Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism

by John Updike

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2011 by The Estate of John H. Updike

  Foreword copyright © 2011 by Christopher Carduff

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Ltd., Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Updike, John.

  [Prose works. Selections]

  Higher gossip : essays and criticism / by John Updike; edited by Christopher Carduff.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-95717-7

  I. Carduff, Christopher. II. Title.

  PS3571.P4A6 2011

  818’.5408—dc22

  2011013586

  Jacket photograph: “John Updike” Photograph by Irving Penn.

  Copyright © 1992. Condé Nast Publications.

  Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson

  v3.1

  Acknowledgments

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following magazines and publishers, who first printed the pieces specified, sometimes under different titles and in slightly different form:

  THE NEW YORKER: “A Desert Encounter,” the opening section of “The Beloved” (as “Love: First Lessons”), the tribute to L. E. Sissman, “Visual Trophies,” “The Valiant Swabian,” “In Love with a Wanton” (as “An Ode to Golf”), and the fifteen reviews collected in “Book Chat”

  THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: Seventeen of the reviews collected in “Gallery Tours”

  AARP MAGAZINE: “The Writer in Winter”

  THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR: “Nessus at Noon”

  THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE (LONDON): “The Football Factory”

  TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW: The second and third sections of “The Beloved”

  GRANTA: “The Lens Factory”

  ONTARIO REVIEW: “Cafeteria, Mass. General Hospital”

  POETRY: “Not Cancelled Yet” and the comment on poetry in the marketplace (as part of an interview conducted by mail and posted at poetryfoundation.org)

  PEN AMERICA MAGAZINE: “Humor in Fiction”

  PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AND INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS: Tribute to Raymond Carver

  LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE: “The Enduring Magritte”

  LE TRANSRÉALISTE (PARIS): Tribute to Jean Ipoustéguy

  NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: “Visions of Mars” and “Extreme Dinosaurs”

  FORD TIMES: “Ipswich in the Seventies” (as “The Dilemma of Ipswich”)

  AUDIENCE: “Three Texts from Early Ipswich”

  BOOKBUILDERS OF BOSTON NEWSLETTER: Tribute to Lovell Thompson

  GOLF DIGEST: “Walking Insomnia” (as “Never to Sleep, Always to Dream”)

  THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW: “The End of Authorship” and “In Defense of the Amateur Reader”

  TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (LONDON): “An American View of English Fiction” (as an untitled comment)

  LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR (PARIS): Replies to questions occasioned by Licks of Love

  PHYSICS TODAY: Note on “The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe”

  THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY: Contribution to the symposium “The Future of the American Idea”

  CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE: Remarks upon accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature

  EUROGRAPHICA (HELSINKI): “The Football Factory” and “The Lens Factory,” in Love Factories: Three Short Stories, and “Basium XVI,” in Recent Poems, 1986–1990, both books in editions of 350 copies

  HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: “Basium XVI” (as “Kiss 16”), in Poemata Humanistica Decem, an anthology of Renaissance Latin poems with English translations by divers hands, edited by Rodney G. Dennis

  ALFRED A. KNOPF: “Head of a Girl, at the Met,” in Facing Nature; “A Poetics of Book Reviewing,” from the foreword to Picked-Up Pieces; and the critical matter from The Carpentered Hen, The Poorhouse Fair, Buchanan Dying, and The Early Stories; also the foreword to The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball

  LIMBERLOST PRESS (BOISE, IDAHO): “An Hour Without Color” and “Not Cancelled Yet,” in Not Cancelled Yet, a chapbook of thirteen poems in an edition of 700 copies

  LORD JOHN PRESS (NORTHFIELD, CALIF.): “The Beloved,” as a small book in an edition of 400 copies, and “Humor in Fiction,” as a small book in an edition of 126 copies

  LITTLE, BROWN & CO.: “Søren Kierkegaard,” in Atlantic Brief Lives: A Biographical Companion to the Arts, edited by Louis Kronenberger

  QUILL AND BRUSH (ROCKVILLE, MD.): Contribution to F. Scott Fitzgerald at 100, edited by Jackson R. Bryer, a small book in an edition of 500 copies

  STERLING PUBLISHERS (US) / DUNCAN BAIRD PUBLISHERS (UK): Foreword to Coffee with Hemingway, by Kirk Curnutt

  THE ECCO PRESS (US) / CANONGATE (UK): Introduction to The Haunted Major, by Robert Marshall

  PENGUIN GROUP LTD (UK): Afterword to The Luzhin Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT: Introduction to The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike with Katrina Kenison, and “Playing with Better Players,” in The Ultimate Golf Book, edited by Charles McGrath and David McCormick

  HARRY N. ABRAMS: “Harvard Square in the Fifties,” in Harvard Square: An Illustrated History Since 1950, by Mo Lotman

  ALOE PRESS (NEW YORK): “Ipswich in the Seventies,” as A Good Place, a booklet in an edition of 126 copies

  THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DAY COMMITTEE OF THE TOWN OF IPSWICH (MASS.): “Three Texts from Early Ipswich,” as a keepsake printed on the occasion of the pageant’s first performance

  THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS (BEVERLY, MASS.): “Open Spaces,” as the foreword to Land of the Commonwealth, by Richard Cheek with Libby Ola Hopkins

  MASSACHUSETTS GOLFING ASSOCIATION (NORTON, MASS.): “Memoirs of a Massachusetts Golfer,” in A Commonwealth of Golfers, 1903–2003, edited by Laurence Sheehan

  THORNWILLOW PRESS (NEWBURGH, N.Y.): Four of the five essays in “The Game,” as In Love with a Wanton: Essays on Golf, a small book in an edition of 250 copies

  WATSON PUBLICATIONS (UNIVERSITY PARK, FLA.): “Being Senior,” in the souvenir program of the 2001 U.S. Senior Open Championship

  STEWART, TABORI & CHANG: Foreword to Lost Balls, by Charles Lindsay

  SIMON & SCHUSTER: “Reply to Paul Boyer,” in Novel History, edited by Mark C. Carnes

  EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY: Introduction to Rabbit Angstrom

  FAWCETT BOOKS: Foreword to Too Far to Go, and the original ending of Self-Consciousness, in Literary Outtakes, edited by Larry Dark

  THE BENEDICTINE MISSIONARIES OF BLUE CLOUD ABBEY (MARVIN, S.D.): Note on “The Indian,” a short story printed as an eight-page special issue of The Blue Cloud Quarterly

  WILLIAM B. EWERT, PUBLISHER (CONCORD, N.H.): Note on Bech: His Oeuvre, a small book in an edition of 110 copies

  HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS: Statement on one’s own style, in The Sound on the Page, by Ben Yagoda

  OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS: Letter included as an afterword to the introduction to Updike in Cincinnati, edited by James Schiff

  WARNER BOOKS: “The Courage of Ballplayers,” as an untitled contribution to What Baseball Means to Me, edited by Curt Smith and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following sources of previously published material:

  RANDOM HOUSE, INC.: From the Modern Library edition of Cervant
es’ Don Quixote, translated by Pierre Antoine Motteux, revised 1791 by John Ozell. Copyright 1930 by Random House, Inc.

  PENGUIN BOOKS: From the Penguin Classics edition of Voltaire’s Candide, translated by John Butt. Copyright © 1947 by John Butt.

  THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA: From Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (the corrected text of the first edition, published by Charles L. Webster & Co., New York, in 1885), in Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings, edited by Guy Cardwell. Copyright © 1982 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.

  LITTLE, BROWN/THE WYLIE AGENCY LLC/THE EVELYN WAUGH ESTATE: From A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh. Copyright 1934, renewed © 1962 by Evelyn Waugh.

  WARNER/CHAPELL MUSIC, ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC., AND THE COLE PORTER MUSICAL AND LITERARY PROPERTY TRUSTS, PETER L. FELCHER, TRUSTEE: “Don’t Fence Me In” (Porter/Fletcher), copyright © 1944 (renewed) Warner Bros. Inc. Excerpts from “You’re the Top!” copyright © 1934 (renewed) Warner Bros. Inc.; “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” copyright © 1938 (renewed) by Chappell & Co., Inc.; “Why Should I Care?” copyright © 1937 (renewed) by Chappell & Co., Inc.; “Dressing Daughter for Dinner,” copyright © 1983 by Robert H. Montgomery, Jr., as Trustee; “Jerry, My Soldier Boy,” copyright © 1942 (renewed) by Chappell & Co., Inc.; “Pets,” copyright © 1967 by John F. Wharton, as Trustee; “Can-Can,” copyright © 1952 by Cole Porter (renewed by Chappell & Co., Inc.); “Night and Day,” copyright © 1932 (renewed) by Warner Bros., Inc. All rights reserved. International copyrights secured.

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT/FABER & FABER LTD: From “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’ ” by T. S. Eliot, from The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. Copyright 1934, 1952 by Harcourt, Brace & World. Copyright © 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot.

  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS: From The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Alexander Dru. Copyright © 1938 by Oxford University Press.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Real Conversation

  THE WRITER IN WINTER

  A DESERT ENCOUNTER

  NESSUS AT NOON

  THE FOOTBALL FACTORY

  THE BELOVED

  THE LENS FACTORY

  FIVE POEMS

  Basium XVI

  Head of a Girl, at the Met

  Cafeteria, Mass. General Hospital

  An Hour Without Color

  Not Cancelled Yet

  Book Chat

  HUMOR IN FICTION

  LIVES AND LAURELS

  Søren Kierkegaard

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Ernest Hemingway

  Kurt Vonnegut

  L. E. Sissman

  Raymond Carver

  FOREWORDS AND AFTERWORDS

  The Haunted Major, by Robert Marshall

  The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball

  The Luzhin Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov

  The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike with Katrina Kenison

  WORKS AND DAYS

  The Changeling

  Back-Chat, Funny Cracks

  Imperishable Maxwell

  Basically Decent

  FICTION NOW

  Hugger-Mugger

  Classics Galore

  A Boston Fable

  Nan, American Man

  An Upstate Saga

  Relative Strangers

  Dreamy Wilderness

  AMERICANA

  Famous Aimee

  Laissez-faire Is More

  Makeup and Make-Believe

  Sparky from St. Paul

  Gallery Tours

  OLD MASTERS

  A Wistful Würzburger

  Singular in Everything

  More Light on Delft

  Plain and Simplified

  ROMANTICS AND REALISTS

  “Therefore I Print”

  Innerlichkeit and Eigentümlichkeit

  Splendid Lies

  A Lean and Optical Dane

  Lear Far and Near

  The Artist as Trailblazer

  VAN GOGH AND SEURAT

  Uncertain Skills, Determined Spirit

  The Purest of Styles

  Pointillism in Black and White

  SECESSIONISTS AND SURREALISTS

  Can Genitals Be Beautiful?

  New Kind on the Block

  Beyond Real

  The Enduring Magritte

  Jean Ipoustéguy

  PHOTOGRAPHERS

  Visual Trophies

  Aftermaths

  Pet Topics

  THE UNIVERSE

  The Valiant Swabian

  Visions of Mars

  Extreme Dinosaurs

  THE COMMONWEALTH

  Harvard Square in the Fifties

  Ipswich in the Seventies

  Three Texts from Early Ipswich

  Lovell Thompson

  Open Spaces

  Memoirs of a Massachusetts Golfer

  THE GAME

  In Love with a Wanton

  Playing with Better Players

  Walking Insomnia

  Lost Balls

  Being Senior

  Table Talk

  The End of Authorship

  In Defense of the Amateur Reader

  A Poetics of Book Reviewing

  An American View of English Fiction

  Comment on “Poetry’s Failure in the Marketplace”

  Foreword to the 1982 Edition of The Carpentered Hen

  Introduction to the 1977 Edition of The Poorhouse Fair

  From the Afterword to Buchanan Dying

  Reply to Paul Boyer’s Appraisal of Memories of the Ford Administration

  Letter to Rosemary Herbert, Book Review Editor of the Boston Herald, Anent Gertrude and Claudius

  Introduction to Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels

  Foreword to The Early Stories: 1953–1975

  Foreword to Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories

  Note on “The Indian”

  Note on Bech: His Oeuvre

  Replies to Three Questions About Licks of Love

  The Original Ending of Self-Consciousness

  On One’s Own Style

  Letter Included as an Afterword to the Introduction of Updike in Cincinnati

  The Courage of Ballplayers

  Post-Hubble Astronomy

  On “The American Idea”

  Commencement Address, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1993

  Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature

  Index

  Illustration Credits

  About the Author

  About the Editor

  Other Books by This Author

  Foreword

  A REVIEW DONE WELL, John Updike tells us in his foreword to Hugging the Shore (1983), is “gossip of a higher sort”—the dirt dished out by a trusted and stylish confidant who got to the party early, who read the book in uncorrected galleys or saw the exhibition as the last wall label was going up. The words of this privileged insider, this ideal reviewer, come to us in the carefully weighted syllables of a well-schooled but largely self-educated connoisseur (“a wise and presentable man,” Updike calls him, “in suit and tie”) and we lean in close to hear them, not only because we feel more intelligent and worldly in his company but because he’s got the goods. He knows the story; he quotes directly; he’s qualified to judge and takes delight in judging. He brings us the juicy cultural news we crave: who’s been good and who’s been bad, who’s just said or done something beautiful and who’s fallen wide of the mark. And he does so with a taste for fine discriminations and (only sometimes, in a seemingly throwaway line, and all the more effectively for his usually being so humane) for the hot and salty drop of blood. His account of the proceedings approaches the definitive.

  For many readers of a certain age, myself included, Updike was the ideal reviewer—indeed the preëminent literary jo
urnalist of our times. And the learned yet never pedantic, civilizing yet gossipy “I” of his criticism (“a figure,” the author claimed, “no more or less fictional, somehow, than the heroes of Rabbit, Run and The Coup and Self-Consciousness”) became a familiar and welcome voice in our heads. Over the course of five decades we came to know, trust, and appropriate his pronouncements and predilections. We flipped to the back of every new issue of The New Yorker, where his book reviews appeared almost monthly from the middle Sixties on, and were disappointed if we couldn’t find him there; later, after 1990, we hopefully scanned The New York Review of Books in search of his art writings. Updike told us what to read, or skip, or fight the crowds to see; more frequently he provided us with such vivid and memorably phrased responses to whatever was under consideration that—by some mystery of vicarious experience, by a contact-high communication of imagery and sensibility—we felt we’d read the book or seen the show ourselves. His verdicts were the final word, and they live on in our memories: Though John Cheever’s journals make “a spectacular splash of bile and melancholy,” of “lusts and failures and self-humiliations and crushing sense of shame and despond,” his confessions also “posthumously administer a Christian lesson in the deep gulf between outward appearance and Christian tradition” and, “in their unstructured emotion, reach higher and certainly descend lower than anything in the fiction.” Though Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full occasionally “touches us with its grand ambition,” it still “amounts to entertainment, not literature, not even literature in a modest aspirant form. Like a movie desperate to recoup its bankers’ investment, the novel tries too hard to please us.” Though the many nudes among Andrew Wyeth’s “heavily hyped” Helga paintings, on pink-and-cream display in cold gray puritan Boston, “make the show sensational,” they also “make it worthwhile. They significantly add to a venerable genre rather undernourished in America, where the menace and sadness of naked flesh have impressed artists as much as its grandeur and allure.” This is gossip, yes, but gossip in service of higher, even lofty, things, witty but exalted talk that, by getting at what is alive (or not) in works of art, enhanced our aesthetic lives immeasurably. No living critic can approach its style, its special mixture of warmth, elegance, and impressionistic brilliance, and I doubt we’ll hear the likes of it again.

  Because Updike liked the way I’d put together posthumous editions of Daniel Fuchs and William Maxwell, and because we’d collaborated happily on his Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu (2010), I was asked by his wife and literary executor, Martha Updike, to assemble this volume of his uncollected prose. The notion of such a volume—the capstone to the series of miscellanies that began with Assorted Prose (1965) and included, most recently, More Matter (1999) and Due Considerations (2007)—was on Updike’s mind during the weeks before his death. In a letter to me dated December 16, 2008, he wrote, in the context of other unfinished business, that he would soon be making a final deposit to his papers at Harvard’s Houghton Library, namely a carton of recent and fugitive magazine pieces. He hoped that this was only a temporary deposit: “I might yet make a book of them,” he said, “if there is time and energy.” He died, of inoperable lung cancer, on January 27, 2009.