A flow of apt words for every occasion

BUY NOW

Deplorably, John Updike was a great celebrator. For him, to describe was to bless. He rejoiced in articulacy itself, as though producing a suave flow of apt words for every occasion was one of the great achievements of life. Sometimes it seemed as though almost any occasion would do.

Higher Gossip is a great wad of a book, the posthumous successor to such effusive collections as Assorted Prose, Picked-Up Pieces, Hugging the Shore, Odd Jobs, More Matter and Due Considerations. The truth is that John Updike, by far the most prolific contributor to the New Yorker, wrote so much, both in fiction and non-fiction, that only the most dedicated reader would want it all, for, although it is, in his ready and polished way, all good enough, or really very good of its kind, or even excellent sometimes, almost none of it is great, let alone essential.

Updike’s editor here, Christopher Carduff, is that most dedicated reader. He not only adores Updike’s writing, he attempts to imitate its poise and fluency in his own foreword. To tell us that Updike the literary artist and Updike the critic were two sides of the same coin, he proclaims: “The sun gives light from dawn to dusk, and the moon the sun’s reflection throughout the night; together they make the day. Fiction and poetry, essays and criticism: these were the sun and moon of Updike’s days, twin aspects of the light and order and colour that he was born to bring, the counterpoint of existence that he was born to sing.”

Chunter would be a better word for what Updike does in this collection. It contains odd bits of journalism, a few stories, five poems, some book reviews, some forewords and afterwords, some art criticism, some stuff about golf (which he loved), some introductions to reissues of his own work, some randomly commissioned comments, plus speeches and addresses, most of it late work, a little as yet uncollected early stuff being industriously salvaged too.

There’s a review of a biography of Max Factor, a comment on “the courage of baseball players”, an essay on Mars (“Mars has long exerted a pull on the human imagination”) and a note on freaky dinosaurs. He celebrates the lyrics of Cole Porter and the comic strip Peanuts, the fiction of William Maxwell and the golfing of Tiger Woods.

In some 1976 tips on book reviewing, Updike asks for generosity always: “Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban.” That was his own policy and it enabled a long and astonishingly productive career of steady praising and sharing.

Yet by far his most interesting criticism came when a little sharpness and attack escaped him, as when considering the life of John Cheever, a partly wasted but obviously greater talent; or when reviewing British writers unsuccessfully trying to be American (like Martin Amis); or when contemplating Englishness per se.

In 1964, invited to comment on English fiction in the TLS, Updike observed: “Adversely, let me say that no literature is as non-existential as the English. That is, the Englishman does not seem to be aware of any intrinsic problem in human existence.” Still true, worth preserving — unlike most of this sequacious moonshine.

Save up to 20% off books when you buy from our Bookshop with free P&P