John Updike dead at 76

Another one of my literary heroes falls to old age. I was born fifty years too late.

John Updike, prize-winning writer, dead at age 76

By HILLEL ITALIE – 21 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.

Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Mass., died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir "Self-Consciousness" and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams. He was prolific, even compulsive, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards.

Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanizing, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.

His settings ranged from the court of "Hamlet" to postcolonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburb. Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by "penny-pinching parents," united by "the patriotic cohesion of World War II" and blessed by a "disproportionate share of the world's resources," the postwar, suburban boom of "idealistic careers and early marriages."

He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation's confusion over the civil rights and women's movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment. On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing.

But more often he was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man's interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it "to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached." Nothing was too great or too small for Updike to poeticize. He might rhapsodize over the film projector's "chuckling whir" or look to the stars and observe that "the universe is perfectly transparent: we exist as flaws in ancient glass."

In the richest detail, his books recorded the extremes of earthly desire and spiritual zealotry, whether the comic philandering of the preacher in "A Month of Sundays" or the steady rage of the young Muslim in "Terrorist." Raised in the Protestant community of Shillington, Pa., where the Lord's Prayer was recited daily at school, Updike was a lifelong churchgoer influenced by his faith, but not immune to doubts.

"I remember the times when I was wrestling with these issues that I would feel crushed. I was crushed by the purely materialistic, atheistic account of the universe," Updike told The Associated Press during a 2006 interview.

"I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can't quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, `This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck.'"

He received his greatest acclaim for the "Rabbit" series, a quartet of novels published over a 30-year span that featured ex-high school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and his restless adjustment to adulthood and the constraints of work and family. To the very end, Harry was in motion, an innocent in his belief that any door could be opened, a believer in God even as he bedded women other than his wife.

"The tetralogy to me is the tale of a life, a life led an American citizen who shares the national passion for youth, freedom, and sex, the national openness and willingness to learn, the national habit of improvisation," Updike would later write. "He is furthermore a Protestant, haunted by a God whose manifestations are elusive, yet all-important."

Other notable books included "Couples," a sexually explicit tale of suburban mating that sold millions of copies; "In the Beauty of the Lilies," an epic of American faith and fantasy; and "Too Far to Go, which followed the courtship, marriage and divorce of the Maples, a suburban couple with parallels to Updike's own first marriage.

Plagued from an early age by asthma, psoriasis and a stammer, he found creative outlets in drawing and writing. Updike was born in Reading, Pa., his mother a department store worker who longed to write, his father a high school teacher remembered with sadness and affection in "The Centaur," a novel published in 1964. The author brooded over his father's low pay and mocking students, but also wrote of a childhood of "warm and action-packed houses that accommodated the presence of a stranger, my strange ambition to be glamorous."

For Updike, the high life meant books, such as the volumes of P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Benchley he borrowed from the library as a child, or, as he later recalled, the "chastely severe, time-honored classics" he read in his dorm room at Harvard University, leaning back in his "wooden Harvard chair," cigarette in hand.

While studying on full scholarship at Harvard, he headed the staff of the Harvard Lampoon and met the woman who became his first wife, Mary Entwistle Pennington, whom he married in June 1953, a year before he earned his A.B. degree summa cum laude. (Updike divorced Pennington in 1975 and was remarried two years later, to Martha Bernhard).

After graduating, he accepted a one-year fellowship to study painting at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University. During his stay in England, a literary idol, E.B. White, offered him a position at The New Yorker, where he served briefly as foreign books reviewer. Many of Updike's reviews and short stories were published in The New Yorker, often edited by White's stepson, Roger Angell.

By the end of the 1950s, Updike had published a story collection, a book of poetry and his first novel, "The Poorhouse Fair," soon followed by the first of the Rabbit books, "Rabbit, Run." Praise came so early and so often that New York Times critic Arthur Mizener worried that Updike's "natural talent" was exposing him "from an early age to a great deal of head-turning praise."

Updike learned to write about everyday life by, in part, living it. In 1957, he left New York, with its "cultural hassle" and melting pot of "agents and wisenheimers," and settled with his first wife and four kids in Ipswich, Mass, a "rather out-of-the-way town" about 30 miles north of Boston.

"The real America seemed to me 'out there,' too heterogeneous and electrified by now to pose much threat of the provinciality that people used to come to New York to escape," Updike later wrote.

"There were also practical attractions: free parking for my car, public education for my children, a beach to tan my skin on, a church to attend without seeming too strange."

by Hillel Italie (Associated Press)

We are the change we seek...

In honor of the first week of President Barack Obama's adminstration, this is a collection of my favorite quotes over his political career.

In my opinion, President Obama is the finest orator in politics today, and perhaps since President John F. Kennedy. I believe in President Barack Obama. I believe in the audacity of hope. And for the first time in my adult life, I have faith in the leadership of my nation.

*****

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."


"Americans... still believe in an America where anything's possible - they just don't think their leaders do."


"Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential."


"I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. "


"I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions."


"If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost. "


"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress. "


"It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today. "


"My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. "


"People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time. "


"The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife."


"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America."


"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. "


"Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago. "


"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen. "


"We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible."


"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges."


"We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential."


"You know, my faith is one that admits some doubt."


"Hope – Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead."


"The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them."


"America is a land of big dreamers and big hopes. It is this hope that has sustained us through revolution and civil war, depression and world war, a struggle for civil and social rights and the brink of nuclear crisis. And it is because our dreamers dreamed that we have emerged from each challenge more united, more prosperous, and more admired than before."


"Iraq is sort of a situation where you've got a guy who drove the bus into the ditch. You obviously have to get the bus out of the ditch, and that's not easy to do, although you probably should fire the driver."


"Yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on individual initiative, on a belief in the free market. But it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, of mutual responsibility. The idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we're all in it together and everybody's got a shot at opportunity. Americans know this. We know that government can't solve all our problems - and we don't want it to. But we also know that there are some things we can't do on our own. We know that there are some things we do better together."


"It's not just enough to change the players. We've gotta change the game."


"Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question."


"Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met."


"The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."


"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."


"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage."


"Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."


"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness."


"America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."


"What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task."


"This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected."


"This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."


"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. ... It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America."


"Parents have the primary responsibility for instilling an ethic of hard work and educational achievement in their children."


"I love America too much, am too invested in what this country has become, too committed to its institutions, its beauty, and even its ugliness, to focus entirely on the circumstances of its birth. But neither can I brush aside the magnitude of the injustice done, or erase the ghosts of generations past, or ignore the open wound, the aching spirit, that ails this country still."


"The blood of slaves reminds us that our pragmatism can sometimes be moral cowardice. Lincoln, and those buried at Gettysburg, remind us that we should pursue our own absolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay. "


"In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? I'm not talking about blind optimism here... No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!"


"And then, on September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow — the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction. "


"It is the lucky ones who serve; the unlucky ones drift into the murky tide of hustles and odd jobs; many will drown."


****

These are the quotes that jumped out at me, the ones that made me think, that made me believe.

Visions of America

Rabbi Sherwin Wine:

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.

This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.

from www.frethink.com, one of my favorite blogs.

The Green Economy- Fighting poverty and global warming in the same battle?

There's been a lot of discussion in the last few months about the 'green economy'. Most of it's been political rhetoric, but there's a truth to the possibilities it offers us.

It's apparent to anyone with half a brain that "Drill, baby, drill!" is not the answer to our problems. We as a civilization face environmental disaster within the next few generations. Global warming is a fact. Dwindling natural resources is fact. Mass extinctions are a fact. We, the human race as a whole, face a challenge. We must reform our society to better co-exist with the rest of the ecosystem, to stall and reverse the damages we've wrought.

I'm not a tree-hugging hippie. It doesn't take a lot of intelligence, though, to know that without taking better care of 'Spaceship Earth', our way of life is doomed. The clock is ticking, and we've got to start now in the process of learning how to reverse global warming, stabilize the global human population, and conserve our resources.

This is a daunting task when facing the economic troubles that our world has right now. It's harder to find money for research and development, for massive changes in how we produce and utilize energy, for educating people in how to live at peace with mother Earth, when those same people are struggling to buy food and keep a roof over their heads, when tax receipts are down and the national debt has ballooned to over eleven trillion dollars. The same set of challenges can also serve as an opportunity, however.

I read an amazing article today in the New Yorker, 'Greening the Ghetto', about Van Jones, the chairman of an organization called Green For All. His goal is to "get the greenest solutions to the poorest people." His ideas are remarkable, even if he's still figuring out how to apply them. He shares the goal of President Obama, to establish a green economy. To use government spending to stimulate an environmental renaissance, to use the massive task of rebuilding our infrastructure and reforming the way we treat the environment to stimulate the economy, provide jobs, and lift ourselves from recession. It's an admirable goal, and one that can kill two birds with one stone.

Van Jones wants a piece of the green pie, but for a good reason. He aims to combine saving the environment with providing jobs, especially for the poorest elements of the population. In his words, he wants to turn 'Joe the Plumber' into 'Joe the Solar Panel Installer'. He argues that making this an "everybody movement" hinges on making everyone have a stake in it, from the rich to the poor, and that providing jobs for the poor gives all elements a reason to support environmental reform. He wants to guide gang members into putting down their handguns and picking up caulk guns, to provide job training in the green economy for the most disadvantaged members of the populace. It's a worthy goal, and he has the support of a lot of noteworthy people, from former Vice President Al Gore to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

For the most part, those who are most interested in saving the environment tend to be the college-educated, older, more affluent element of the population. This is backed up by studies, but I see this myself everywhere; when you don't have the education to know why the environmental problems facing our world are so serious and/or you're worried about where your family's next meal is coming from, it's hard to worry about the big picture. To make environmental reform work, we have to get everyone involved. And it can be the perfect 'Manhattan Project' to stimulate the economy, the way that the internet did fifteen years ago or the Interstate system did fifty years ago.

He's still not giving a lot of concrete ways to accomplish these goals. He's obviously a great salesman/idea person, though, and maybe just planting the seeds of the idea is enough to start it moving.

Read the full article on the New Yorker Online here

I love you without knowing why...

"i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. i love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so i love you because i know no other way 'than this: where i does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as i fall asleep."-Pablo Neruda

Bright Atlanta

Bright Atlanta, originally uploaded by Nrbelex.

Why does photography make my city look so much more spectacular than it actually is?

Kiss- A painting

I am in love with this painting.

It captures the way it feels when my lips touch Valerie's and everything else about the world recedes to distant background, to be replaced by the bright glowing shell that our intertwining souls build around us. This painting captures love.

I'm not an art critic. I'm not even terribly knowledgable about visual art. I just know what I love when I see it. And I wish I could have this hanging on my wall, because every time I looked at it, I would be able to feel milady's presence in the room.

The artist is Leonid Afremov. I highly recommend you check him out (the link leads to his website). His use of color is extraordinary.

A wish...

This says everything I want to say to my lover right now, so many miles away...

New home.

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