Upskirt: Author Searches for Meaning in Tender Fumblings with Imagined Prostitute

Ah, writers. Tortured, little geniuses. They sit in crusty old cabins lost in their mystical worlds begging to unleash their precious voices. Their profound insight and verbal cunning on display for all of Oprah's readership. John Updike is one of the more prolific voices with his endless Rabbit series. Rabbit did this. Rabbit did that. Rabbit Strikes Again. Naturally we should take him seriously because he wins so many awards and Pulitzer's.

I myself have never read his novels. I have a read a short story or two of his. What can be said? The man has a vocabulary begging to be admired. He knows his way around a comma (I could learn a thing or two). In all seriousness, he does have praiseworthy skill in his ability to construct a sentence.

There was an article by one Dan Schneider who effectively critiques the short story writing skills of Updike and Raymond Carver. You can judge for yourself who succeeds and who fails. I will focus on a particular passage that I thought was noteworthy. In the story 'Transactions' a young man has an encounter with a lady of the night. There's some drama involving a condom. Hilarity ensues:

"She asked, ‘You gonna keep that as a souvenir?’

He asked, ‘You want it back?’

‘No, Ed. You can keep it.’

‘Thanks. I keep saying ‘Thanks’ to you, you notice?’

‘I hadn’t minded.’ She stood, her buttocks fair as Parian marble. ‘Mind if I use your john before I go?’

‘No, please do. Please.’ ‘Don’t want to keep you from your beauty sleep.’ But even this mild revelation of injury must have tasted unprofessional, passing her lips, for she relented and, gesturing again at the sheath of his prick, offered, ‘Want me to flush that for you?’

‘No. It’s mine. I want it.’

She gathered some clothes and he regretted afterwards that he had not pressed into his memory these last poses of her naked body. But a wave of blankness was emitted by the still-operant alcohol."

Everyone is entitled to write badly. It isn't the writing I'm critiquing (it speaks for itself). It's what I can deduce about the person who wrote it. Look at that dialogue. With your life experiences and what you know about people and their nature, ask yourself, Is it authentic? Does it sound real? Is it important? Is it necessary? Does the author have a grasp of the world?

Write what you know. There's a reason that axiom is recited so often. I have no way of knowing if Updike has ever engaged in the company of a prostitute. Doesn't really matter. I read that passage of his writing and it tells me something about him. The overly sentimental nature is odious. Just as there's a time and place for witticisms and snark, there's a time for authentic and earnest emotion. Whenever he wrote this he didn't seem to have an understanding of what makes something significant. What details make something interesting. Maybe he's improved. He must have. Truthfully, I'm not the least bit curious to find out.

Am I being petty? Perhaps. When I think of Updike, Philip Roth (who doesn't annoy me so much), and the numerous other ImportantCaucasianVoicesOfOurTime, I wonder what people really love about them. It can't be their insight. Half of their stories are about English professors at liberal arts colleges who end up sleeping with their precociously uninhibited dream student (I imagine most Caucasian writers of a certain age basically endeavor to rewrite Lolita).

It has to be the voice. The art with which they use a word and design a sentence or paragraph. Those elephantine, elegant sentences with the odd introduction of an unappreciated but lovely word.

Here's another gem from the Great Voice of Our Time. From his novel Brazil, a notoriously famous line:

Standing with her [Isabel] in the warming waterfall, soaping her skin so its yielding silk was overlaid with a white grease, and then letting her soap him [Tristão] in turn, he felt his cashew become a banana, and then a rippled yam, bursting with weight.

It's as I've always suspected. The ImportantCaucasian VoicesOfOurTime dream of rich fantasy lands to escape the uncomfortable truth about their nether nether regions.

Rippled yam, Updike?? Keep dreamin' BluePill Boy.