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GRAZING AMONG THE CENTAURS
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12 February 2007
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Guidelines
and Instructions
When questions and comments are submitted, please indicate your first and/or last name, city and state/country, and email address at the end of the text. We do not publish anonymous submissions, primarily because of the need frequently to confirm or clarify matters in the questions or comments. Requests for anonymity on the web page will be considered and granted at our discretion. We reserve the right to edit all submissions.
In the case of questions, it is assumed readers with information will contact the person who submits the question directly by means of the email address attached. But it is hoped that the respondent will also submit the response through this section on the page. Here the motto of my Alma Mater seems appropriate: "Crescat scientia, vita excolatur"--roughly translated, "Let knowledge increase, and thus life be enriched"!
In the case of submitted comments, we very much want to hear your views about Updike's writings and his place in the American literary scene. We welcome all opinions about all topics connected with John Updike's work. Those who are inspired by him and those who are troubled by him are encouraged to add commentary to this section. All that is required is a civil attitude and responsible, fair-minded presentation. We encourage commentary contributions to be limited to 250 words per entry.
Finally, in order to reduce the transcription work we request that you edit your submissions carefully for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and spacing. Normally, submissions will be transferred with the "copy and paste" technique common to most word processors. Email-ers, myself included, are notoriously careless typists, so your attention to neatness will help us to handle the submissions to this section expeditiously--and to the pleasure of us all.
To enter your question, comment, or response, click this link: centaurian@prexar.com
UPDIKE READER QUESTIONS AND GENERAL COMMENTARY
1. QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS--SOME SUBMITTED FOR READER RESPONSES
John McTavish Writes On the Matter of John Updike's Surprise About Smiley's Ten Days in the Hills--The Issue of "Sexual Overkill"
12 February 2007
Any surprise that John Updike was surprised by Jane Smiley's graphically over-the-top sexual descriptions in her latest novel is itself mildly surprising. JU has never tried to nail down in print all the anatomical and coital details. As he long ago noted, " Sexual excitement arises from an arcanum; some stimuli must be kept in safe deposit" ( Picked-Up Pieces, p. 444 ).
This literary restraint has nothing to do, of course, with prudery. It's just that something needs to be held back or readers are going to feel more like they're in a doctor's office than in somebody's boudoir. " Where we draw back varies," JU notes in PUP, "but our sexual natures, even in this age of competetive license and Freudian sanction, do ask limits, for their own protection."
The erotic details animating JU's own fictional sex scenes often have to do with almost anything and everything but the actual physics of intercourse.
VILLAGE'S Karen, for example, entering Owen's office, closing the door, offering her boss a batch of business papers in one hand and a wadded warm handful of nylon underpants in the other hand. And then lifting her skirt to make it graphically clear where her pants were.
Or Piet, during a party in COUPLES, nursing one of Foxy's post-natal, over-sized breasts in the bathroom at a friend's house only to have rock-like knocks striking at the unlocked door and a familar wifely voice apologizing for almost barging in on poor Foxy.
Or Teresa, in TERRORIST, responding in the bedroom to Jack's pre-coital sigh that they might have a problem with a scene-ending but also clinching, "No problema, senor."
These lines, torn out of context, are hardly turn-ons. But they're still probably more arousing, especially when read IN context, than any number of anatomical details woodenly worked into the narrative.
'Show, don't tell.' Physiological details can be just a matter of telling when what is needed is the kind of artistic presentation that SHOWS sexual encounters in all their human fulness.
Something like this, I suspect, may lie behind JU's reservations concerning Smiley's sexually overly explicit novel.
John McTavish, Huntsville, ONTARIO
[J. Yerkes, 2-12-07]
And Here Is British Guardian Commentator Simon Surtees' Reply to Liddle
25 January 2007
Dear Professor Yerkes.
I did not see Rod Liddle's article; thanks for posting it. I think it is an extreme point of view and it is interesting to note that Terrorist was singled out in at least two "Books of the Year" articles including Julian Barnes in The Guardian.
Liddle's point seems to me a very detached way of reading novels. In my view Updike's late work from "Towards the End of Time" onwards has been his most deeply personal writing and each work does not easily stand on its own but has to be read within the overall context of his work. It seems to me that Updike is taking stock of his work and his ideas and finding outlets for them in his fiction. It may not have produced "literary" masterpieces, although he is still the pre-eminent stylist he always was, but it has produced novels of considerable interest within his own opus and adds considerably to one's deep appreciation of his work.
Perhaps he has set his flag too high. One could easily say the same of Philip Roth.
My entry to the Guardian "Readers Books of the Year" in the Guardian (30/12/07) singled out "Terrorist" as "easy to fault,[but] was underrated by critics who failed to see just how accurately he describes the shallow morality of middle America which, he implies, has set itself up as a target for young Islamic idealists. It made his earlier work feel like prophecy."
Liddle should have stuck with it. If he has put down his Updike and his Franzen, perhaps he might pick up Richard Powers.
Thanks
Simon Surtees
43, Wilmington Avenue,
London W4 3HA
Carla Ferreira Attends Updike's David Distinguished Lecture 14 September 2006 at Midland College in Texas
Carla Alexandra Ferreira is a Professor Doctor in Brazil at UNESP in the Modern Languages Department and she was here in the United States when Updike made his presentation in Midland. She wrote her dissertation on Updike's work in Brazil and is a correspondent for Portuguese readers of this website. Her native language is Portuguese but she handles her English very well, as you can see. She was kind enough to send this picture and report about her pleasant visit there and her conversations with John Updike. Thanks, Carla, for taking time to write.
Dear Professor Yerkes,
I am writing to send you some news about Updike's
presentation at Midland College in Texas which I attended last month.
![[Image]](pict212.jpg)
It was an unforgettable experience to me. Look at my happy face!
Yes, I had the chance to talk to him and had my books signed. It was wonderful.
Here is my account of his talk:
The event started at 7.00 pm at Chaparral Center in Midland College. There were about 400 people there. His presentation was called "Wide Open Spaces." He was introduced to the audience by having some of his major works mentioned. Then he started talking about the theme he had chosen and its relation to being in Texas: "Wide Open Spaces." He said "Texas is a hopeful place where hopes come true." People laughed and enjoyed his remark. Then he went on by saying he was going to read some extracts of some of his poems and short stories which mentioned or were created in some locations in the USA. That choice was related not only to the geographical space but also to an inner space, that is, the impressions those places provoked in his writing and about Americans in general. For me, a foreigner, that was a very good way of presenting one's nation. As he read I could picture Americans in different places as well as those places. Later on, when I met him he asked me if I agreed that Texans were similar to Brazilians (more open people, hospitable, etc.). I told him in reply that I had thought the same and he said, "Well, it's wide open spaces."
After reading four poems (one of them "July") and commenting that the 30's and the 40's were not untroubled times in the US, but for children were experienced through innocence and he read some extracts of his early short-stories. The one he concentrated on was "The happiest I've been" (1958). As he read he stopped to explain the segments he had read. That was amazing. The audience enjoyed that very much. I had the impression they could see themselves portrayed in the story.
After that a question session started. He received some pieces of paper with questions prepared by the people there. Most of them were about the Rabbit books and his continuing writing of them. He said: "Four is a tetralogy; there is no word for five!" Everybody laughed. He was asked about a prequel of Rabbit and he answered that was in Rabbit, Run. Then he was asked about the American Sublime in Literature and he mentioned Huck Finn, Moby Dick, the opening paragraph of The Sound and the Fury, as some of them. Then came the question was about a writer's experience. About style and whether learning grammar and punctuation was important nowadays. He was also asked about his portraying of women. He said he tried to do that the best he could but he knew he had some limitations. He added if Jane Austen was not afraid of portraying men then he shouldn't be afraid of portraying women either. He could not leave the female out of his fiction. Gertrude and Claudius was one example of that. Finally the questions (about 4) were about the story "A&P." He said they well might have been written by students who had some paper to do! And he "complained" teachers insisted on teaching that short-story. He suggested they could teach others. Then he said he really saw a similar scene - of girls entering a public place wearing their bathing suit. When he was talking to me at the reception he asked me if I also taught that short-story and since I said I did he wanted to know if it made sense for Brazilian students. I explained what happened there to their reading of the short-story and he was pleased.
After all the questions were answered he commented briefly about Terrorist and said it was all about faith and the belief that everything done in God's name was OK. He emphasized one should remember that the protagonist was an idealistic 18-year-old young man.
That is all. After the lecture he was taken to a local golf club for dinner and signing books.
Best regards always,
Carla
[J. Yerkes, 11-5-06]
Rabbit Books Still Inspire
10 April 2006
Ever fresh comments come about the impact of Rabbit readers. This one comes from a new voice out of California.
I just finished reading Rabbit at Rest. I wanted to see if I could find a direct link to Mr. Updike himself, just to thank him for writing this book and the others with Rabbit Angstrom as the central character. This will have to do.
I, like so many Americans, am Rabbit Angstrom in many respects. I am now an overweight, tall, recently retired, former basketball player, with heart problems. When I was younger I was Rabbit in those stages of life too. I lack the voice and education to have put it all down on paper, and I thank John Updike, perhaps the greatest writer of twentieth-century Americana for doing it so well.
Bob C. Montague, CA
A WONDERFUL LISTENER'S REPORT ON UPDIKE'S SEPTEMBER 24TH NEW YORKER FESTIVAL CONVERSATION WITH DAVID REMNICK
WELCOME NOTES FROM KEN KRAWCHUK
Writer Updike to Editor Remnick: "Reading, PA . . . please pronounce with a short vowel 'e,' not the long 'e,' like 'reading a book'!"
Ken Krawchuk is one of those otherwise unobtrusive persons who reads this website and cares enough about it to support it with strategic submissions. What could we ever achieve here in Updike commentary were it not for that small cadre of people who send materials to light up this volunteer literary commentary? Precious little. From all over the world people write nearly daily and tell me how much they appreciate this website. I reply that were it not for people who support it--like Ken Krawchuk--it would fold into dull senescence. So once again I am able to publish first-hand materials not yet in print elsewhere because of support like Ken's. I share his report with you in full because I know we have all wondered how the event unfolded ten days ago in New York's Celeste Bartos Forum at The New York Publick Libarry. Thanks, Ken--a heap and a bunch, as my Hoosier family and friends back home put it!
September 24, 2005
4 P.M. Celeste Bartos Forum
The New York Public Library
The New Yorker Festival
John Updike interviewed by David Remnick
"A Life in Literature"
Ken Krawchuk's Notes of the event
David Remnick, Editor of The New Yorker Magazine, took the stage first to introduce John Updike in what can be said was an appreciative and grateful tone for Updike's appearance at this event, Updike's first at this, the sixth annual New Yorker Festival. I had occasion to ask Mr. Updike once why he hadn't participated in the New Yorker Festival yet, and he said he wasn't sure why such a magazine needed to have a festival. He did add, however, that under the right conditions he might be willing to participate. This event at the New York Public Library must have fit the bill.
Remnick stated that Updike's association with the magazine is well known by his dust jacket biographies that state, "From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, to which he has contributed short stories and criticism as well as poems." These constitute over 800 pieces he said, beginning 51 years ago in August of 1954 with the light verse poem, "Duet With Muffled Brake Drums," to his most recent book review of E. L. Doctorow's "The March" in the September 12, 2005, issue of the magazine. Remnick commented that Updike was, "The singular American, New Yorker writer." Remnick said Updike's writing took on the great themes of Sex, Art and Religion and his best known work was the Rabbit Quartet.
When preparing for this event, Remnick asked around the office for questions that he should ask John Updike. He related that Roger Angell wondered, "Why Updike continues to be a hacking golfer? Who does he think he is, Sam Snead?"
Remnick's first question to John Updike was actually, "How did your relationship with the New Yorker begin?" Mr. Updike began by correcting the pronunciation of David Remnick's pronunciation of Reading, PA, to the short vowel "e" and not the long, like "reading a book" which elicited good natured laughter from the audience. He continued that his father's sister Mary worked at the New Republic and probably started a subscription for his family around the age of 11. He said he initially was a lover of the cartoons and cartoonists and then the poetry. He said he "loved the New Yorker," and the romance continued through college. He was determined in 5 years to get into the magazine after college. It actually happened in June after graduation with the acceptance of his light verse poem. He described the elation that he felt when in the mail came, "not my envelope--their envelope." That moment was "his happiest moment as a writer." To this day he has vivid recollections of that first acceptance by the magazine.
He next had a short story accepted by the magazine in August that same year and he said he received $525 for that effort. At the time he said his father earned $1200 a year as a teacher, and Updike felt that "I'm really a writer now." Updike then stated that he felt, "The New Yorker was superior to other magazines. It was understated and had a take it or leave it quality about it."
Remnick, being an editor himself, next asked about Updike's editorial influences. Updike responded by saying that, "Bill Maxwell sent the letter accepting that first poem. He was smart and kind. He was a gentle, soft-spoken man." Updike continued that, "Katherine White was my first fiction editor. She was warm-hearted and encouraging. She liked going over proofs in a newspaper way. The offices on 43rd Street had news stacks like newspaper offices. She quickly went over the stories." He said that his current fiction editor is Roger Angell and he's worked with Moss and Quinn as poetry editors.
Updike related that while he was at the Ruskin School of Fine Arts he had 4 stories already accepted by The New Yorker. He was visited by E.B. and Katherine White and offered the position of a staff writer when he finished there. He jokingly referred to his early days there as being responsible for "New Yorker East." He said he was set to the task of producing, "800 word, big-town folksy pieces." He would, "go to shows at the Armory and listen and look and try to make a poem of what you see."
Interestingly, after only two years with The New Yorker, Updike was as anxious to leave New York as he had been to leave Shillington, PA. He had achieved his initial goal to get to New York. But once there he found out that, "Too many writers, editors and agents were suggesting what to do with my life, so my new goal was to get out of New York City."
Remnick then asked about Updike's early influences. Updike responded, "My mother wanted to be a writer." He then listed early works and authors that influenced him-Madame Bovary, P.G. Woodhouse, James Thurber, Kenneth Kempton and J.D. Salinger who, "could write a 1950's story and not a 1930's story." He also fondly recollected reading Proust in New York on Riverside Drive. He said that, "Proust influenced my early stories." He also mentioned Eudora Welty and Henry Green who he came upon at Oxford. He stated, "Green was a fat, rich boy who became a real writer with a range of voices."
Remnick's next topic related to style. He asked if Updike was able to "choose a style or was it given to you?" Updike responded by saying, "Don't write to achieve a style. Write to describe the thing. Make a picture by describing spoken and visual elements of the scene. What interests me are the embarrassing and scintillating moments." The crowd laughed at this remark. Updike continued, "There is more Proust in my weaker stories. You can't be lucky all the time. But anything that was printed in The New Yorker was good enough for me to put in a book."
Remnick then wondered what still excited John Updike about writing after all these years. Updike replied, "I'm excited about getting my desk clean so I can retire." Updike followed up with an interesting distinction between writing and being in print. "I'm not so much excited with writing, but I'm still very much engaged with being in print. I wonder if I haven't written what I've had to say, 2 or 3 times already." Remnick followed up with why Updike continues to mine the territory of his past as he gets older. Updike remarked, "I left the area where I grew up. This makes it magical, enchanted. To me it was the world. This large, rural area with its depressed big city. This was where the riddle of being was posed and unraveled to me."
Remnick now tackled the question of Sex in Updike's work. Updike was very straightforward in his answers to this topic. He commented, "In the late 1950's fiction still had room to grow in this area. Tolstoy and Stendahl could be sexy, but they closed the bedroom door. Joyce and Henry Miller left the door open. Rabbit Run contained a lot that wouldn't go in to The New Yorker. Shawn could be prudish. Now I'm shocked what I read in The New Yorker." The crowd erupted in laughter at this.
Updike expanded on this and the role he felt he played as a writer. "I felt I had something to say-to report-on this topic, " he emphasized. "Much in the same way I felt obliged to describe the agony or the stoic suffering of my father who was teaching out of necessity for his family." He continued, "I had more to say about the mystery and puzzle of being me."
David Remnick interjected he's read a lot about descriptions of writers' processes and wondered what Updike's process was. Updike replied it was most important to the writer to remember that, "You are in charge. Some characters talk easily, but ultimately the writer needs to stay in charge." He said, "Writers write in paper houses and in houses of images. Magazine writing helped to stay connected to the real world." On advice to young writers Updike offered, "Once embarked, keep at it. Don't lose momentum."
Remnick pressed him on this process issue as it related to the organization of Updike's physical working space. Updike remarked, "It's one of those things that sounds weirder than it actually is. We have four rooms that used to be maid's rooms. Three out of the four have desks. One room has the desk for bills and letters. One is for the criticisms and reviews. And one is for novels, with the old army desk bought for $30 and has a view of the sea."
Remnick asked how the events of 9-11 entered in to his work. Updike said, "The American psyche and the illusion of safety initially were altered by the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was watching the event across the East River in Brooklyn on the rooftop. I didn't expect to see the buildings coming down. I knew I was watching people die. I had a kindly view of the universe. I'm still an optimist, but this sense of oblivion was still a shattering moment."
The topic then switched to how Updike came to be a reviewer for the magazine. It started when Updike complained to the editor William Shawn about the "sharpness" of the reviews. Updike felt that a magazine of its stature was somehow lacking in this "sharpness" of book reviews. Shawn challenged Updike to do better. Updike accepted the challenge on the condition that he would review no living American writers, only European and deceased writers. His other requirement was that he had to at least like the book to try to review it. He said, "If you don't like a book, the fault may be partly your own."
Updike said that Tristram Shandy was the biggest great book he can't get through. He said it was "one long quibble." He said he'd like to finish it one day before he dies. "Maybe it will be the way I die," he joked to great laughter. He did say how he remembers the one summer another great big book, Don Quixote, happily kept him company.
The questions next turned again to advice for young writers. Updike stated that today's environment was not as welcoming and publishers were not as willing to take on newcomers. There is a more business bottom line approach to the industry, he suggests. "Seize other occupations!" he exclaimed to a great roar of laughter. He did advise, however, to "work at it everyday. A manuscript does accumulate. Read whom you like. Read the classics. Remember, you owe the reader amusement and enlightenment. Learn to use your eyes. Learn to observe. Show the human and the spirit."
At this point the floor was opened for questions and an audience member commented that it was the 109th Anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's birth and asked what influence Fitzgerald had on Updike. Updike quipped, "Fitzgerald showed us how not to live a writer's life." Again, the audience found this very funny. Becoming serious again, Updike further said, "Fitzgerald valued youthful athleticism. Life was a romantic thing. He became the modern master of American letters. He kept a reverence for the writing."
Updike was quick to point out that the writer John Cheever had more of an influence on him. He said, "Cheever's sentences glow in the mind." He also remarked that even though it was easy to poke at Hemingway's pomposity, he was still "committed to the art, and did something for the craft."
Updike was next asked what was most difficult about reviewing art. Updike responded that he wasn't sure panning El Greco was a wise and necessary thing. What he does try to do is get in the artist to explore what the art is about. He said he admires Vermeer for his coolness and Cezanne's soothing feel. When he visits art, he says, "I try to do that with words. Painting was truly the heroic art of the 20th Century."
That concluded the interview and Remnick again thanked Updike's participation in the festival. Updike was whisked off stage and out of sight. A few of us were surprised, because Updike generally signs books after his readings, but maybe the format of the event for the organizers simply did not include this. I did manage to have David Remnick sign one of his books. When I approached him he joked he hoped I wasn't having him sign one of Updike's books. I assured him no, no it was surely one of his.
[J. Yerkes, 10-5-05]
Talk about great help! American Literature Scholar Marshall Boswell Has Prepared a Chronological Sequence for the Collection of 103 Early Stories
Marshall Boswell at Rhodes College, author of John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy (U. of Missouri Press, 2001), did yeoman's work in preparing this list. How paltry would be the service of this page without the support of persons like Marshall, and especially this week, Robert McCoy, Larry Randen and David Weber. Heartfelt thanks to them each one, but here especially to Marshall.
John Updike, The Early Stories 1953-1975 Chronology
Prepared by Marshall Boswell
1950s
1. Ace in the Hole 12/9/53
2. Friends from Philadelphia 6/54
3. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and So Forth 1/20/55
4. Dentistry and Doubt 3/28/55
5. Kid's Whistling, The 6/16/55
6. Toward Evening 11/16/55
7. Lucid Eye in a Silver Town, The '56-'64
8. Snowing in Greenwich Village 1/56
9. Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow? 3/56
10. Sunday Teasing 5/20/56
11. His Finest Hour 5/56
12. Trillion Feet of Gas, A 11/56
13. Gift from the City, A 4/57
14. Incest 4/10/57
15. Alligators, The 1/9/58
16. Happiest I've Been, The 2/7/58
17. Walter Briggs 6/12/58
18. Persistence of Desire, The 7/19/58
19. Still Life 12/58
20. Flight 2/21/59
21. Dear Alexandros 10/4/59
22. Should Wizard Hit Mommy? 4/11/59
23. Sense of Shelter, A 10/59
1960s
24. Wife-Wooing 1/11/60
25. Archangel 3/60
26. Pigeon Feathers 3/60
27. Sea's Green Sameness, The 3/24/60
28. Home 3/24/60
29. You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You 4/60
30. Astronomer, The 6/18/60
31. A&P 7/18/60
32. Doctor's Wife, The 8/20/60
33. Lifeguard 8/24/60
34. Crow in the Woods, The 8/24/60
35. Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother's Thimble, and Fanning Island 9/27/60
36. Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car 5/2/61
37. Unstuck 6/1/61
38. In Football Season 11/28/61
39. Madman, A 3/1/62
40. Indian, The 2/8/62
41. Giving Blood 3/10/62
42. Solitaire 8/11/62
43. Leaves 10/62
44. Stare, The 11/62
45. Museums and Women 12/12/62
46. Avec la Bebe Sitter 12/21/62
47. Twin Beds in Rome 2/13/63
48. Four Sides of One Story 2/25/63
49. Morning, The 3/13/63
50. At a Bar in Charlotte Amalie 5/4/63
51. Christian Roommates, The 6/63
52. Eros Rampant 7/28/63
53. My Lover Has Dirty Fingernails 7/19/63
54. Eclipse 7/28/63
55. Harv is Plowing Now 10/2/63
56. Music School, The 11/1/63
57. Rescue, The 5/9/64
58. Dark, The 6/13/64
59. Bulgarian Poetess 12/26/64
60. Family Meadow, The 1/4/65
61. Man and Daughter in the Cold 1/18/65
62. Hermit, The 1/25/65
63. During the Jurassic 4/0/65
64. Witnesses, The 6/21/65
65. Marching through Boston 8/13/65
66. Taste of Metal, The 2/22/66
67. Your Lover Just Called 7/30/66
68. Slump, The 11/22/67
69. Under the Microscope 11/29/67
70. Day of the Dying Rabbit, The 10/15/68
71. I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying 1/6/69/
72. Deacon, The 2/5/69
73. Corner, The 5/69
74. I Will No Let Thee Go, Except Thou Bless Me 5/4/69
75. Hillies, The 8/28/69
76. Orphaned Swimming Pool, The 9/5/69
1970s
77. Plumbing 5/7/70
78. Carol Sing, The 5/30/70
79. Minutes of the Last Meeting 1/20/71
80. Baluchitherium, The 4/28/71
81. Sublimating 5/8/71
82. Tarbox Police, The 5/14/71
83. When Everyone Was Pregnant 6/1/71
84. Invention of the Horse Collar, The 8/23/71
85. Jesus on Honshu 9/9/71
86. Commercial 11/14/71
87. Believers /1/72
88. Gun Shop, The 2/25/72
89. How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time 7/7/72
90. Nevada 9/2/72
91. Son 2/6/73
92. Daughter, Last Glimpses of 6/26/73
93. Ethiopia 8/9/73
94. Transaction 9/10/73
95. Nakedness 4/27/74
96. Separating 7/13/74
97. Augustine's Concubine 11/1/74
98. Gesturing 12/9/74
99. Killing 1/20/75
100. Constellation of Events, A 3/11/75
101. Man Who Loved Extinct Animals 5/75
102. Problems 8/12/75
103. Love Song, for a Moog Synthesizer 10/21/75
[12-9-03]
Jim Morrison and I have pieced together the Harry Angstrom family tree and key relationships which should be of help to all Rabbit series readers. Additions and corrections are welcome. Just write to the page email as noted above. We hope readers will find this helpful.
Harry [Harold C. "Rabbit"] Angstrom's Family Tree and Relationships
Earl W. Angstrom married to Mary R. Angstrom
Children: Harold C. [Harry "Rabbit"] Angstrom and Miriam (Mim) Angstrom
Fred Springer married to Bessie [Koerner] Springer
Child: Janice [née Springer] Angstrom
Harry marries Janice [Springer] Angstrom
Children: Rebecca June Angstrom (deceased) and Nelson Springer Angstrom
Harry has an affair with Ruth Leonard
Ruth Leonard marries Fred Byer
Child out of wedlock by Ruth [née Leonard] Byer: Annabelle [Angstrom] Byer
Harry slept with a flower-child named Jill
Harry maintained a long affair with Thelma Harrison
Harry selpt with Nelson's wife "Pru" once
Nelson Angstrom marries Teresa "Pru" [née Lubell] Angstrom
Children: Roy Angstrom and Judy Angstrom
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Janice had a live-in affair with Charlie Stavros
Janice Angstrom after Harry's death marries Ronnie [Raymond] Harrison, Thelma's husband.
Children of Ronnie and Thelma Harrison (and step-mother Janice):
Alex and Georgie and Ron, Jr. (wife Margie)
Ron, Jr. has three children: 2 boys, 1 girl
Jim Morrison has also contructed a relationship narrative which will be very helpful to newer readers of Updike's Rabbit series:
Earl Angstrom was married to Mary Angstrom and they had two children: Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom and Miriam (Mim) Angstrom.
Fred Springer was married to Bessie Springer and I think had only one child: Janice Springer.
Harry Angstom married Janice Springer and they had two children: Nelson and Rebecca (Becky). Rebecca died at an early age.
Ruth Leonard married Fred Byer and they raised the girl Annebelle Byer, who may have been Harry's child.
Nelson Angstrom married Teresa "Pru" Lubell. Harry slept with Pru once.
Charlie Stavros worked at Springer Motors alongside Harry and not only sleptwith Janice while she and Harry were still married, but he also slept with Harry's sister, Mim.
Earl + Mary Angstrom=Harry and Miriam Angstrom
Fred +Bessie Springer=Janice Springer
Harry+Janice=Nelson and Rebecca Angstrom
Ruth Leonard + Fred Byer (or Harry)=Annebelle Byer
Ronnie Harrison was married to Thelma Harrison. Ronnie played high school basketball with Harry. He also slept with Ruth Leonard before she became Harry's lover in Rabbit, Run. And yet again, in Rabbit is Rich, he sleeps with a girl Harry lusts after, Cindy Murkett.
Thelma Harrison becomes Harry's lover near the end of Rabbit is Rich, and the affair continues for the next ten years, up until near her death from lupus in Rabbit at Rest. She tells her husband about the affair on her deathbed, and Ronnie in turn speaks to Harry about it.
It's clear that Ronnie and Harry have been linked for a long time through their desires for the same women, and it's not surprising to find Ronnie and Janice married.
FIRST UPDIKE
READER COMMENTARY
2. RESPONSES TO THE STANDING QUESTION FOR ALL READERS
[Caricature copyrighted by David Levine 1978]]
Remember, if this is your first visit to the page, our standing call for responses is
"What occasion first prompted you to begin reading John Updike, and why did you continue to read him?"
Normally, I will leave the comments here for about a month unless this section becomes too over-crowded.
Thirty-two Is Not a Bad Age To Begin Reading Updike, Says a New Friend from the UK
I am very encouraged by some new letters for this section, and is it not very interesting that they come from the UK. Updike is widely read over there and it is a pleasure to welcome Mr. Surtees to our site commentary.
7 October 2004
I started to read Updike in 1984 aged 32. It seems late, but it is not a bad age to come to him; I found that some experience of hope, pain and disappointment plus, of course, the joy of living, helps when trying to relate to his work. I was drawn to him simply through book browsing. I had read Heller, Roth and Doctorow and knew that I had to read him at some stage. I confess, however, that I was drawn to Harry Angstrom by the clever packaging of the Penguin paperbacks around that time. I bought the trilogy and was hooked from then on. I had worked with "salesmen" whose lives and ambitions seemed completely serious and yet superficial and whose loyalties lasted as long as it was commercially convenient for them. Updike seemed immediately to understand and to convey the spiritual sterility of unfulfilled ambitions and articulated in these piercing and poetic prose. I had developed a back problem and remember vividly lying on the floor in tears as Janice's baby drowned in the bath. From there I read "Couples" and then, his first newly published work since my discovery, "The Witches of Eastwick" came out. Since then, I wait patiently for each release.
Outside Harry, I think my favourite of his is "Rogers Version". As well as an astonishing theological tour de force, he captures vividly, the yawning gap between practical religion and intellectual theory. The destruction of Dale at the cocktail party, so cynically laid on by Roger, is one of my favourite passages in his entire work.
I have greatly appreciated last year's publication of the Early Stories. Such a wide variety of themes and showing his spiritual heart.
Simon Surtees // simon.athome@btinternet.com
A True Confession from Normandy, France: An Updike Short Story Has Been This French Teacher's "'texte fétiche de rentrée des classes' for Fifteen Years Now!"
This is a lovely testimony to Updike's artistry reaching far beyond our American shores. I was really wonderful to hear from you, Catherine. Here is the text of her letter about the use of this Updike story for the opening of every term in her classes. The answer to her question is that the story over here was titled "The Wallet" and appeared in Yankee Magazine, September 1985: 114-117. It was reprinted in his collection of short stories Trust Me (Knopf, 1989: 222-237). My guess is that this story was abbreviated for the French book Catherine mentions. It will likely not be otherwise available until (or unless) there is a second volume of Updike's collected stories beyond 1975, the last of the stories in The Early Stories (Knopf, 2003). Cast your bread upon the waters . . . !
27 September 2004
What a piece of luck! I have just found your website...will answer your question and also ask for your help. I first read John Updike in a schoolbook for french students some fifteen years ago. It was a text entitled "the Movie House" in which the narrator (Updike himself I always imagined) was telling about how he was allowed to go to the movies on his own, from the age of six . He was explaining how much he enjoyed watching romantic films with Adolphe Menjou and also horror films with monsters. He described what his feelings were then and on his way back home, being still moved or frightened by the scenes he had just seen. All this is of course was very beautifully written in a realistic and poetic style and I was much impressed about it!
Now I have to say that I was not a student then, but a teacher and I immediately decided to study it in class! I am very ashamed to admit that I only knew J. Updike by name but had never read any of his works!
Anyway, I just want you to know that this text has been my "texte fétiche de rentrée des classes"(trans: "my favorite text for the opening of classes") since then and for fifteen years now! Indeed it is the subject, substance, sap, support of my first class at the beginning of each new school year.
Yet even if I have tried hard and in every possible way to find out the book from which this extract was taken, I still do not know about it and feel very frustrated not to be able to tell my students! Could you please help me?
Shall I also say that I have read and very much liked The Centaur, Bech at Bay, The Afterlife (and other stories).
I am french and a teacher of english in a public highschool in Normandy, very interested in literature in general and american writers in particular.
Hoping to hear from you, Bravo pour votre site,
Catherine HERVIEU, Lycée Henri Cornat , 50700 Valognes, France // Catherinehervieu@club-internet.fr
John Updike and Mohammed Ali--Two New Zealand Heroes
Robin Churchman wrote me several weeks ago and I lost his note in my computer problems. I finally found it yesterday and apologize to him for the long delay in posting this letter.
29 June 2004
I first came upon John Updike when I read a review of Rabbit Run. I purchased the book in paperback and within a few pages I was enchanted by his style, eloquence, subtlety and most of all the clarity and vision of his descriptive prose and his insight into human behaviour and weakness. After this book I read the other Rabbit books. Of all his works thus far I have been most humbled by Self Consciousness which is to me the most humbling and eloquent of all his works. I have read them all now, excepting his essays, and often read them over again for inspiration. I know that I can never attain what is to me the Everest of descriptive prose. My recently departed brother was an accomplished Jazz guitarist and he most admired Wes Montgomery and Johnny Smith - both American artists. He felt the same as I. He was lucky enough to meet Johnny Smith in Taupo New Zealand while Johnny Smith was on a fishing holiday.
Like John Updike I admire Nabokov and in many ways their work is of a similar incisiveness.
I often wonder if John Updike admired JP Donleavy, the 'before his time' author of "The Ginger Man"
You are welcome to post this note on the website if you wish.
Of all the people on earth I would wish to meet it would be John Updike, and Mohammed Ali. Two of Americas greatest sons.
Robin Churchman // New Zealand // rchurchman@xtra.co.nz
From Trash Can to Couples to Life 32 Years Later!
I first read Updike at 22 back in 1972 while working a swing shift for a company making those plastic coffee cups you used to get when you bought a certain soft margarine. I was trying to work my way toward a teaching degree at a state college in South (New) Jersey. The swing shift was driving me crazy: 5 days on 1s, 1 day off, 5 days on 2nd, 2 days off, 5 days on 3rd and 3 days off: repeat. I couldn’t sleep when I needed to but couldn’t stay awake on the job let alone during class. When the plant was running trouble free, I would try to do some studying or catch a few winks in the locker room on a wooden bench not made for comfort. One night or maybe early morning I noticed someone had thrown a paperback into the trash. tI caught my eye with its really gaudy, shiny, metalized cover: Couples. I wasn’t reading much for pleasure at the time. I didn’t have time for much other than Foundations of Ed., Ed. Psyc., Ed. Philosophy etc. plus Ed. Article research and reviews. I initially thought that Couples was some romance novel which seemed out of place in the Men’s locker room. I hadn’t hear of John Updike at that time. I opened it in the middle and immediately sensed that the main character, Piet, was a bit of a sleaze and figured the book for a distraction that would help keep me awake through shift change.
After restarting at Chapter one, Couples met my expectation of keeping me awake all right but not with steamy sex scenes even though John Updike can paint a sex scene as well as the best erotic storyteller. Rather, I was immediately captured by Updike’s incredible capacity to draw the reader into the characters’ conscious being: to feel the stresses, anxiety, delights and conflicts of ordinary people just struggling through ordinary lives sprinkled with moments of passion follow by longer periods of regret, analysis, adjustments. It took me forever to read Couples . I found the prose difficult at first. I had the sense that Updike had a great sense of understanding and describing the no longer so mundane relationships of ordinary, middle class, middle aged men and surprisingly, women. I found myself rereading sentences and chapters of this already big book because it seemed important to understand it: all.
I’m 54 now. Got my degree. Taught. Married. Raised 2 children who are now in college and are smarter than me. I‘ve read everything written by Updike and eagerly await every new effort. I really have come to rely on knowing how his characters deal with life, death, love, sex, health, faith, age, children, psoriasis to help me manage with my own issues. Maybe too much. Of course I read lots of other stuff: political opinion, historical novels but my analytical reading style and schedule don’t allow me the time to read materials that don’t challenge and reward as well as delight.
Ed Phillips // phil6570@msn.com
MONTHLY UPDIKE READER DISCUSSION
3. MONTHLY DISCUSSION TOPIC
[Picture copyrighted by David Levine 1968]
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DISCUSSION TOPICS IN 2007 WILL BE OCCASIONAL
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