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Book Reviews
The three great secrets
JOHN UPDIKE:
An epitaph
Essay by Julie McGuire
From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.
—John Hoyer Updike, 1932-2009
John Hoyer Updike was a master spy who combed through the suburban landscape to find the “paltry and few“ titillating secrets to unearth. Described as the “chronicler of suburban adultery” and “the greatest American fiction writer of his generation,” this controversial yet undoubtedly prolific writer has provoked a love-hate relationship with both critics and readers. This is evidenced by his receipt of both The Guardian’s lifetime achievement award for bad sex in fiction (“an abundance of sperm greets the performance of oral sex”), and two Pulitzer prizes (for Rabbit at Rest and Rabbit is Rich).
My own love-hate relationship with Updike began during my junior year in high school. Escaping from the “dull” books assigned in English (by the way, these “dull” books are now among my favorites) Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, I devoured the devilish Witches of Eastwick, completely charmed by Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, the divorced witches who cast their spells on the unsuspecting natives of Eastwick, a fictional suburb in Rhode Island. Witches was the first "adult" book I read (I don't count Judy Blume’s Forever, whose sex scenes were highlighted and passed around high school classrooms across the country). Even as a teenager, I considered myself a mature reader and Witches, in my mind, was a sophisticated novel, so I admired Updike’s ability to incorporate sex seamlessly into his captivating narrative; Updike told one hell of a good story.
Then I came to hate his work. After about three or four chapters of Rabbit Run, the first of four in Updike's famous Rabbit series, I vowed never to read another Updike novel. I just didn’t get the fascination with Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the middle-class self-acknowledged insignificant protagonist whose success in life peaked in high school as the basketball star. Rabbit runs from the “petty” problems in his life, and Updike skillfully captured the dullness of Rabbit’s life. But at the time, I didn’t appreciate the nuanced way that Updike was commenting on the dangers of living life half-heartedly.
Later I found In the Beauty of the Lilies, a glimpse of religious life in America, and I loved it. Lilies is an intimate portrait of the yearning for something beyond, for faith in something larger than ourselves. If you’re new to Updike, I’d recommend starting here.
Although in recent years Updike seemed a shoo-in as a “dead pool” pick, somehow he always had more. With Terrorist: A Novel, his 2007 edgy, provocative exploration of radical Islam, I found another reason to admire him as a writer. In Terrorist, Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy, the anti-hero of this post-September 11, 2001 novel, embraces a radical form of Islam. His high school guidance counselor vows to save him from certain destruction. Terrorist is a searing commentary on racial relations, technology, extremism, and stereotypes.
Writing in a one-room office above a restaurant in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Updike wrote six days a week for several hours a day throughout his career. His work ethic is a lesson to young writers hoping for a lasting career. Said Updike:
Creativity is merely a name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
Updike was well-rewarded for his hard work. I was surprised to learn that in addition to his Pulitzer prizes (he was only the third American to receive a second Pulitzer in fiction), Updike received the Jesuit magazine America’s Campion Award in 1997 as a “distinguished person of Christian letters.” He also received a National Medal of Art from President George H. W. Bush, and the National Medal for the Humanities from President George W. Bush. These awards alone show how difficult it is to characterize the man poked fun of for his raunchy sex scenes, and honored for his deep faith.
John Updike was more than a novelist, chronicler of America and the seedier, more banal side of suburbia. He was also a prolific short story writer, literary critic, and poet. Love him or hate him (maybe undecided?), he was an important figure in contemporary American writing.
In an autobiographical essay, Updike identified the three great secrets as “sex, art, and religion.” I was sad to learn that Updike had died; sorry that he couldn’t survive the “last act,” and meditate on what he might have called the fourth great secret—facing death and surviving—in words. I imagine he’d have a lot to say.
Julie McGuire, fiction editor of The Internet Review of Books, is a paralegal. Her personal essays and poems have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and several small periodicals. She and her family live in Virginia.
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