Martha moved more
inland, away from Ipswich, to Georgetown, MA (and years later to Haven Hill, a mansion
in Beverly Farms MA, and although on the sea, still secluded). He lived a more isolated life during his
later years. Begley notes that there he
was “settled and safe – out of harm’s way – and free from the time – and
energy-consuming entanglements of the riotously unmonogamous Ipswich lifestyle. But he worried that he was putting too much
distance between himself and the sources of his inspiration.” Updike himself, after nine months into his
second marriage said, “One of the problems of being a fiction writer is that of
gathering experience. The need for
seclusion and respectability that goes with some success, both are very
sheltering – they cut you off from painful experience. We all want to avoid painful experience, and
yet painful experience is your chief resource as a writer.”
Curiously enough, as Begley points out, as a young writer
Updike made his mark without the anger and torment of so many of his
contemporary writers. “He wasn’t
despairing or thwarted or resentful; he wasn’t alienated or conflicted or
drunk; he quarreled with no one. In
short, he cultivated none of the professional deformations that habitually
plague American writers. Even his
neuroses were tame. Except for his
psoriasis, his stutter, and his intermittent religious doubts, he faced no
obstacle that hard work and natural talent couldn’t overcome.” Perhaps that is
because Updike came from a cocoon of love and protection and adulation, his
mother recognizing his genius (and he was a bone-fide one), fostering it and in
a sense living out her own dream as a writer through her only child. They had a close relationship throughout
Updike’s life. In fact, his mother was a
published author, but her focus was always on her son
And indeed, Updike was a hard worker and devoted himself
to writing most days of his life when he was not travelling, playing golf or
sometimes poker, or philandering (although, gathering information from all
those activities).
I think Begley gets to the heart of “what made Updike
run” – especially during his Ipswich years, by putting his finger on what
always puzzled me about Updike, his strong religious vein, usually disguised in
his novels but prominent in works such as Roger’s
Version. It seemed to be somewhat inconsistent with the life he led. In Ipswich he joined the First Congregational
Church (ironically the same religion in which I was brought up, but abandoned
as an adult). Religion to Updike was a
constant fulcrum in his life, a hinge on which to swing between the fear of
death, to his infidelities. Begley hones right in on the issue:
Surrounded by
disbelief more or less politely concealed, he refused to play along -- "I
decided ... I would believe." Though he disapproved of pragmatic
faith, he was well aware of the utility of his own special brand of piety:
"Religion enables us to ignore nothingness," he wrote, "and get
on with the jobs of life." He explained the tenacity of his faith by
pointing to the part played by fear: "The choice seemed to come down to:
believe or be frightened and depressed all the time." On a good day, faith
in God gave him confirmation that he mattered -- "that one's sense
of oneself as being of infinite value is somewhere in the universe answered,
that indeed one is of infinite value." Religion eased his existential
terror, allowing him to do his work, and to engage in the various kinds of play
that best amused him-among them the hazardous sport of falling for his friends'
wives. He was caught in a vicious circle: he fell in love, and his adulterous
passion made him feel alive, but also sparked a religious crisis that renewed
his fear of death -- so he fell in love some more and read some more theology.
Not surprisingly, his wife found that she couldn't tell when he exhibited signs
of angst, whether he was suffering from religious doubt or romantic torment.
Furthermore, Updike recognized his exceptionalism as a
writer and hoarded every document, doodling (he was an expert cartoonist and
almost went into the profession of animation), every letter he received. These, he knew, would be a treasure trove for
future literary researchers after his death. Even by the time he was in
college, Updike had a literary vision of his future, one he described to his
mother in a letter: “We need a writer who desires both to be great and to be
popular, an author who can see America as clearly as Sinclair Lewis, but,
unlike Lewis, is willing to take it to his bosom…[one who could] produce an
epic out of the Protestant ethic” A mighty
lofty vision for a young man who then carved that future for the rest of his
writing life.
Begley’s writing itself is superb with the biography reading
like a novel, integrating his observations, bolstering them from Updike’s own
fiction. Consider just this one passage:
“…Mary’s knack of keeping her husband at a distance, her studiously unruffled
passivity – leavened by dry humor, bolstered by tenacious dignity, and sealed
with maturing beauty – helped to hold the marriage together. Like many of his damaged fictional couples,
they ‘hunkered down in embattled, recriminatory renewal of their vows, mixed
with spells of humorous weariness.’”
Between his own elegant writing, and plentiful quotes, Begley has
managed to create a verisimilitude approaching a virtual hologram of Updike’s
life.
In reading this work, I accumulated six single spaced
pages of notes and in reviewing them, realized it would be silly to go into
detail on all. I’d end up practically
reprinting the essence of Begley’s extraordinary biography and as such I’ve
omitted so many other issues that “made Updike run” and many of the
controversies. My heartfelt suggestion:
read the biography!
In some ways this was a difficult one for me to read. We
all have a favorite writer, but I also thought of Updike as a distant friend, a
one way relationship of course, but an intimate one. His passing was a loss to me. We had so many
commonalities as well, his being almost exactly ten years older than I, with a
number of uncanny things in common (I don’t mean to compare myself to him in
any way however). We lived through the
same eras. What he wrote about I
experienced.
Towards the end of his life, he gave a talk at the
National Booksellers Association in 2006 entitled “The End of Authorship” – a
defense of the printed word in which he felt threatened by Google’s attempt to
digitize, well, everything. He loved the
texture of the book as I do. As Begley
recounts, “Updike saw [the universal digitized library] as ruin for writers
dependent on royalties. Defending not
only the economic model that had sustained him but his fundamental conception
of literature, which he understood to be a private, silent communication
between two individuals, author and reader, he was arguing for ‘accountability
and intimacy.’….His identity was forged in solitary communion with an open
book.”
His was a life of productivity and meaning, and now
immortality, a writer who will be read for generations. We would all like to be remembered. It was his intention, even as a young man, to
achieve exactly what he achieved (and he did it through assiduously hard work,
not to mention having a pure genius for writing). How many of us can say that? My life in publishing was something I loved,
but now that is gone, receding in my retirement years to the point I sometimes
wonder whether it was a dream and what exactly did I accomplish? Reading Begley’s acknowledgments I was
heartened that he gave attribution to Jack De Bellis: “Without the herculean efforts of Jack De
Bellis, a tireless collector of Updike facts and Updike treasure, all Updike
scholars would have to work twice as hard as they do.” I cite this as at the end of my publishing
career my company published his John
Updike Encyclopedia. Before that we published his John Updike, 1967-1993: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources.
Updike reviewed the chronology for the former and wrote an introduction for the
latter. So the circle closes for
me. Books matter, great literature
captures life better than any compilation of digital photographs, and Updike’s
works will be read and studied by generations and generations to follow.
When Updike died in early 2009, I wrote a piece which perhaps puts my feelings expressed above in context. A few months later, at the bottom of this entry I quoted
his poem “Perfection Wasted,” quintessential Updike, displaying his playful,
satiric side, as well as his endless ruminations about death.
He was a fine poet, a part of his work so often overlooked. It is when he turned most inward. So I conclude this entry by quoting his
“Enemies of a House,” still another commonality as I’ve done battle with New
England homes as he, and I’m fascinated by how he turns the poem describing the
despoliation of an old house into the universality of the end of a life.
Enemies of a House
By John Updike
Dry rot intruding
where the wood is wet;
hot sun that shrinks roof shingles so
they leak
and backs
pane-putty into crumbs, the pet
retriever at the frail screen door; the
meek
small mice who find
their way between the walls
and gnaw improvements to their nests:
mildew
in the cellar, at
the attic window, squalls;
loosening mortar, desiccated glue;
ice backup over
eaves; wood gutters full
of
leaves each fall and catkins every spring;
salt air, whose soft
persistent breath
turns iron red,
brass brown, and copper dull;
voracious ivy; frost heaves; splintering;
carpenter ants; adultery;
drink; death
His was indeed a life well led as documented by Adam
Begley in this inspired biography.
