Many things passed through my mind just now when I read a New York Times alert that John Updike had died of lung cancer at age 76. I thought of the books of his that I've read, those I haven't yet and those I'll undoubtedly get the chance to once his papers are sorted. I thought of how glad I am that I got to see him read and lecture. I recalled discussing with friends recently an essay by David Foster Wallace lambasting Updike's work. Ultimately, what I came away with is that Updike was one of the last giants of American letters, and that regardless of what one thinks of his work, he will be sorely missed.

I came to Updike late, picking up Rabbit, Run as a way to prepare for seeing the author lecture at the 150th anniversary of Coe College in Cedar Rapids while I was a newspaper reporter in town. I liked it, and made a perhaps foolish vow to read each Rabbit book as I passed the commensurate time in my life (I'm overdue to dive into Rabbit Redux, I believe). It's still the only of his novels I've read, though I've since read a considerable amount of his criticism (both in the New Yorker and in collections) and his poetry. I reviewed Americana, his last collection of new poems, in 2001, and have since gone back to read much of his verse as well. I'm amazed at his facility with language, the way he crafted sentences and chose words. That might seem a strange thing to say about a writer, but few possessed his talents.

He certainly divided the literary world. There are folks like Nicholson Baker, who spun a full length book, U and I, from his appreciation of Updike's work, and others like Wallace, who's "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," a review of Updike's Toward the End of Time republished in his Consider the Lobster collection, picks apart the author's work: "Toward the End of Time is also, of the let's say two dozen Updike books I've read, far and away the worst, a novel so clunky and self-indulgent that it's hard to believe the author let it be published in this kind of shape."

At that 2001 appearance in Cedar Rapids, a member of the audience asked Updike if he wrote as a child. He said he fell in love with books early on, and his impulse was to do something creative with pencil and paper.

"The world has been kind and allowed me to continue to play as children do," he said.

His work, hardly child's play, fills 50-plus volumes and leaves us a lot to digest. His critics may be at least partly right when they say he spent much of his life writing about thinly veiled versions of himself, but few have done so as eloquently -- or compulsively -- and the world of books is richer for his place in it.

Labels: books