2009-02-16 - 10:51 a.m.
So, because you don't appreciate what you had until you don't have it any more, I've been thinking about John Updike. I've got some of his books on the shelf, and I'd read some shorter stuff, but another book always seemed brighter, something on the TV was always louder. But the magazine he wrote for devoted eight or ten pages to excerpts from his forty years of sending stuff to them and so I finally took a long look. Here's the deal: he wrote sentences so beautiful and crammed so full with living and truth that they are like cranberries, so tight and full they bounce. You can't change them, you can't slip a sheet of paper between two of them. They are as if handed down from the place where perfection is cast.
And, of course, he worked very hard to get his words that way, I know. Still, though, he had that clarity. When I was in college, I'd often play a game with myself, and the result acted as a barometer for my inner well-being. I'd ask myself: if you could choose one, would you wake up tomorrow 50 percent smarter or 50 percent more attractive? And it's a silly game but after reading those eight to ten pages, the answer now is pretty clear. I wish I could borrow his clarity and I don't know if that's something you can learn or if it's just given, as the ability to dunk a basketball is given. To do what he did, to observe, disassemble, and reassemble, with grace, that's a great thing.
And I go to Scranton, Pa., Wednesday, to give a talk and then to do a reading. Fliers have been put up, around this little campus, advertising the reading. I am holding steady at the quiet-hum level of nerves. I want to read a thing about getting sort of arrested for possessing drugs but am not sure it'll be ready.
Anecdote: Last Friday, the day after I taught my class, I was in a restaurant with a work friend, waiting for tacos. And I saw this guy, early twenties, round and overweight, shaggy brown hair, wearing a worn Black Sabbath T-shirt. He looked familiar. Then it clicked: he's in my class, he has a Greek name, and he also didn't show up the night before. I smiled and waved. He said hello and then, stammering, said he thought it'd be OK to miss the class since it was early in the semester. Really, it wasn't a very good excuse, and I stopped him before he could continue. His two buddies giggled.
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