WEDS
snow day. OFF hooray. no Prizes class.
I can’t figure out what I have to say or feel about Updike. Admire his productivity and
general quality. Always a bit amazed and put off by the lapidary prose style—-sometimes
show offey? so often superb. Maybe he got overshadowed by Mailer and the
other new yorkers he so aspired to run with and succeeded.
I remember reading Rabbit Runs my sophomore year—and I almost knew then but not
quite that I was just five or so years too young to really get what all the excitement
was about. Which maybe is how Updike always struck me—-as much as I
wanted to be a fan I never really got so excited by his work that it ever seemed
essential—to me—to keep up with it. Always felt like there was a coolness to it
that kept me off. And the sexuality was somehow “available” to him as a Protestant
writer as it never was to “us Catholics.” And the suburban aesthetics/ethics —
westchester county? was yet another alien country to me.
Urbane. The consummate newyorker writer of his generation?? The old new yorker—-of
William Shawn and his circle. Not as warm as Cheever was. Maybe better though? In some
ways. But then again maybe not.
———
took the car down to the garage downtown—KTM’s Kevin bought the biz from Chris Clarke. Brian has same affect as Casey—decided it is generational—-
Drove Joe’s car this morning to see Dr Chung. He agreed with me that the red eye thing was a little sub-cutaneous vessel rupture. No worry, nothing to do for it.
Ben has almost all the wallpaper stripped off the hallway. Paint it next week.
Brandeis is selling the whole Rose Museum collection. Wow. They must be in deep debt doo-doo. Shame. It is the only such collection of Good contemporary art in New England.
