RIP. Dig that hole, forget the sun

My 3rd favorite "literary" writer, after Roth and Vonnegut.

Now only Roth is left.

Anyone want to buy a first edition of Assorted Prose, signed by Updike and Williams on the page facing Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu? It's the first book appearance of the essay, and the only double signed copy I've seen anywhere in many years.

Oh, and RIP, John.

Anyone want to buy a first edition of Assorted Prose, signed by Updike and Williams on the page facing Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu?

Wasting no time in trying to make a buck, eh?

I started reading one of his novels (one of the Rabbit ones, can't remember which) about 10 years ago, and had to stop after I got grossed out reading the depiction of geriatric sex.

Anyone want to buy a first edition of Assorted Prose, signed by Updike and Williams on the page facing Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu?

Wasting no time in trying to make a buck, eh?

Well, if I were really serious about that offer, wouldn't I be on ebay rather than BTF?

To An Usherette

(Or as I always called it: The Shepherd in Surburbia.)

Ah, come with me,
Petite cherie,
And we shall rather happy be.
I know a modest luncheonette
Where, for a little, one can get
A choplet, baby lima beans,
And, segmented, two tangerines.

Le coup de grace,
My pretty lass,
Will be a demi-demitasse
Within a serviette conveyed
By weazened waiters, underpaid,
Who mincingly might grant us spoons
While a combo tinkles trivial tunes.

Ah with me come,
Ma faible femme,
And I shall say I love you some.

Updike was once challenged to craft a limerick using "Poughkeepsie." As a native, I was always charmed by the results (despite his bending the rules by using "Poughkeepsie" twice):

There was an old poop from Poughkeepsie,
Who tended, at night, to be tipsy.
Said he, "My last steps
Aren't propelled by just Schweppes!"
That peppy old poop from Poughkeepsie.

I started reading one of his novels (one of the Rabbit ones, can't remember which) about 10 years ago, and had to stop

I realize the rule is de mortuis nil nisi bonum , but while I very much liked his nonfiction essays (like the one linked) and his book reviews, I found his fiction to be virtually unreadable

"Gods do not answer letters." One of my favorite lines ever.

The novels seem dated now, but if you want to see him at his peak, read some of the old short story collections. incredible.

I believe, VLMJ, the the original limericks DID have that form i.e. last word same in first & last line

Most original limericks repeated the entire first line for the last. What a clever wag it must have been to stray from that path.

RIP John.

Hmmm, then I've been giving FAR too many props over the years to "The Man From Peru".

Well, if I were really serious about that offer, wouldn't I be on ebay rather than BTF?

Probably. You're less likely to get asked for a Certificate of Authenticity here.

Fixed:

There was an old poop from Poughkeepsie,
Who tended, at night, to be tipsy.
Said he, "My last steps
Aren't propelled by just Schweppes!"
T'is a limerick worthy of Nipsey.

I have a friend that would get bored and send me limericks as he wrote them; too bad I can't posy any of them here.

Another baseball connection: Most of Updike's New Yorker pieces were edited by Roger Angell.

For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill.

Bob Costas has repeated this Updike line ad nauseam.

In the vein of yesterday's thread, I'll always remember John Updike as the ghost-writer for Krusty the Klown's memoirs: "Your Shoes Too Big to Kickbox God"

Boy, that limerick would be a whole lot less popular if the last line was "there once was a man from Nantucket"

He included some discussion of the 1979 Phillies and Pirates in Rabbit is Rich, and a trip to a fictionalized Reading Phillies game in Rabbit Redux.

Even though he became a whole-cloth New Englander for the last 80% or so of his life, he quite eloquently recalled and depicted his life in eastern Pennsylvania in his fiction.

R.I.P.

Even though he became a whole-cloth New Englander for the last 80% or so of his life, he quite eloquently recalled and depicted his life in eastern Pennsylvania in his fiction.

And just the other day we lost Andrew Wyeth. Not a great few weeks for local artistic icons.

Updike's Rabbit novels are quite an accomplishment, but Thomas Berger's Reinhart novels are in a very similar vein and are much better, both in sensibility and characer. Reinhart in Love is the masterpiece.

Berger is 84 years old. Except for Little Big Man, he's very much underappreciated. He's written very different novels in vary different ways. He deserves to be much more highly regarded.

I guess this is as good a place as any to ask: does anyone have recommendations for good baseball writing collections? I've already worked my way through all of Angell's collections, but I'm always looking for new additions to get me through to opening day.

The four Fireside Book of Baseball Collections are a very good place to start. By this time they're probably not all that expensive on Amazon or abebooks. Since they were all selected by one person (Charles Einstein) rather than by a committee, there are some very good and eclectic pieces of writing scattered throughout them. You don't get the Same Old Same Old that you would from more conventional anthologies.

EDIT: The Third Fireside Book was always the most expensive of the lot (the Fourth is PB only), but now even that's down to less than ten bucks. That's about fifty dollars less than the cheapest copies were going before Amazon came along.

Don't believe everything you read. There's no such thing as a John Updike.

My favorite line from the Williams piece, and of course I'm sufficiently contrarian as to make it something other than the "letters" line, is "Insofar as the clutch hitter is not a sportswriter's myth, he is a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money." John Updike: proto-saberist!

I've only read a couple of his novels, enjoying both, most notably Memories of the Ford Administration, which has a lot of wonderful material on James Buchanan.

Literary fans bid old man adieu. And he doesn't answer our letters.

I think this is the best short-story I've ever read, or at least my favorite.

I feel horrible about this. I pulled out his piece on Williams and read it for the millionth time on Sunday night.

Well, if I were really serious about that offer, wouldn't I be on ebay rather than BTF?

How silly of me not to check eBay and craigslist and a bunch of classified ads before asking the question. There's nothing in your history that would suggest you'd be interested in selling a book.

Feel free to restate #3 to convey better whatever your point was.

What I love about that essay is how he never tips his hand. In retrospect, he's setting up the "Gods don't answer letters" line throughout the essay, but he's very casual about doing it. Lines setting Williams against Greek heroes and the like appear in the middle of paragraphs developing other thoughts. They're never the topic sentences or the payoff of the thought they're developing. So when he finally delivers the line, it's natural but not telegraphed.

I guess this is as good a place as any to ask: does anyone have recommendations for good baseball writing collections? I've already worked my way through all of Angell's collections, but I'm always looking for new additions to get me through to opening day.

Roger Kahn's stuff is complementary to Angell's. Sometimes you feel like an essay (Angell), sometimes an entire book (Kahn).

And I second the recommendation of the Fireside Books (great selection, but not a lot of poems in them, though). About 15 years ago I bought the first three books for $45 total. Given that so much 1970s and 1980s dreck is being republished, I'm frankly surprised that the University of Nebraska or some college press doesn't reprint all four Firesides.

What I love about that essay is how he never tips his hand. In retrospect, he's setting up the "Gods don't answer letters" line throughout the essay, but he's very casual about doing it.

For chrissake, its "Gods do not answer letters". I can't explain why, but the contraction completely destroys the sentence. That's why he was John Updike, and Zach and I are nebbishes.


I printed out the paragraph that culminates in "Gods do not answer letters" as a sophomore in college and taped it above the desk in my room in my fraternity. Keep in mind, at my frat the inhabitants of each room changed at least once a year, and often once a quarter.
I went back last summer to visit, 8 years after my sophomore year, and that paper was still taped over my old desk. No one had ever wanted to take it down.

Roger Kahn's stuff is complementary to Angell's. Sometimes you feel like an essay (Angell), sometimes an entire book (Kahn).

i bring this up every time he's mentioned, but, I LOATH the man (Kahn) for strictly personal reasons that are too boring to go into, but his book "The Era" is as good as "Boys of.." and both are brilliant

i bring this up every time he's mentioned, but, I LOATH the man (Kahn) for strictly personal reasons that are too boring to go into, but his book "The Era" is as good as "Boys of.." and both are brilliant

Well, you don't have to love the artist in order to love the art.

If ever there was a forum to delve into the boring, strictly personal reasons one hates Roger Kahn, this is that forum. Please do tell.

The only Updike I ever read was "A&P;" in college. Still remember it quite fondly, as the story really has stuck with me for some reason.

I second to motion to hear the "strictly personal reasons" for loathing Roger Kahn. And feel free AndrewJ, in a post about the death of a prodigious short story writer, to spend up to 7,500 words on it.

P.S.: Personally I had grown to dislike John Updike's stuff in the New Yorker (book reviews mainly). My own issues I'm sure, but the pieces in recent years just seemed pointedly obscure, condescending and irritating. Again, probably just me.

Now on to the "strictly personal reasons" (cue AndrewJ)

"He radiated, from afar, the hard blue glow of high purpose."

Like Chuck Berry's "coffee colored Cadillac"

Never seen one,but know what it means

The only Updike I ever read was "A&P;" in college. Still remember it quite fondly, as the story really has stuck with me for some reason.

That's funny, I read A&P in high school, and it stuck with me too, but I didn't remember the author until you mentioned it.

Damn IMing while posting:

"I second the motion..."

Updike's an amazing writer. I don't agree at all with how some here are portraying him. His prose is tight and evocative. Not at all dated. Unless you think that a Faulkner or a Lagerkvist is 'dated.' Rabbit, Run is simply awesome. As for his more recent output, well, he was in his late 60s/early 70s. Not so many novelists are still potent by that point...

"Gods do not answer letters." One of my favorite lines ever.

You know the Einstein quote (oft paraphrased), "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.", with the He being God? I never knew there was a response from Neils Bohr, and even as a non-religious person, this is one of my new favorite lines ever: "Do not presume to tell God what to do with His dice."

It still doesn't top my favorite quote ever, and hence my favorite quote in music history, discussing our favorite microscopic hero Particle Man, "When he's under water, does he get wet, or does the water get him instead?" That's some powerful stuff.

Well screw Updike, 'cuz now we're talking the two Johns and I think every other BTF thread should about TMBG. Or Roger Kahn. Or both.

Did we have a thread on David Foster Wallace back when he unfortunately passed? One of his big fans.

Never was much of a fan of Updike, but it does seem that many here loved his writing.

Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was.

"and there it was" has my vote for the best, most telling line, taken in context, in the essay. It sort of epitomizes Williams, and by extension all hitters, the hoped-for fruition of all that preparation and effort. You prepare, you work, you perform, then it's out of your hands whether you succeed. Fate may contrive to thwart you (rain, wind, cold, no good pitches to hit, injury, the draft, etc.). Williams was sort of the samurai of hitters, and the essay ("thing done well, thing done ill") captures that. Williams is as much an artist as--well, as Updike, or anyone. His approach to hitting was always an attempt to attain a state where the situation didn't matter, where it's all equal, where it doesn't matter. In the end, we feel, because he remained true to himself, he is rewarded for his steadfastness: he refused to bend his knee, and in the end fate blinked. Or relented, in any case. But in the end his fate was not entirely in his hands. And what many take to be the negatives in his character, or approach, may have been necessary for this to happen.

I'd never call Updike a tight writer, but when he was good, he was very good. Something of a champion of translated fiction as a reviewer, too, which is great. And without him, we wouldn't have Nicholson Baker's U&I;, which would be a shame. Agreed about DFW being a more significant loss, though. I was always an admirer of his work, and I've been thinking a lot about him again this week. When he signed my copy of Infinite Jest in 1996 I told him the one thing that really bugged me in the book was that he set up the Arizona Cardinals as a successful team of the future. He tried to convince me they were on the way up and would be an elite team within a few years, and I said he was nuts and it would never happen. We were both wrong, really, but I'm sorry he's not here to see this Super Bowl.

Andy, if you made that offer of a doubly signed Assorted Prose with any seriousness, tell me how much you're asking for it.

If you made that offer in jest just to brag about owning such a thing and make others feel jealous, congratulations.

If you made the whole thing up just to make me feel like a jerk, again, well done.

Eh, I have no ax to grind about Kahn -- it was PD Jeter who expressed his dislike of the man.

Did we have a thread on David Foster Wallace back when he unfortunately passed? One of his big fans.

A little discussion broke out in this one.

Here's DFW's piece on Updike which was also in Consider the Lobster.

For in September of 1957, in the same situation, the story was reversed. Mantle finally hit .365; it was the best season of his career. But Williams, though sick and old, had run away from him. A bout of flu had laid him low in September. He emerged from his cave in the Hotel Somerset haggard but irresistible; he hit four successive pinch-hit home runs. "I feel terrible," he confessed, "but every time I take a swing at the ball it goes out of the park." He ended the season with thirty-eight home runs and an average of .388, the highest in either league since his own .406, and, coming from a decrepit man of thirty-nine, an even more supernal figure. With eight or so of the "leg hits" that a younger man would have beaten out, it would have been .400.

Retrosheet tells me that Williams hit five home runs in the September of 1957, of which two were labeled 'ph'. On the 21st, Williams produced a home run in just one at bat. His being walked three times informed this statistical anomaly. In that month, Williams started three of the five games wherein he hit a homer. The fact that he hit more or less consecutive pinch hit home runs, on the 17th (following a two-week absence from the field) and 20th, is pretty remarkable.

Two girls, one of them with pert buckteeth and eyes as black as vest buttons, the other with white skin and flesh-colored hair, like an underdeveloped photograph of a redhead, came and sat on my right. On my other side was one of those frowning, chestless young-old men who can frequently be seen, often wearing sailor hats, attending ball games alone. He did not once open his program but instead tapped it, rolled up, on his knee as he gave the game his disconsolate attention. A young lady, with freckles and a depressed, dainty nose that by an optical illusion seemed to thrust her lips forward for a kiss, sauntered down into the box seats and with striking aplomb took a seat right behind the roof of the Oriole dugout.

I've often attended baseball games by myself, but never wearing a sailor hat.

Well, if I were really serious about that offer, wouldn't I be on ebay rather than BTF?

How silly of me not to check eBay and craigslist and a bunch of classified ads before asking the question. There's nothing in your history that would suggest you'd be interested in selling a book.

Well, other than the fact that I was a bookseller for 23 years, a fact you could have easily learned by clicking on my handle, and which I've mentioned on more than a few occasions on BTF.

Feel free to restate #3 to convey better whatever your point was.

The "point" of the post was mostly self-parody mixed with a bit of whimsy. I hope that was the spirit of your first post, too.

----------------------------

Andy, if you made that offer of a doubly signed Assorted Prose with any seriousness, tell me how much you're asking for it.

If you made that offer in jest just to brag about owning such a thing and make others feel jealous, congratulations.

If you made the whole thing up just to make me feel like a jerk, again, well done.

No, I didn't make it up. I bought it from a local book collector / author / baseball fan. What was inspired was that he thought to ask Updike to sign it on the blank page (p. 126) facing the beginning of the "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" story, rather than on the flyleaf or the title page of the book, which is the usual place for authors to sign. Updike signed it when the book first came out in 1965, and Williams signed it later, probably when he was managing the Senators. (I've had the book for about 4 or 5 years and don't recall that particular detail---it may have been later than that.) Updike signed in a blue ballpoint pen, and Williams signed in a black sharpie or similar pen. The book itself is in fine condition with the previous owner's name written on the flyleaf, in a slightly soiled but mostly VG dust jacket.

The only copy I've seen on the internet with both signatures was in January of 2006, at $4000. Which proves nothing, since I have no idea whether it was ever sold or not. But in any case, I haven't seen any double signed copies since. There's a 1977 limited (300 copies) edition reprint of the essay alone, that's signed only by Updike, and as of today there are five listed copies on abebooks ranging from $250 to $500. The way these things go, with Updike's death there might be no copies online tomorrow, or there might be twenty more. There's no way of knowing one way or the other.

As to the seriousness of the "offer," as I said, if I had a burning desire to sell it, I'd be on ebay and not on BTF. But if you're serious yourself about wanting to buy it, send me an e-mail and I'll give you a quote. I do doubt that there are many (if any) copies quite like this that are likely to show up anytime soon, but I'm a Dimaggio man myself.

Ted Williams's line during September 1957: .632/.788/1.526 (33 PAs)

And .453/.594/.855 in 60 games after the All-Star break. Worthy of John Updike's approbation.

All I can say is that the four Rabbit novels are absolutely great. It's especially interesting that they're written in real time; when Updike started the third novel (Rabbit is Rich), he did not know that the Phillies would win their fist ever World Series that summer, but he works it into the plot extremely well. I expect that those books will still be read in 100 years because they capture so well the feeling of their time and the small details; I had old Toyota jingles running through my head as I was reading the books last year.

The Thompson thread was my introduction to DFW, actually - and I read Consider the Lobster over the weekend* (and will read A Supposedly Fun Thing this next one, time permitting). The Updike essay in Lobster was a weak part of an otherwise excellent read.

AandP is great. Haven't done a Rabbit book yet, have the first one in the pile.

There's nothing in your history that would suggest you'd be interested in selling a book.
-----------------------------
Well, other than the fact that I was a bookseller for 23 years

WOOOOOOSH!

I didn't recognize Andy's new handle.

I didn't recognize Andy's new handle.

And most of us don't make it a habit to click on others' handles.

And most of us don't make it a habit to click on others' handles.

I will on occasion, but I'm nosy.