John Updike's Curiosity About Faith & Resonance with J.D. Salinger

Copyright © 2014 Wendy Murray.

By Wendy Murray

John Updike was born on this day, March 18, in 1932 (d. Jan 27, 2009). He is best known for his "Rabbit" series in fiction, two of which won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Rabbit is Rich (1982) and Rabbit at Rest (1991).

Updike's Rabbit novels:

(1960) Rabbit, Run 

(1971) Rabbit Redux 

(1981) Rabbit Is Rich  

(1990) Rabbit At Rest 

(1995) Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels  

(2001) Rabbit Remembered (a novella in the collection Licks of Love)

I did not take to Updike's novels -- they seemed more a man's game. But I devoured his essays that New Yorker and elsewhere, particularly those he wrote late in his life when he explored spiritual themes.

In 1961 he wrote a review in the New York Times of his contemporary J.D. Salinger's, book Franny and Zooey. (Prior to its publication as a novel it had appeared as two short stories in the New Yorker.) Even at this ascending phase of Updike's career, he resonated with Salinger's religious exploration in the book embodied in the character of Franny. The story centers around her near- despair: “All I know is I’m losing my mind. I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting--it is, it is.” Her disenchantment incited her to want to pray, but she did not know how to pray. Then she latched onto a little book called the Philokalia, which emphasized the transformative value of repeating the “Jesus Prayer”: Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, which Franny began to recite compulsively. The novel explores the shock this induced for those around her, as well as the change it affected in her own soul.

In his review of Salinger's book, Updike wrote:  "Let me say, I am glad he is hopeful. I am one of those -- to do some confessing of my own -- for whom Salinger's work dawned as something of a revelation. I expect that further revelations are to come."

(Salinger died the year to the day following Updike's death, January 27, 2010).

The Enduring Love of Blondie and Dagwood

Dagwood and Blondie (née Boopadoop) Bumstead are celebrating 81 years of marital bliss (the anniversary date is Feb 17, 1933).

"Blondie" remains among the longest-running  newspaper comics of all time at 80+ years and counting.

Creator, Chic Young (January 1901 – March 1973) explained in an interview (1960s) with writer William Zinnser why "Blondie" possessed such staying power:

“It’s simple. I keep Dagwood in a world that people are used to. He never does anything as special as playing golf, and the people who come to the door are just the people an average family has to deal with. The only regular neighbors are Herb and Tootsie Woodley. If a new neighbor came over with his problem, nobody would be interested.” (After Chic Young's death, his son Dean Young kept the comic strip going along with various illustrators.)

Dagwood Bumstead renounced family wealth and status (his father was a railroad baron) to marry the sassy working-class blond who makes incredible sandwiches. Since his family objected to the marriage, Dagwood settled for an ordinary life of working for J.C. Dithers & Company and running into the
mailman as he scrambled, late, out the door for work.
And Blondie's big sandwiches.

Visit Blondie's blog.

Blondie, The Bumstead Family History (Thomas Nelson, 2007)  "The lives of Blondie and Dagwood and their interactions with their children Alexander and Cookie, their neighbors Herb and Tootsie Woodley, the family dog Daisy, Dagwood's boss Mr. Dithers, the mailman Mr. Beasley, and the neighborhood kid Elmo Tuttle. Included are Blondie and Dagwood's courtship, their early beaus, their wedding, Dagwood at work, Blondie's catering business."

Buy the Book

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5 Tips for Developing Good Reading Habits

. . . 1. Pace yourself. Each book has its own process of discovery and interior animation.

Nevil Shute's Little-known Classic: A Town Like Alice
Shute possesses a steady narrative voice and drives the plot relentlessly forward, though his plots are often complicated. His magic makes them plausible and wrenching.

Happy Birthday, MLK, Jr. ~ An Interview with Ed Gilbreath

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality... Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” 

Nevil Shute's Little-known Classic: A Town Like Alice

Nevil Shute was born 115 years ago today. While most people have not heard of him, he remains one of Britain's most acclaimed and revered writers. His was born Nevil Shute Norway (17 January 1899 - 12 January 1960) and rose to become a popular novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer. He described in the in an anonymous epigram in one of his books how engineering and design could improve human life: "An engineer is a man who can make something for five bob that any bloody fool can make for a quid!"

He adopted the name Nevil Shute as his pen name and wrote several novels including On the Beach and The Rainbow and the Rose. He his best known for his novel, A Town Like Alice (1950), a World War 2 novel set in Malaya and Australia. The protagonists Jean Paget and Joe Harman are based upon people whom Shute met, both of whom suffered heroically as prisoners of war and who later fell in love redeemed their lost years.

Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards,
real-life inspiration for Joe Harman

Shute based the character of Harman on Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards, an Australian veteran of the Malayan campaign, whom Shute met in 1948 at a station (ranch) in Queensland. Edwards had been crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. He had later escaped execution a second time, when his "last meal" of chicken and beer could not be obtained. Shute appropriates both episodes in the novel.

The novel was ranked in 1998 by the Modern Library ranked 17th on The Reader's List of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th century.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the novel contains the earliest known use of the word dicey: "He.. made a tight, dicey turn round in the gorge with about a hundred feet to spare."

Shute possesses a steady narrative voice and drives the plot relentlessly forward, though his plots are often complicated. His magic makes them plausible and wrenching.

Bryan Brown and Helen Morse in Masterpiece Theatre's
wildly successful mini-series (1981) A Town Like Alice

From A Town Like Alice [the narrator as an old man remembering his friends in Australia]:

 "I suppose it is because I have lived rather a restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf Country, dreaming of blazing sunshine, of poddy dodging and black stockriders, of Cairns and of Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection."

Writing Advice: Accept the Pacing ~ Umberto Eco on Staying the Course

By Wendy Murray

Umberto Eco, born January 5, 1932

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite writers: Italian novelist, Umberto Eco (born1932; he is 82 today). Among other things, he wrote the dazzling mystery novel set in an abbey during 14th-century Italy titled The Name of the Rose.

At the end of the book,  the author included personal advice about both the writing process as well as the reading:

". . . . after reading the manuscript, my friends and editors suggested I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found difficult and demanding. Without thinking twice, I refused, because, as I insisted, if somebody wanted to the enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he [or she] had to accept the abbey's own pace. If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book. Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or an initiation, and if someone doesn't like them, so much the worse for them. He can stay at the foot of the hill.
Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away."

Rare Footage of J.R.R. Tolkien Talking About LOTR Happy Birthday!

J.R.R. Tolkien was born on this day in 1892.