Jan 30 2009
Another view of John Updike if offered by Kris Collins, Pittsburgh poet and editor of The New Yinzer, a literary magazine of the Web:
"Like many readers I simply assumed the man would always be there.
"I first read Rabbit Run during a gloomy post-collegiate winter in a little apartment in Friendship. I can honestly say that book taught me more about the art of the novel and the possibilities of writing fiction than four years at the university beating my head against the writing department."
The New Yinzer is running its own appreciation of the late James Crumley, who shuffled off in September at 69, after a career writing hard-boiled crime fiction and teaching briefly at Carnegie Mellon U. Read it at: http://www.newyinzer.com
More on Crumley: Chuck Kinder, no stranger to the writing life, knew Crumley well. His recent thoughts
"Those who think Jim is really gone are mistaken. He is actually just on another long road-trip to wherever-the-hell-he-feels-like-going, beerjoint to beerjoint, whorehouse to whorehouse, wandering through the West making new best friends wherever he stops on a whim, changing lives, rescuing people who don't even know they need rescuing, & doing it pretty much by just being real smart & real polite, just by being himself, a great old boy with no pretensions whatsoever. For somebody who could drink about anybody I ever met under the table & clean out a *** roadhouse pretty much single-handedly if the occasion called for it, Jim Crumley was a Calm Center. I've called him the Mayor of Montana before, but he was the Mayor of a much bigger state than Montana, & that's where he is right now, taking care of business. Clearly I have had about one too many toasts to old Jim tonight. But here's one more for him, to Jim Crumley, the last best legend.
It's been a bad year for writers and those who comment about their writing, so news that the Washington Post is discontinuing its Book World Sunday tabloid is not earth shattering. Here's memo from new Post boss on what will happen via Media Bistro. I run it in full in case the posting is taken down:
Brauchli, on Book World
An internal email from Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, obtained by FishbowlDC:
Colleagues, we are announcing today a couple of changes in our Sunday
paper and the way we cover books and literature.
Starting on Feb. 22, our book coverage will appear in Style throughout
the week and in the Outlook section on Sundays. We will end Book World's run as a stand-alone print section but will revamp and rebrand our books section online as Book World, where we'll offer readers a robust, well-organized site dedicated to our coverage and reviews of books.
This new arrangement recognizes the tremendous importance of books,
ideas, literature and reading to our audience.
In the daily paper, Style will run a daily "Book World" review, as well
as coverage of literature and publishing. Big events in the book world,
as well as interviews or profiles of authors, will be featured in Style, more often on the cover and more prominently than in the past.
On Sundays, Outlook will become the primary venue for books coverage,
with a focus on non-fiction books and ideas alongside its traditional
package of lively journalism and thoughtful essays from outside
contributors. Outlook will carry Jon Yardley's column, our Best Seller
list and other features.
In addition, we will continue to publish occasional special tabloid-format Book World sections on Sundays, built around themes such
as Summer Reading or Children's Books. We also have started a syndicated product called "Book Digest" that will bring Post reviews to other newspapers around the country.
Running this coverage will be Rachel Shea, whose skills and knowledge
have been honed during her successful tenure as Marie Arana's deputy and acting successor. The Book World team remains intact and the group's mission will be to serve all Post venues--Style, Outlook, the special tab sections and our online Book World section. This is a model for how we want to approach a number of coverage areas at The Post: with reporting groups that serve all our platforms, in print and online.
In addition to these changes in the news department, the editorial and
op-ed pages that now appear Sundays in Outlook will migrate from that
section into the A section. We will add a third page of opinion on
Sundays.
The Close To Home page, which features opinion contributions from and
about people in our area, will move to the Sunday Metro section and,
like all of this content, will continue to be run by the editorial page.
The changes outlined here will take effect in the third week of
February.
In other words, about the same amount of content, just sprinkled throughout the daily paper and in the Post's Sunday opinion section.
A Post Book World editor blogs about his hopes:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2009/01/preservation.html?wprss=shortstack
Jan 29 2009
Time to scrape off the rust, change the oil and recharge the battery on Quick Reads which has been sitting abandoned in the PG parking lot for nearly two months. Let’s fire it up for 2009 and take it out for a spin more often.
RIP, John Updike
One of the challenges of working for a daily newspaper is writing the obituary of a well-known person on deadline while trying to come to grips with the death personally.
John Updike’s death caught me off guard. I had no inkling that he was stricken with lung cancer. He was making a West Coast swing in November to promote his last novel, "The Widows of Eastwick."
Lea Garchick, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, reported Nov. 12:
"John Updike, 76, whose new book is "The Widows of Eastwick," was a big hit at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on Monday night, even though his wife, Martha, said he had pneumonia. That in no way deterred him from flirting with many young women who stood in line to have him autograph books."
So, something was surfacing at that time. That his family allowed him privacy as his illness progressed is admirable.
More observations on Mr. Updike will be added here. So far, here are messages from Pittsburgh guys actor David Conrad and novelist Lester Goran:
Conrad: "Bob, you showed them why they shouldn’t lean on AP. I never knew about the event in Kittanning. A ‘small audience.’ Damn."
Updike came to Pittsburgh in late March of 1992 to speak to the National College English Association and accepted an invitation to speak in Kittanning at Indiana University’s Armstrong County branch. It booked the high school auditorium.
I heard about the talk at the last minute and still recall the frantic drive up Route 28 to get there in time.
Goran: "Loved your use of the quote from Richard Ford. How do we honor John Updike enough? He’s tracked, led the way, cast a shadow, and cleared the bushes for almost every American writer of his time. I thought he’d be around forever. I own at least ten of his books."
One of the most meaningless and pretentious descriptions of Updike’s work comes from the New Yorker this week:
"We have always been grateful for his unerring ability to limn the fissures of ordinary American life, and for the seemingly effortless lyricism of his prose."
Who thinks these absurd comments up, the same gag writers who do the captions for the cartoons?