John Updike

John Updike - American novelist, poet, author, short story writer, art and literary critic - died two months ago on January 27th, at the age of 76.  He was an incredibly gifted writer and beloved by many. I first encountered his work in The New Yorker, for which he wrote for almost half a century.  I was most struck, and touched, by his ability to recognize and describe the beauty and weight in the simplest of moments.  He explains, in few but perfect words, emotions we have all experienced, but whose import we couldn't even begin to vocalize.  

Here is an excerpt from one of Updike's fictional short stories, written for the January 3, 1959 edition of The New Yorker, that I believe exemplifies the beauty that Updike breathes into the quiet moments we are all so familiar with.  

From "The Happiest I've Been"

        Red dawn light touched the clouds above the black slate roofs as, with a few other cars, we drove through Alton.  The moon-sized clock of a beer billboard said ten after six.  Olinger was deathly still.  The air brightened as we moved along the highway; the glowing wall of my home hung above the woods as we rounded the long curve b the Mennonite dairy.  With a .22 I could have had a pane of my parents' bedroom window, and they were dreaming I was in Indiana.  My grandfather would be up, stamping around in the kitchen for my grandmother to make him breakfast, or outside walking to see if any ice had formed on the brook.  For an instant I genuinely feared he might hail me from the peak of the barn roof.  Then trees interceded and we were safe in a landscape where no one cared.

        At the entrance to the Turnpike Neil did a strange thing; he stopped the car and had me take the wheel.  He had never trusted me to drive his father's car before; he had believed my not knowing where the crankshift or fuel pump was handicapped my competence to steer.  But now he was quite complacent.  He hunched under an old mackinaw and leaned his head against the metal of the window frame and was soon asleep.  We crossed the Susquehanna on a long smooth bridge below Harrisburg, then began climbing toward the Alleghenies.  In the mountains there was snow, a dry dusting like sand that waved back and forth on the road surface.  Farther along, there had been a fresh fall that night, about two inches, and the plows had not yet cleared all the lanes.  I was passing a Sunoco truck on a high curve when without warning the scraped section gave out and I realized I might skid into the fence, if not over the edge.  The radio was singing, "Carpets of clover, I'll lay right at your feet," and the speedometer said 81.  Nothing happened; the car stayed firm in the snow, and Neil slept through the danger, his face turned skyward and his breath struggling in his nose.  It was the first time I heard a contemporary of mine snore. 

        When we came into tunnel country, the flicker and hollow amplification stirred Neil awake.  He sat up, the mackinaw dropping to his lap, and lit a cigarette.  A second after the scratch of his match the moment occurred of which each following moment was a slight diminution, as we made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh.  There were many reasons for my feeling so happy.  We were on our way.  I had seen a dawn.  This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely.  Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded between me and that encounter.  There was the quality of the 10 A.M. sunlight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thin overcast, blessing irresponsibility - you felt you could slice forever through such a cool pure element - and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life.  And there was knowing that twice since midnight, a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me.