Always outnumbered. Generally overdresssed.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Death 1 Updike 0

Just when it looked like he was going to keep going forever, breaking all records for writing the same novel over and over again, John Updike has confounded all our expectations and finally died ladies and gentlemen.

The only person ever to have claimed to have read more Updike novels than me is David Foster Wallace - now also dead by his own hand.

I'm just saying, you know, be careful.

Who, now, will describe the municipal processes by which immigrant populations build their libraries and community centres as part of incidental description? Who will bring implausible metaphors, from cooking and nature, to bear on every human process from ejaculation to micturation? Who, now, will minutely detail the psychological processes of a male literary author and generously give those thoughts to work-a-day characters from used car salesmen to carpenters and housewives?

Who, in short, will spin their pathological solipsism into a literary career spanning five decades?

Ok, but apart from Ian McEwan, who?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Scamp?