There isn’t a good reason why I’ve been so quiet about John Updike. I’ve dabbled here and there over the years, usually under some peer pressure, trying to read him. I really like A&P, a story that everyone pointsto as a classic.
In June of this year Knopf will be publishing a collection of his short stories, My Father’s Tears. Discovering it laying on my desk reminded me that I did intend to read it.
There are moments in your life when you find yourself stuck in another part of the world, like the family Updike describes in ‘Morocco’. He’s stranded them with what seems like a bucket full of days rolling out forever before they can get back to civilization. Updike’s narrator tells this story in flashback, a remembrance of sorts, about the horror that seemed commonplace in Morocco, realities that this civilized family didn’t know were waiting for them in this off-season paradise.
Updike is cold with his delivery of a dead girl under a truck, or a man masturbating on the beach, I don’t think the image can be described any other way, especially when Updike recounts the episodes that have resonated on his narrator at the end of this story. The family is stuck, the father gets money wired from London to pull his clan out of the fire, but gets long stares as the notes are counted out for him at a local bank. There is talk of Tangier, visiting there, it reminds me of the difference between the third world and the United States, what we take for granted here, hot water and paved roads for instance, in Morocco it’s a given that neither one of them is a high priority, and natives could care less. Updike cares, because he makes you feel what it’s like not to have these staples at the ready.
Recent Comments