Updike's Memoirs Take Life Seriously

The book opens in his hometown--Shillington, Pennsylvania--with Updike walking through the streets waiting for lost luggage and reminiscing. He introduces events and people from his childhood, cleverly returning to them throughout the work.

These elements pop up at unpredicted but appropriate times throughout essays and provide humor and lightness.

In the second and third essays, Updike discusses the role played by psoriasis, a genetic skin ailment, and stuttering in his childhood.

The first three essays are an interesting view of the formation of ideas and themes that reappear in all of Updike's fiction. Many critics consider his novels, short stories and poetry largely autobiographical, and the way in which he explains the process of composing suggests that perhaps all writing stems from childhood fascinations of the author. Updike presents the interplay between experience and writing almost as an empirical proof, giving example after example and following each w

A Self-Consciousness

By John Updike

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989

$18,95

John Updike couldn't always get the words out. Ever since childhood Pulitzer Prize-winning author has had a stuttering problem. And although the speech defect has not stopped him from making his thoughts known in the long run, it did as a child.

In his autobiography Self-Consciousness, Updike recounts his earliest memory of stuttering, when a bully nicknamed him "Ostrich." "[It was] a nickname I did not think I deserved," Updike writes, "and a fear of being misunderstood or mistaken for somebody else has accompanied the impdiment ever since."

Updike's fascination with the pecularities of his person form the core of this work, six essays on topics ranging from skin disease to the 1960s.

He plays with the meaning of his title by showing how the traits that make him stand out influenced his writing.

Updike smatters the book with events from his childhood in small town Pennsylvania, his years at Harvard and his life in New Ipswitch. The events center around six issues, arranged roughly chronologically, but analyzed from a mature perspective, revealing commentary.

The fourth essay, on the '60s, focuses on the Vietnam conflict. He was listed in a survey as writer outstandingly in favor of continuing American involvement in Vietnam, but Updike felt misrepesented. So he wrote a letter to The New York Times in 1966, "claiming that not only I but the president (whoever he was) was not an ostrich."

When he returns to his small town upbringing, he contrasts his solidly middle class heritage with the "politically correct" activisism among the richer New England elite. Updike argues for a love of America that forgives her mistakes, much as he has come to forgive himself for his physical flaws in the previous chapters.

In the final two essays, a letter to his grandsons and a reflection on religion, Updike moves into the self-consciousness of his later life.

Forgive Me Not

But as a result, the essays lose the playfulness and verge on self-importance, not self-consciousness. In all the essays, Updike makes offhand remarks that show a strong sense of his own significance, and the essays pick up this tone.

The first four are--like Updike's physical flaws--easily forgiven. The self-consciousness often comes as a wryness, a repetition of amusing bits of personal history which balance the self-importance with a likeable self-deprecation.

These essays prompt the sort of indulgence one gives a child. They avoid heaviness. The older Updike, however, takes himself too seriously. Ironically, he childishly exaggerates the importance of events in his maturity more than in his youth.

By linking the essays, Updike gives readers a full picture of his life. This format allows him to move from a recapitulation of important events to the less obvious, but often more relevant, influences on his personality.

For the most part the essays are enjoyable--an honest and profound look at America, at human success and failure and at growing up. They portray an era and are perhaps more meaningful than the slew of backward-looking books that vomit up recent social history.

But Updike's latest book takes what is important in his life and uses it to show what is important in any life.