10at10 Club

Main Discussion Area => In Memoriam, Happy Birthday => Topic started by: urth on January 27, 2009, 10:47:44 AM

Title: RIP John Updike
Post by: urth on January 27, 2009, 10:47:44 AM

Of lung cancer, he was 76.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/27/entertainment/e102349S96.DTL&tsp=1

Title: Re: RIP John Updike
Post by: RGMike on January 29, 2009, 10:53:41 AM

an Updike poem, published on the NYT Op-Ed page today:

"It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
'Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise -- depths unplumbable!"

"Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
'I thought he died a while ago.'

"For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur."

Title: Re: RIP John Updike
Post by: Gazoo on January 29, 2009, 10:03:01 PM

That poem is great.  I'm gonna save it.

I've never read any Updike, actually.  But I once overheard Lev Grossman, one of Time's arts editors, tell a senior editor that Updike had "spectacular eyebrows."

(http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2009-01/44730192.jpg)