John Updike: Terrorist

[earthboar]

Has anybody read John Updike's new book, Terrorist? I just heard him speak on National Public Radio (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5479128), talking about immigration. Any reviews or comments on Updike in general will be appreciated! I just finished reading some of his introductions, especially to "Melville's Short Fiction". What an intelligent man.

[Wild Apple]

I've never read a book by him so I can't comment on his abilities as an author, but I am somewhat familiar with Updike the man and critic.

He has a policy of rejecting books solely on if they exceed a certain length and I find that ridiculous. He seems pretentious and borderline haughty - constantly bringing up the fact that he attended Harvard and how he works for the New Yorker. On top of that, he is an avid golfer, which is something that I despise for its adverse effects on the environment.


That is just my opinion of him. I know many others love him and his work.

[genoveva]

I just read an article about him and his new book. In my opinion, the topic and subject of the book seems horribly pretentious. What does a rich white man know about being an American Muslim terrorist? What is his aim in writing this book? Why did he choose this topic? Why demonize American Muslims? There is enough stereotyping of Muslims in this country- Now we need a lamely written cookie cutout book about the thing many persons are scared to death about? Seems bigotted.

[Logos]

Please do not discuss current politics.

[cuppajoe_9]

My first thought when I read the title of this thread was "Jeez, he's a bit pretentious, but I don't think that's quite fair..."

[MikeK]

Wild Apple, you say that you "despise" people for being "avid golfers" because that hobby contradicts a particular view of yours, and then call someone else "pretentious and borderline haughty". Was your post perhaps an exercise in irony?

[earthboar]

Please do not discuss current politics.


What does a rich white man know about being an American Muslim terrorist?

Tolerating white man hate is as unacceptable as any other. That was truly an offensive comment, one made in blanket ignorance with a broad stroke.

Well, that's it for me then. Can someone please direct me to the door, and tell me how I remove my id from this network? I don't see that option anywhere.

thank you!

[behindblueeyes]

maybe the book can be discussed without talking about the actual political views?.... i didn't read it though so i wouldn't know

[genoveva]

maybe the book can be discussed without talking about the actual political views?

This is tricky because the title itself is political. The fact that his main character is an American Muslim who, out of disgust for non-Muslim Americans, wants to participate in a suicidal terrorist act is political.

Religion is political. :nod:

You can read an excerpt from the novel via the NPR link in the original post.

Perhaps instead, we can talk about how many books he's written- 20+ ??
Or, his style?? :confused:

[Wild Apple]

Wild Apple, you say that you "despise" people for being "avid golfers" because that hobby contradicts a particular view of yours, and then call someone else "pretentious and borderline haughty". Was your post perhaps an exercise in irony?

I am implying that Updike is prententious by virtue of his position in life (i.e. Harvard graduate and writer for the New Yorker). I, on the other hand, despise that he is an avid golfer based on an ethical issue, not what job I have or what my background is.

I don't despise him because he is an avid golfer. I despise him golfing. In other words....I don't think I am a better person than him because he is a golfer and I'm not. I simply find it a fault of his that he golfs. The golfing comment was meant to be aside from the pretentious and haughty comment; I tried to convey that with "On top of that."

[genoveva]

Tolerating white man hate is as unacceptable as any other.

I agree! This is why his novel bothers me so much. From simply knowing what it is about and who wrote it, I would predict that the novel will serve only to justify, exacerbate, and sustain hate.

But, perhaps someone will read it and report otherwise.


That was truly an offensive comment

Well? John Updike is not an American Muslim, nor is he a terrorist (that I know of). How has he come to know what it's like to be one and write a book from that point of view? His authorship does not seem credible.

Further, his opening pages which are posted at that NPR site are truly offensive to me as a reader. Yuck. But, here in America we do have the 1st amendment- the freedom of speech. Nonetheless, I'm completely turned off by his chosen topic to write a book about.

You asked for opinions.

[cuppajoe_9]

Well? John Updike is not an American Muslim, nor is he a terrorist (that I know of). How has he come to know what it's like to be one and write a book from that point of view? His authorship does not seem credible.So what? Charles Dickens was not a french nobleman who was unjustly imprisoned during the French Revolution.

[Ron Price]

UPDIKE

John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy chronicles reflectively the decades since I first had contact with the Baha’i Faith back in 1953. With the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship Updike was working on the first of these four books, Rabbit, Run, when I became a Baha’i in October 1959. The book was published a few months later in 1960 and is the story of a young man, one Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, from a small town in the USA. The book concerns Harry’s attempts to escape the constraints of life. In my teens I, too, lived in a small town and, although I could see the attractiveness of escaping from social constraints, I also left the need for a set of limits. I was only too well aware of just how easily I could go beyond the appropriate limits. By the late fifties I could see what happened to those who did escape from life’s, from society’s, constraints. I knew from personal experience by my early teens, by 1957, what it was like to be caught stealing, breaking and entering, going too far sexually, misbehaving around the family home, at school or with my play-mates and pushing the envelope of life. Had I read Updike’s book, Rabbit, Run I think I would have had my need, my desire, for limits reinforced. The Baha’i Faith provided that framework, those limits, at a critical stage in my life, my mid-teens. This Faith also provided that sense of the sacredness of life which is at the centre of Updike’s work.

When I was preparing to leave North America for Australia in 1970/1 people were watching the movie Rabbit, Run. It had opened just as I began planning to leave Canada in 1970. Rabbit Redux, Updike’s sequel to Rabbit, Run came out four months after I arrived in Sydney for what became my life in Australia. Harry Angstrom took to the road in 1971 in Rabbit Redux as I took to a different road in the southern hemisphere. Updike’s final two Rabbit books took Harry Angstrom into the 1990s and his rather bleak retirement and old age. The following prose-poem compares and contrasts my life with Harry’s. –Ron Price with thanks to “Articles on John Updike’s Works,” in The New York Times on the Web.

You didn’t think much about politics
back then in the ‘50s, did you John?
Private destiny was your concern,
then and now--not that partisan game.
And your then theories about how
to write are now forgotten, eh John?

When Rabbit is Rich was set in ’79,
I was living in Tasmania fighting
another bi-polar episode; Harry was
fighting his many losses in life
or was it life’s pleasures--sex, booze,
marital infidelity and having fun?

Then Harry got old--at just 55--
in 1990 in Rabbit At Rest, a decade
before I headed into quieter pastures
where death and age awaited---
inevitably long down life’s road,
but not with fear, emptiness
and Harry’s downward slide
with its world inhabited by
ghosts and demons of his past.

Ron Price
June 24th 2006

[Virgil]

I am implying that Updike is prententious by virtue of his position in life (i.e. Harvard graduate and writer for the New Yorker). I, on the other hand, despise that he is an avid golfer based on an ethical issue, not what job I have or what my background is.

I don't despise him because he is an avid golfer. I despise him golfing. In other words....I don't think I am a better person than him because he is a golfer and I'm not. I simply find it a fault of his that he golfs. The golfing comment was meant to be aside from the pretentious and haughty comment; I tried to convey that with "On top of that."

What's wrong with golfing?