Obit: Updike

John Updike died a few days ago. He was never a strong influence on my writing or my reading, but he was one of the pantheon of writers who seemed always to exist. Bellow, Roth, Sontag, Updike, Didion, Mailer -- & Miller & Tennessee Williams in theater -- were heavy hitters. For me, they reside in the same category as the baseball players of the post-war era: Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Willy Mays, Ted Williams. The're muscular titans whose reputations are foregone.

Updike was the one who drew that connection for me. I've read Rabbit, Run & a few late novels, & a lot of his reviews in "The New Yorker", which were invariably kindly & encouraging, like a grandfather's advice & unlike most critical voices. But the only piece that's truly moved me is his "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu".

The piece, published at the end of the 1960 season, is a look back at the career of Ted Williams, who was retiring from the Red Sox after 21 years (but fewer seasons, cuz of WW2). His longevity meant that Updike, aged 28, had literally grown up following Williams' career, & a child's sense of awe comes through in his essay. Listen to this description of Williams' final at-bat. He launches the pitch into the bullpen beyond the right-field wall; Updike says "It was in the books while it was still in the sky." Then:

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs — hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

Look at how respectful Updike is of Williams' behavior here. Williams was a famously private ballplayer with an antagonistic relationship to the press. So Updike never tries to crack open Williams' mind, neither at the plate nor in his private life. Instead, he admires the man's ability from the cheering crowd. He celebrates Williams' craft by matching it with his own.

For me, Updike, Williams & those writers & ballplayers of the post-war era feel remote and a little eerie. They're semi-mythical beings, maybe because I heard their names before I ever knew who they were. To me, they were the archetypes of ballplayers & of writers. Who's left -- Roth, Didion? How strange it is when archetypes go extinct.

Shakespearean Awards

I've always been a pretty dorky dude. In my pimply adolescence, for instance, Shakespeare's plays replaced Doctor Who as my favorite stories. So the 15-year-old dork still in my psyche really wished he could see David Tennant play Hamlet in London last month.

But I'm even more surprised to read the news that he won an award from the London Critics Circle for "Best Shakespearean Perf" for his Hamlet yesterday. He shares it with Derek Jacobi (for Malvolio in the Donmar's Twelfth Night). Most of my surprise, though, is learning there's an annual award for Shakespearean performances. Londoners see so much Shakespeare, this is actually feasible!

That sound you hear is my teeth grinding in envy.

NY Times op-ed

Lunchtime, time to check the news. And what happy line do I read on today's NY Times op-ed page? Kristol's piece ends with "This is William Kristol's last column."

Hurray! No more paltry rationalization of executive criminal activity, no more fudging of data to support exploitative policies, no more half-baked predictions of doom which subsequent events fail to support (he's like an anti-Cassandra: I don't listen to his prophecies, & then they don't come true). So long, screwy, see you in St. Louie!

Of course, even in that last quote, Kristol can't help fudging the truth: it's only his last Times column. Presumably he'll keep writing elsewhere. (And stay on as Jon Stewart's punching bag.)

Infinite Jest: 79-137, part 2

My last post mentioned that this 60-page chunk gives us a few longer arcs (albeit broken up into segments). But I was wrong: it starts two arcs, but first it ends another. The tale that began back on p. 33 comes to a close on p. 87. It's the bit about the film that arrived in the mailbox of a medical attache. Apparently, this flick is so addictive, you can't look away. By the end of the interlude, it's incapacitated eight viewers. In my mind's eye, I imagine the room looking a little like Groucho's cabin in A Night at the Opera. The way DFW pops back into this scene regularly over 50+ pages helps the novel cohere in its early stages. It's like he's laying down a beat.

Then, p. 87, one month later. The novel, movie-like, fades up on a desert landscape & a lone figure in a wheelchair. Soon he's joined by a transvestite to watch the sun set over Tucson AZ. They discuss bring up the addictive film (AKA the Entertainment, AKA the Samizdat) & its victims. Once again DFW fills out the world of the novel through dialogue, description, & wandering interior monologues.

But what a crazy world! Quebecois separatists, legless assassins, cross-dressing G-men, goofy acronyms, mata haris, moles & turncoats at the highest levels of US intelligence. DFW burlesques Cold War thrillers like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Ipcress File. (But unlike those, this thriller is all about homeland security. America's porous boundaries, terrorist attacks conducted via US Mail -- this stuff is more timely now than when I'd read it in 2000!)

This scene -- which DFW periodically breaks from, just as he'd done with the medical attache -- gives the novel stability, pace, rhythm. It's a sort of heartbeat, really. But it's an odd one: it's so ridiculous, beyond anything else in the novel (so far). I can't help imagining a young Alec Guinness or Peter Sellers playing Marathe, laconically speaking his mangled English in a terribly nasal Quebecois accent.

But the exchange between Marathe & his American handler, Hugh Steeply, is also deeply moving. They fall to discussing the motivations of Rodney Tine (the J. Edgar Hoover of IJ heart of the novel), who may've been co-opted by his counterpart in Montreal. And their convo becomes pretty philosophical & abstract. They discuss fanaticism (the Latin "fanatic" means "worshipper at the temple"), tragic love, & definitions of freedom. Their opinions put the novel's themes of addiction & obsession in particularly American terms. It's astonishing how easily DFW slips it into a mad scene of cloak & dagger.

Infinite Jest: 79-137, part 1

Ah, delinquency! I've been reading at a pretty good clip (honest!) but not posting. Time to start rectifying that. Fortunately, the next three 20-page sections are more unified than the earlier ones. In fact, it's a big structural shift from staccato bursts to longer narrative arcs. Two simultaneous narratives play out across these pages. But I'll defer those till tomorrow.

Tonight, I want to string together several of the one-off sections. Previously, IJ had four to six of these per twenty pages; now the rate slows to that number in the whole 60-page chunk:

• a philosophical conversation between Mario I. & Schtitt, ETA's Teutonic athletic director, on their way to an ice cream parlor
  
• yet another addict, Tiny Ewell, hits bottom
• a herd of feral hamsters (!!!) thunders across the plains of Vermont (!?)
• Mario I. finds himself the object of lust by an ETA student who's so Amazonian she's nicknamed "the USS" Millicent Kent
• ETA's own guru, Lyle, lives off the sweat of others. Literally.
  
• A junkie nearly gets killed by Chinese drug lords before deciding to kick the habit
  

I feel like my incessant bullet-pointing has paid off by showing me the Big Picture. There are essentially four strands that DFW interweaves to create IJ: (1) Some sections (here, earlier, & later) simply introduce us to the ETA: its grounds, its founder, & its extremely eccentric staff. These overlap with (2) a focus on the three Incandenza brothers (as the eldest of three boys, I appreciate a good fraternity). (3) A distinctly separate strand sees Boston addicts dry out before moving on to a life of sobriety. (4) Finally, a satiric sci-fi espionage tale whose maguffin is a supremely addictive film.

But DFW doesn't make it easy for us to discern the Big Pic. I mentioned Lego blocks in a previous post. In more highfallutin terms, IJ has a montage structure (rather than personal or free indirect narration, stream-of-consciousness, or the esp. old-fashioned epistolary forms). Fellow Jester & namesake Aaron Riccio cites a DFW interview where the author (DFW, not Aaron) claims he's using a fractal pattern.

Okay, I'm not sure what DFW means by that (yet), so I'll stick with "montage." The fictionalized, satiric 21st century of IJ is built in snippets which connect, interweave, & play off each other based on their (presumably careful) order. Partly, the disjunctions from section to section keep us on our toes. But it also creates a mosaic that gives the world of the book a different sort of life than a linear narrative would. Forced to find (or create) connections between such disparate styles & stories, we're sucked into the artistic illusion. Think of it as a literary equivalent for the persistence of vision that turns a series of frames into a movie. I think it's grand & beautiful, how all these bits add up to something more than their sum.

Inauguration coverage

I've never experienced anything quite like Obama's Inauguration. As I walked to the Capitol from my pal Rodd's place, I was comforted that we were sharing the same path and the same intentions. I'd compare it to the feeling you get on the subway when you're going to a ballgame or a protest: a camaraderie that comes from shared sense of purpose. But that comparison's not quite right. Maybe it was the cold air of the early morning, but my anticipation lacked elation.

Outside the fenced areas was dizzying. A river of people streamed from Union Station, unending, like it was bigger inside than out. But once inside the Purple Zone (I love the name, it sounds like something from a comic book), people simply milled like cattle on a range, maybe a little surprised at how much space there still was. It didn't take much effort to worm my way to a good spot just left of center. Then I stood & waited.

The cold seeped through the layers of clothing. It sapped the crowd &, I think, muffled the energy, even once the ceremony started. At least, I'd expected a roar when Obama entered, like a crowd cheering the home team at a sports arena. There were cheers, but it didn't register on the Richter Scale. When each of the former presidents were announced, we alternated cheers'n'jeers: Carter ("yayyy!") Bush #1 ("grumble..."), Clinton ("YAYYYYYY!") Bush #2 ("Boooooo!"). The lustiness of the last surprised me, since till that point the crowd had played it cool. Then a chorus of "na na, nana na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!" started up. Still, the loudest response overall came not for the Obamas but for their daughters.

And from where I stood, that was the high point of the crowd's energy. The Inauguration seemed to have a weary but satisfied atmosphere. We'd taken terrible punches as a country over the last eight years, & were happy just to be standing as the final bell rang. We wouldn't pogo or hug, we'd just shake each other's hands, slap a few backs, & drift apart so we could get back to work.

That's why Obama's sober speech was appropriate. He wasn't at his best (off the top of my head, I can think of four speeches he's made that were better), but he recognized the moment. He didn't whitewash the dire state of the union, & he refused to offer pat comforts. He also didn't hesitate to criticize the outgoing administration (a friend compared it to Stephen Colbert's roasting of Bush in 2006) or his Democratic predecessor, for that matter.

I didn't walk away ecstatic like I'd expected to. Witnessing the inauguration wasn't quite cathartic for me -- it couldn't purge the last eight years of bile I'd been forced to swallow. So it was a canny choice for Obama to close by alluding to the eve before the Battle of Trenton. (It also allowed him to use cold as a metaphor in his closing: "in this winter of hardship... let us brave the icy currents." That really spoke to the crowd.) By citing that low moment in American history, Obama reminded us that we can soldier on, while simultaneously acknowledging that our struggles may last for years.

Still, I was lucky enough to get my catharsis afterwards. I happened to walk by the Capitol right as Bush's helicopter shuttled him off to his flight out. The sight of his chopper soaring off, & the knowledge that he was truly gone, warmed my heart more than anything Obama said. Na na, nana na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!

Inauguration Day, 7:30 am!

It's been a busy week, but that's no reason not to post. Sorry!

But my excuse for not posting these last few days is a pretty good one: I scored a ticket to the Inauguration! I'm down in DC right now at my old pal Rodd's place west of the Capitol. The foot traffic outside the window is astonishing, a busyness that I recognize from before a big ball game. But that's when you're outside the stadium; we're about a mile from the Mall!

So I've got a ticket in the Purple Zone, from the office of a Utah Republican, thanks to a college buddy who ended up in Salt Lake City (Nick O'Donnell, coming through!). I should be able to see pretty well, as long as I don't have a really tall person in front of me. I'd hoped to post once or twice from the event itself, but the radio's warning that cell phones may be jammed by signals. Oy, this is gonna be a mess!

So I'll post something later today once I've returned from the front line. In the meantime, sit back, enjoy the festivities in the warmth of your home, & I'll freeze my toes off!