Things are getting creepy. First Johnnie Apple, then Sydney Pollack and now John Updike.
Back story: The Lampoon in the pre-Simpson pre-Conan days, consisted of several totally different groups of young men (all men in my day) who got along famously: the “funny” writers and cartoonists (heirs of Benchley and Punch), the serious writers (Charlie Flood, Updike), the business types (Sadri, the now Aga Khan, being the most notable,) the club-sters and some who straddled categories.
When I first knew him, Updike did puckishly wry but not thigh-slapping cartoons and prose pieces that were more sardonic than sophomoric. We suspected he’d survive but hardly thought he’d become our country’s best author.
Following this, I knew several Updikes; there was the young, utterly serious cartoonist, the starting to get omni-observant guy just back from Oxford who haunted the Lampoon “castle,” the semi-reclusive writer north of Boston and then the ebullient art critic whom I would run into at museums all along the East Coast and who like the Kennedys, never forgot a name or face.
He was an amazingly talented guy, whom we, just a few years behind, adored and tried to emulate, largely unsuccessfully. But beyond the talent was a truly perceptive social animal, who you genuinely felt wanted to know how you and your family were and were doing. Add to that that his writing, especially the Rabbit books, was of my and our generation and you had to be in love with the guy.
Le Figaro, a daily I usually agree with, called him a novelist of the American malaise; nothing could be farther from the truth. John Updike was and will remain America’s foremost mirror to one of its most interesting generations.
Bye, John, I’ll miss looking at you looking at paintings.
Back story: The Lampoon in the pre-Simpson pre-Conan days, consisted of several totally different groups of young men (all men in my day) who got along famously: the “funny” writers and cartoonists (heirs of Benchley and Punch), the serious writers (Charlie Flood, Updike), the business types (Sadri, the now Aga Khan, being the most notable,) the club-sters and some who straddled categories.
When I first knew him, Updike did puckishly wry but not thigh-slapping cartoons and prose pieces that were more sardonic than sophomoric. We suspected he’d survive but hardly thought he’d become our country’s best author.
Following this, I knew several Updikes; there was the young, utterly serious cartoonist, the starting to get omni-observant guy just back from Oxford who haunted the Lampoon “castle,” the semi-reclusive writer north of Boston and then the ebullient art critic whom I would run into at museums all along the East Coast and who like the Kennedys, never forgot a name or face.
He was an amazingly talented guy, whom we, just a few years behind, adored and tried to emulate, largely unsuccessfully. But beyond the talent was a truly perceptive social animal, who you genuinely felt wanted to know how you and your family were and were doing. Add to that that his writing, especially the Rabbit books, was of my and our generation and you had to be in love with the guy.
Le Figaro, a daily I usually agree with, called him a novelist of the American malaise; nothing could be farther from the truth. John Updike was and will remain America’s foremost mirror to one of its most interesting generations.
Bye, John, I’ll miss looking at you looking at paintings.
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