who is John Updike?
A garrulous adulterer who lives near the sea? By rights, he should have turned up at Mass General with lipstick on his collar, and then disappeared every 10 minutes to supervise abortions for Mabel and Missy and Charity and Hope. For the record, he was charm incarnate. But as for what Updike is like – in his head, in his private culture – I knew all that already. In his perceptions he is almost dementedly sensual: tactile, olfactory. He cowers under a cataract of sense impressions. His fascination with the observable world is utterly promiscuous: he will address a cathedral and a toilet bowl with the same peeled-eyeball intensity. The brain itself is serendipitous and horrendously encyclopaedic; he knows about home-improvement (“20 feet of 2 inch pine quality knotless stock, a half pound of 1½inch finishing nails”), music, cars (“padded tilt steering wheel, lumbar support lever for adjustable driver comfort, factory-installed AM/FM/ MPX'”), trees, computers, painting (“she halts in the
