Updike: "A crazy belief that you have some exciting news about being alive"

John Updike's death yesterday at 76 gives wide berth for his obituari-teers (huh?) to write beautifully about his enormous body of work. Though Updike and I (this is going to be a tenuous connection, folks) grew up barely twenty miles and a scant generation apart--and his father once worked as a substitute in the high school English department that my mother chaired (Go Daniel Boone HS, Birdsboro, PA!)--I never was a fan of his actual works. His writing, of course. He reminded me of an extraordinary cake decorator, taking the common form and turning it into something of unusual beauty, something far beyond confection. His subjects, though, were, may I say this, plain vanilla, at least given what interests me, a non-male, non-upper-middling-class, non-suburban-living, non-adult-of-the-50s who doesn't play golf.

So it takes his death to tremble my heart. Mark Feeney's elegant bio in this morning's Boston Globe (Page One, "John Updike, literature's wide-ranging master, is dead at 76") carries Updike's brilliance as to why people sit, as I do, hour after hour, day upon day, year in and year out, at the keyboard, wearing out the imprints of the letters. Thank you, Mr. Updike, and we're all sorry you went so young:

"There's a kind of confessional impulse that not every literate, intelligent person has," Mr. Updike said in his [1991 Boston] Globe interview. "A crazy belief that you have some exciting news about being alive, and I guess that, more than talent, is what separates those who do it from those who think they'd like to do it. That your witness to the universe can't be duplicated, that only you can provide it, and that it's worth providing."

UPDATE on Updike: Just listened to a "Remembering John Updike," a special On Point on WBUR about the breadth and depth of Updike's work. One story after another about how universal his topics--and his generosity and graciousness. And so my reading begins.