When word came that John Updike had passed away, I asked my friends over at The Rumpus if they were planning any sort of tribute to him. Their immediate response: What a great idea. Could you put it together? 
Um, okay. Why not? I dispatched the following email to some of the novelists I knew:
As you’ve probably learned by now, John Updike has passed away. As a fellow writer, we’re wondering if you’d like to add your voice to a memorial we’re compiling for The Rumpus.
Nothing fancy: just a paragraph or two on what role Updike played in your own development as a writer. What place in your head did he occupy? Did you admire his prose style, his commitment to the craft, the fact that he’d been famous forever but that didn’t stop him from doing book reviews? Did something he write blow your mind, point the way, or get you laid?
Other publications will handle the career retrospectives. Our focus is from a writer’s perspective–as in you, Updike and the printed page. It doesn’t have to be pure praise–we’ll be re-running David Foster Wallace’s assessment of him as “a penis with a thesaurus”–but we do hope it can be honest and personal.
When it came down to it, we didn’t re-run DFW’s well-known “penis with a thesaurus” reference after all; it just seemed a little too disrespectful to the gentleman, at least on the occasion of his death. The word eulogy, after all, literally means “good words”. Besides, we didn’t need to dig into past assessments. Several writers promptly came through with fresh, well considered and well expressed mini-essays on the man.
Andrew Sean Greer wrote about two very potent experiences: receiving high-profile, career-making praise by Updike in the pages of the New Yorker, and getting somewhat less warm marks from him for a subsequent novel.
Rick Moody cited the lessons of Updike’s discipline, calling him “a lifer”.
Tom Barbash remembered taking a cross-country road trip with Updike’s Rabbit at Rest.
Andrew Foster Altschul recaptured an adolescent’s perspective on Updike: lotsa sex in those pages, but also something else.
Elizabeth Kadetsky considered a little-noted aspect of Updike’s long career: his art criticism.
Austin Grossman wrote about Updike’s legacy of literary transgression—about how his writing about sex leaves us to find “new ways of being thrilled on the page”.
Michelle Richmond contributed a meditation on “how authors become part of our personal mental library,” connecting a comment by Updike to a sobering event in her life.
Joshua Furst recalled his own youthful dismissal of Updike as someone who “stood for everything I opposed in fiction,” and his later, humbling realization that ideology and iconography aside, Updike was still a damn fine crafter of language.
Lucy Corin remembered Updike as a slight-creepy presence in her childhood bathroom, and as an inspiring voice in her ear today.
My thanks to them all, and to The Rumpus for cajoling me into the guest-editor seat. When you get a chance, take the time to read the full text of our impromptu tribute.
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02.22.09 § 0