John Updike, one of America's most fluent and prolific authors, has died.
So sad.
Here's the link to the NY Times/AP newsflash.
Updike could in almost no way be called a progressive, and I'm not sure of his party affiliation, but his death deserves a moment, I think. His Rabbit Angstrom tetraology is one of the best looks at class and the middle-class in America: read them if you want to see the underside of the American dream from a rather comfortable suburban-fuckup point of view. A lovely portrait of America and a "typical" (white, middle-class) American over four decades.
His other writings are, if not all terrific, all certainly finely tuned, beautifully honed, exquisitely shaped: the man had a mellifluous, seemingly endless style, and could write about most anything with verve and enthusiasm, as well as a quiet grace. Except, of course, the female anatomy, which subject exercised much of his attention: these parts of Updike are embarrassing, and perhaps best left to social scientists, literary scholars, and other archaeologists of the lost American century.
My favorite Updikes (besides the Rabbit books)
Of the Farm, an often overlooked, short work. Some of Updike's most crystalling prose, and fine pastoral-nature writing.
The Henry Bech books, collected by Everyman's Library. Updike at his bitterest and wittiest, Bech being his fictional mouthpiece and alternate alter ego (after the lumpen homme moyen Rabbit Angstrom, of course). Incredibly bitchy and fun.
His short stories are also incredible: check out the Knopf Early Stories, 1953–1975 for a great collection of the work he was proudest of, and which he thought would survive longest.
Finally, Updike's essays are perhaps his best work, the medium that suited him most. Updike on any writer is an education and a pleasure.
Here's a Wikipedia link to Updike's works.
And make sure to read Nicholson Baker's U and I certainly my favorite of Baker's works, and a terrific, odd, nutty look at literary celebrity, obsessions, reading, memory, time, etc.: it's all there, as Baker chronicles his lifelong obsession with Updike's works. A sterling example of irresponsible, aleatory, lyrical criticism at its best.
Again, not exactly a tragedy for progressive politics, but a sad loss for American letters.