What a bum deal John Updike is dead. I won't wax poetically about what a tragedy it is to lose such a great American author but I will say a few things since I have been on an Updike kick for the last few months.
This cat really made me believe that there is room in the American canon left to fill, he churned out the good stuff until the day he died and created some immense characters.
After re-reading every essay that I have been assigned to write on Updike (the whole two of them) I discovered that I loathed reading him my freshman year of college which is odd because I have always thought that I dug this cat. My essay on A&P was essentially a seven page flogging of Updike for writing something about nothing. And I am thoroughly convinced that I never actually read Rabbit Run but plucked a few reviews off the internet, paraphrased and turned it in... again disappointing because in my head I had thoroughly appreciated this book.
The NYTimes made this a front page gig along with dedicating more than ample column width in his tribute this morning which I really dig since the NYT rarely does that kind of coverage over an old dead white guy.
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