JOHN UPDIKE d. January 27, 2009

JOHN UPDIKE

March 18, 1932-January 27, 2009

JOHN UPDIKE AT HOME

IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS

JANUARY 11, 1972

CONTEMPLATING HIS OWN MORTALITY?

ALREADY?

In this interview-cum-photography session, it was startling to hear Updike declare that he was now too old to learn a foreign language. Of course, he did not look the slightest bit decrepit (not counting his broken foot). Did he want contradiction? Reassurance? Or should one assume that he was simply stating a fact, with all the sad implications for one's own future?

Updike was, it turned out, the proverbial thirty-nine years old at the time.

Now comes a story from Nicholas Delbanco, a former student of Updike's. Updike was, Delbanco says, "always disparaging his own energy, his own enthusiasm, his own ability." He does note that "I never knew how far his tongue was in his cheek, but he was declaring himself finished in his late 20s, which was when I first met him."

In his seventies, Updike began a series of yearly birthday poems against the day, and indeed, he did die relatively young, at seventy-six. The birthday poems and others, including ones capturing his observations while hospitalized, were collected in ENDPOINT.

One of the most poignant is "Hospital," in which Updike cries out against the loneliness:

My wife of thirty years is on the phone. 
I get a busy signal, and I know 
she's in her grief and needs to organize 
consulting friends. But me, I need her voice; 
her body is the only locus where 
my desolation bumps against its end.