John Updike R.I.P.
“If I say that Henry Green taught me to write, it implies that I learned and it is not a business one learns, unlearns rather, the premature certainties and used ecstacies unraveling as one goes.”
—quoted from loving memory, switch out Updike for Green and it says what I want to say.
He was the first great writer who wrote about a world I recognized: church basements, supermarkets, the eroded earth where little kids play. The stories at the end of Pigeon Feathers are among the most radiant ever written. He taught me the power of adjectives to enchant nouns. He reviewed graciously and generously and accurately. He sought writers from other countries and other traditions. His best New Yorker Talk of the Town pieces, especially his description of Christmas in New York after Kennedy’s assassination, were written as ephemera but should survive for as long as men and women still read English. I have criticized him elsewhere but any writer who added so much to our literature and life has toiled well.
