Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Witches of Eastwick
John Updike: his prodigious facility and output raised doubts in my mind. A great writer, no question about it, with unparelleled command of the English language, as every casual reader of the New Yorker would know. But was he a great novelist, like Bellow or Roth? Prompted by Martin Amis, I tried. The first thing that struck me was his comic gift. Then, his incredible ear for dialogue: the telephone gossip between the three witches, the appearance of Darryl Van Horne (remember Jack Nicholson in the movie?): you are there. Little by little, other layers appear: the cruelty, but at the same time the vast knowingness. With infinite subtlety, he conveys every shade of meaning about relations between men and women, their yearnings, loves, rivalries. There is a familiarity with the mysteries of the universe, the ebb and flow of life. Updike was Piscis; he has the wisdom and the distance of the sign. His light touch does not make him any less profound than others more prone to display their intellectual bagage and their angst. How come this man never had the Nobel prize? It would have been richly deserved.
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