Updike (69 page)

149 Gill “came to
The New Yorker
young”: MM, 786.

149 He wanted to be an artist, not an “elegant hack”: LP, June 26, 1960, Houghton.

149 “easily the finest writing talent”: Brendan Gill to VG, October 20, 1956, Orion.

149 “gallant, wise, and willing to lose money”: JU to VG, January 31, 1957, Orion.

150 “While our baby cooed”:
PP
, 165.

150 “It was a revelation to me”: Ibid., 167.

150 “Those two woke me up”: Remnick interview, 2005.

151 In some later accounts of his “defection”:
DC
, 103.

151 “too trafficked, too well cherished by others”:
SC
, 253.

151 “immense as the city is”: Remnick interview, 2005.

151 “a vast conspiracy of bother”: LP, January 27, 1957, Houghton.

151 “When New York ceased to support my fantasies”:
AP
, vii.

151 “sweet as a mint paddy”: LP, February 18, 1957, Houghton.

151 volunteered to find him a larger, more suitable apartment:
DC
, 103.

151 “The crucial flight of my life”:
ES
, x.

152 “the crucial detachment of my life”:
OS
, ix.

152 In 1968 he told
Time
magazine:
T
d.

152 “My money comes out of here”:
WMRR
.

152 “There’s a certain moment of jubilant mortality”:
T
d.

152 “being in New York takes so much energy”:
OJ
, 56.

152 The reviewer referred in the very first sentence: Maxwell Geismar, “The End of the Line,”
The New York Times
,
March 24, 1957.

153 “very shallow sophistication”: Maxwell Geismar, “Fitzgerald: Bard of the Jazz Age,”
Saturday Review of Literature
, April 26, 1958, 17.

153 William Maxwell felt obliged to send his “depressed” author: WM to JU, May 7, 1958, NYPL.

154 “We must write where we stand”:
PP
, 48.

154 “Irwin Shaw when he was a young man”: Maxwell, “The Art of Fiction No. 71.”

155 Updike himself complained of a certain “prudery”:
DC
, 101.

155 “anachronistic nice-nellyism”:
OJ
, 116.

155 Dismissing what he called “Westport comedy”: Alfred Kazin, “Broadway: The New Philistines,”
Time
, June 6, 1960.

156 “I notice in
Time
a reference to ‘the artist for
The New Yorker
’”: JU to Alfred Kazin, June 13, 1960, The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library.

157 “Harold Bloom’s torturous dramatization”:
HS
, 592.

IV. Welcome to Tarbox

158 “[M]y conception of an artist . . .”:
AP
, 145.

158 “If Shillington gave me life”:
SC
, 49.

159 “Children are what welds a family to a town”: Ibid., 53.

159 “It felt,” he wrote, “like a town with space”: JU, “The Dilemma of Ipswich,”
Ford Times
, September 1972, 10.

159 Updike once claimed that he’d moved:
SC
, 57.

159 “A small-town boy,” he wrote:
ES
, x.

159 “the whole mass of middling, hidden, troubled”:
SC
, 103.

160 “mini-city perkiness”: JU, “The Dilemma of Ipswich,” 10.

160 “a maverick kind of place”:
SC
, 52.

160 “Ipswich is traditionally careless of itself”: JU, “The Dilemma of Ipswich,” 12.

161 “We are all looking forward greatly”: CC to JU, April 3, 1957, Harper.

162 “It gathers power as it goes”: EL to JU, May 10, 1957, Harper.

162 “[N]one of us feels that the book”: CC to JU, June 13, 1957, Harper.

162 “It had been a good exercise to write it”:
CJU
, 47.

162 “chalk it up to practice”: Ibid., 3.

163 “every incident with any pith”: LP, January 13, 1964, Houghton.

163 “wretched genre,” he exclaimed:
CJU
, 3.

165 “a self-preserving detachment”:
LL
, 89.

166 “one wife, one editor is all a man should have”: WM to JU, September 24, 1957, Houghton.

166 “pricelessly sensitive reader”:
CJU
, 29.

166 she advanced her shrewd opinions: Julieta Ojeda Alba, “A Relaxed Conversation with John Updike,”
Atlantis
(June–December 1996): 499. (Hereafter cited as Alba, “A Relaxed Conversation with John Updike.”)

166 “He was good with the first baby”: Author interview, MW, November 1, 2011.

167 “I came up here to get into a novel-writing groove”: JU to KSW, July 9, 1957, NYPL.

169 “The poetry book is a
lovely
job”: JU to EL, March 1, 1958, Harper.

169 “Is the young man joking?”: Found on JU letter to EL, April 14, 1958, Harper.

169 “troubled about the impact of the story”: EL to JU, December 31, 1957, Harper.

170 “too good to lose”: VG to Simon Michael Bessie, March 27, 1958, Orion.

170 “a mistake to publish [the novel] as it stands”: EL to JU, January 17, 1958, Harper.

170 “I think we knew already”: Found on JU letter to EL, January 20, 1958, Harper.

170 “not carried to a satisfactory or satisfying conclusion”: EL to JU, January 27, 1958, Harper.

170 the novel’s fate in the marketplace “could be dismal”: JU to EL, January 20, 1958, Harper.

170 “I doubt whether we shall sell”: VG to Simon Michael Bessie, March 27, 1958, Orion.

171 “You went to the heart”: JU to EL, February 17, 1958, Harper.

171 “the doors at Harper’s are wide open”: EL to JU, February 20, 1958, Harper.

171 She replied with a long, exceptionally frank letter: KSW to CC, February 18, 1958, Harper.

172 “I am now deeply in debt and quite panicked”: JU to WM, January 25, 1958, NYPL.

172 “ready to disgorge the whole mass”: JU to WM, January 21, 1958, NYPL.

173 “I was full of a Pennsylvania thing I wanted to say”:
CJU
, 25.

173 “a long account of the good old days in Shillington”: LP, October 14, 1958, Houghton.

173 suggested that Updike send a carbon copy of the manuscript: JU to TB, March 23, 1967, Anthony Bailey Papers, Houghton Library.

173 a “wildly enthusiastic” Richardson: SR to JU, March 16, 1958, Ransom.

174 the “inner aspect of the book”: JU to SR, March 13, 1958, Ransom.

174 “Do I sense here a universal man?”: SR to JU, March 17, 1958, Ransom.

174 Updike described him as a cross:
MM
, 856.

175 “I wrote
The Poorhouse Fair
as an anti-novel”:
CJU
, 45.

175 “a deliberate anti–
Nineteen Eighty-Four
”:
PF77
, x.

175 a “queer shape,” he called it: JU to EL, February 17, 1958, Harper.

175 “what will become of us”: Ibid.

176 “Out of the hole where it had been”:
PF
77, viii.

176 Updike “had no fear”:
CJU
, 3.

176 “in his way a distinguished man”: Ibid., 167.

176 “He loved me, and I loved him”:
DC
, 11.

177 an “oblique monument”:
CJU
, 3.

177 “The time is ap-proaching”:
PF
, 117.

177 The inventory of items Updike borrowed:
PF
77, xiii.

177 “offhand-and-backwards-feeling”:
PP
, 51.

177 “absolute empathy”:
HS
, 320.

177 a “classic, if not flawless”: Whitney Balliett, “Writer’s Writer,”
The New Yorker
, February 7, 1959, 138.

178 less a novel than a “poetic vision”: Ibid.

178 a “poet’s care and sensitivity”: Ibid., 140.

178 a lack of “emotional content”: Ibid.

178 “curiously, one never thinks of
liking
or
disliking
it”: Ibid.

178 “Even more than black death”:
PF
, 24.

179 Updike recalled “the thrill of power”:
OJ
, 48.

180 “My father was always afraid”:
CJU
, 12.

180 “My first novel . . . showed the rebellion”:
MM
, 10.

180 “I love the magazine like a parent”: JU to SR, May 5, 1958, Ransom.

180 a steady source of “whale-sized checks”: JU to WM, February 25, 1958, NYPL.

181 “My wife and I found ourselves in a kind of ‘swim’ ”:
SC
, 51–52.

183 One of the “genial grandees of Argilla Road”: Ibid., 52.

183 the “cultivated older generation”: Ibid.

183 the “Junior Jet Set”: “View from the Catacombs,” 75.

184 The women seemed “gorgeous” to Updike:
SC
, 51.

184 a “delayed second edition” of his high school self: Ibid., 221.

184 “If he’s not being paid enough attention”:
T
d.

185 “The sisters and brothers I had never had”:
SC
, 52.

185 “on the basis of what I did in person”:
CJU
, 25.

187 “clicked the collection shut”: JU to EL, March 1, 1958, Harper.

187 “While writing it,” he explained:
OJ
, 134–35.

188 “I believed,” he later wrote: Ibid., 135.

189 “abrupt purchase on lived life”: Ibid.

190 “In 1958 I was at just the right distance”:
OJ
, 134.

191 “a shy try at strip poker”:
DC
, 84.

191 “He was an utterly striking figure”: E-mail, Austin Briggs to author, March 6, 2011.

191 “I am careless, neglecting to count cards”:
DC
, 84.

191 he’d “changed houses, church denominations, and wives”:
DC
, 85.

192 a “wonderful natural swing”:
GD
, 147.

192 “The average golfer,” he later wrote:
MM
, 124.

192 “the hours adding up,” he admitted:
GD
, xiv.

192 this “narcotic pastime”: Ibid.

192 “I am curiously, disproportionately”: Ibid., 169.

192 Rounds of golf, he wrote: Ibid., 189.

192 with his “modest” eighteen handicap: Ibid., xii.

192 a “poor golfer, who came to the game late”: Ibid., 25.

192 “The fluctuations of golfing success”: Ibid., 188–89.

193 “golf was a rumored something”: Ibid., 24.

193 “Golf,” he wrote, “is a great social bridge”:
MM
, 126.

193 the “spongy turf of private fairways”:
GD
, 111.

194 “I sensed that for John”: E-mail, Tim O’Brien to author, February 17, 2012.

194 “Golf,” he explained, “is a constant struggle”:
MM
, 125.

194 “Basically, I want to be alone with my golf”:
GD
, 40.

194 O’Brien remembered having conversations: E-mail, Tim O’Brien to author, February 17, 2012.

194 “He seemed delighted when he won a hole”: E-mail, Tim O’Brien to author, February 18, 2012.

195 “In those instants of whizz, ascent, hover, and fall”:
GD
, 149.

195 the “inexhaustible competitive charm”: Ibid., 127.

195 “Golf,” he explained, “is . . . a great tunnel”:
MM
, 126.

195 “My golfing companions . . . are more dear to me”:
GD
, 189.

195 “If I thought as hard about writing”: Adam Begley, “A Jolly Geezer, Updike Is Back,”
The New York Observer
, October 27, 2003.

195 “Golf converts oddly well into words”:
GD
, 15.

196 “Some of us worship in churches”: Adlai E. Stevenson,
The Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson, 1952
(New York: Random House, 1953), 282.

196 “the eerie religious latency”:
GD
, 51.

197 “We lack the mustard-seed of faith”: Ibid., 46.

197 yet “miracles . . . abound”: Ibid., 51.

197 “ritual interment and resurrection”: Ibid., 152.

197 “Our bad golf testifies, we cannot help feeling”: Ibid., 45.

197 “Man in a state of fear and trembling”:
MM
, 852.

198 “sputters away to one side”:
RRun
, 129.

198 “beautiful natural swing”: Ibid., 130.

198 “Ineptitude seems to coat him”: Ibid., 129.

198 “a white flag of forgiveness”: Ibid., 131.

198 “along a line straight as a ruler-edge”: Ibid., 134.

198 “I do feel that somewhere behind all this”: Ibid., 127.

198 “There was this thing that wasn’t there”: Ibid., 132.

198 “Hell, it’s not much. . . .”: Ibid., 124.

198 a “first-rate” athlete: Ibid., 105.

199 “Playing golf with someone”: Ibid., 151.

199 Harry is “worth saving and could be saved”: Ibid., 167.

199 the “harmless ecstasy” of sporting excellence: Ibid., 168.

199 “Although Harry hasn’t studied”:
WMRR
.

199 “Shillington was littered . . .”:
HG
, 450.

199 “clutter and tensions of young married life”:
MM
, 817.

200 it felt “exhilaratingly speedy and free”:
HG
, 451.

200 a “heavy, intoxicating dose of fantasy”:
MM
, 817.

200 “as he would to his wife”:
RRun
, 82.

200 “ ‘I’d forgotten,’ she says”: Ibid., 85.

201 he’s “too fastidious to mouth the words”: Ibid., 186.

201 “He takes his [clothes] off quickly”: Ibid., 187.

201 “When the door closes”: Ibid., 192.

201 Victor Gollancz resorted to Latin: VG to Daniel George, September 11, 1961, Orion.

201 “I have . . . never read a novel”: Undated memorandum, VG, Orion.

201 “
RABBIT RUN A SUPERB NOVEL
”: VG to JU, February 10, 1960, Orion.

202 “There are one or two little matters to discuss”:
OJ
, 845.

202 “I agreed to go along with the legal experts”: Ibid., 846.

202 “The novels of Henry Miller,” Updike once quipped:
PP
, 38.