John Updike has just made space.
Tell your mother, if she asks, that maybe we’ll meet some other time. Under the pear trees, in Paradise.
I remember spending many hours happily scouring the local library in my youth. There I discovered the wonderful novels of John Updike. My recollections are dim now, and I will surely have to delve into these books again, but I remember something of the Rabbit series. I think I may have attempted the Witches of Eastwick without completing it and there may have been some short stories. The writing of Updike is rich and beautiful, often focusing on the minutae of the everyday and of memory. Consider this evocative excerpt from The Beloved
His grandfather’s love seemed to arrive from the greatest distance. He dwelt in a far, biblical, brown world. He smoked cigars outside behind the chicken house. His love had a wordless tang, not disagreeable, of admonition. On each of Francis’s birthdays, his grandfather would give him a single dollar bill, removed and unfolded with ceremonical dignity from a wallet worn papery by the rubbing of time, where the child was amazed that any wealth still lingered
John Updike’s passing is sad, but he left a ton of awesome work. “Immortality is nontransferrable” he said appropriately.
Nice post, good old Ballincollig Library