Tag Archives: Rest in Peace

My non-existent experience with Updike

Death, Reading, , ,

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve only read one book by John Updike, and one short story. The book was The Witches of Eastwick and I read it after seeing the movie twice. I saw the movie twice by accident — sort of. Dean and I saw it and then some friends wanted to see it so we saw it again. So I read the book — but I don’t recall why.  Perhaps so I could say I read a book by John Updike?

The short story I read was A&P. I remember liking it. I read it in college, I think. My son recently had to read in for his high school freshman English class.

I knew about Updike from a young age, however. My mom had a book of his called Couples. It had sex in it and I’d skim the book to find the parts with sex. I tried to read it from the beginning, but it was boring to me otherwise. (this may have been after sixth grade though)

When I was in the sixth grade an author came to our class to tell us about being an author. His name is Larry Woiwode. (his sister was my student teacher that year). I’ve not read any of his books either, although I have most of them. He called John Updike his friend when he visited our class. I knew who Updike was by then, but perhaps Woiwode’s mentioning him made me more aware of him. [Although now that I think about it I was in 6th grade in 1968 when Couples was published — but perhaps I’d heard of the author before somehow.]

A friend of mine really liked John Updike. She liked his Rabbit novels. I didn’t even try to like them.

So. Perhaps I’ll try to read another book by Updike in honor of his passing. Or perhaps I’ll read a Woiwode book instead.

Oh wait — Updike wrote a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick. There. Decision made.

Number 6

Death, People, ,

I’m not sure when I first saw The Prisoner, but I know it was on WTTW (Channel 11) out of Chicago. I suspect I was in my teens, but I feel as if I was younger and that I watched it with my parents. However, that doesn’t seem right — The Prisoner is not something my parents would have liked.

Regardless of when I first saw The Prisoner, it left its mark on me in a few ways. For one, I had an irrational fear of big white balloons. Honestly. Of course, I didn’t see them very often, but weather balloons come to mind. Now, where on earth would I have seen a weather balloon? Beats me. Maybe I just dreamed about it.

I also had a fear of those old fashioned bicycles — the ones with the huge front wheel — especially when being ridden by someone that seemed more comfortable in a painting by Renoir or a Charles Dickens novel than in real life.

And skinny men with long faces in striped shirts and tight pants? That scared me too.

Putting aside the few things that scared me on the program, it was probably my first taste of quirky science-fiction, and possibly my first taste of surrealism. It was unlike anything I’d seen, except for maybe The Avengers. It also, along with all other media in my life, helped shape the person I was to become. So, when I heard that Patrick McGoohan died this week, I paused and smiled and remembered Number 6.

When we first joined Netflix I rented several episodes from The Prisoner. We watched it as a family — my kids were very young, but liked the program. I think that they appreciated the episodes of The Simpsons where the big white balloon made an appearance more after seeing the “Rover” on The Prisoner.

We didn’t watch the entire series because we grew tired of Number 6 thinking he was going to escape each episode, only be thwarted in the end. I’ve not seen the ending of the program, but I suspect he is still in The Village. Maybe I’ll rent them again though — just for me.

Anyway, here’s to you Number 6. You are, indeed now, a free man.

Nancy

Death, People, ,

We received word, last night, that Dean’s cousin, Nancy, died on Sunday night. We didn’t know she was ill, so it was a shock to us.

We’d not seen her in many years — perhaps as many as 16 — possibly more. The first time I met Nancy was during my first visit to San Francisco. We met her and some of her friends for sushi (I think I avoided sushi at that time) at a restaurant in Oakland. I don’t remember much except that Dean needed to eat a hamburger after the sushi dinner. That and we had a really good time. It seemed so different from the good times we had in Pittsburgh. More grown-up perhaps? More cosmopolitan?

We spent our last night in Northern California that trip at Nancy’s Oakland home before we went to the airport.I vaguely recall that the house wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, but don’t remember being worried.

In 1993 we visited San Fransisco again, this time with children and my mom. Nancy was celebrating her birthday (maybe her 50th?) at a Middle Eastern restaurant complete with a bellydancer (who chose me to “dance” along with him).We sat at low tables, on cushions on the floor. It was an interesting evening — but our times with Nancy always were interesting — and much different from what we normally experienced.

Nancy belonged to the same spiritual group as the folks who wrote Laurel’s Kitchen, which was also the spiritual group that my teenage friend Cynthia belonged to. (And Nancy’s sister, Joanne, helped edit the cookbook).

What I remember mostly about Nancy was her smile. She always seemed to be smiling — and not just her mouth, but her whole face. And she was the first person I knew who wore lip liner — I think of her every time I apply it.