Shortly
after October 1989, I picked up this book off a shelf at Sundance Books in
Geneseo, paid for it, and brought it home.
Since then my paperback copy of Picked-up
Pieces by John Updike has been moved from an apartment to my home and
waited patiently on a shelf for me to read it.
It was one of the first books I paged through this year; in May I
actually began reading it. I enjoyed
reading this collection of essays, speeches, and book reviews originally
published between 1966 and 1975…far earlier than I began reading John
Updike. I heard him speak in Rochester
once, and his style was easy and enjoyable – like listening to a good friend
talk about books. John Updike is no longer
with us, but his voice remains.
In the Foreword he recalls how he became a book reviewer and gives his rules for writing a book review. “A reviewer, unlike an ideal reader, is committed to finish the book: I read slower than I write…” (15); identifying with this statement is easy for me. If I am reading for storyline, I read rather quickly, but when I sense a book deserves a more serious reading, I slow down; I take notes; I copy out lines that strike me. I am a note taker. Updike was a serious reviewer:
My rules, shaped intaglio-fashion by youthful traumas
at the receiving end of critical opinion, were and are:
1.
Try to understand
what the author wished to do and do not blame him for not achieving what he did
not attempt.
2.
Give enough
direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the
review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3.
Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.
4.
Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)
5.
If the book is
judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the
author’s oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?
To these concrete five might be added a vague sixth,
having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product
and appraiser. Do not accept for review
a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any
ideological battle a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never…try to put the author “in his
place,” making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is
being cast. Better to praise and share
than blame and ban. The communion
between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain
possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that
end. (14-15)
And
with that citation I believe I have done justice to John Updike. This collection of essays, speeches, and
reviews does not need to be read cover to cover. I skipped a few reviews of books that I will
not be seeking to read. However, I
compiled a list of authors whose work I will revisit or visit for the first
time because of Updike’s thoughtful opinions.
He
discusses, in essays and speeches, issues of interest to me: his reactions to
meeting other writers, the difficulties of humor in translation, and (in 1969)
thoughts on the future of the novel. As
a lover of graphic novels, I was astounded by this comment, “I see no intrinsic
reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic-strip
novel masterpiece” (39). Updike lived to
see graphic novels come to life; I will be seeking out later writings to see if
he revisited this topic.
I
will close this long overdue review with two lists: one of titles and
characters he valued and a second of authors he admired.
Specific
titles and characters: Living and Loving by Henry Green, Remembrance
of Things Past, Lolita, Ulysses,
Madame Bovary, Notes From the Underground, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Brand by
Ibsen, The Painted Bird by Kosinski, Don Quixote, Falstaff, The Naked Ape,
Candide, Moby Dick, The Plague, and Fear
of Flying by Erica Jong.
Authors:
Henry Green, John Hawkes, Proust, Kafka, Joyce, Karl Barth, Soren Kierkegaard,
Ibsen, Paul Tillich, Knut Hamsun, Borges, H.G. Wells, Hawthorne, Whitman,
Wilde, Chesterton, G.B. Shaw, Nabokov,
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Auden, Camus, Gunter Grass, Jean Genet, Marge Piercy,
James Gould Cozzens, Hemingway, John Cheever, E.B. White, Norman Mailer, Saul
Bellow, and Naipaul.
Updike,
John. Picked-up Pieces. New York:
Fawcett Press, 1989. Print.
