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More Matter: Essays and Criticism

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One of the most annoying things about many of the reviews that accompanied the publication of *More Matter* in the fall of 1999 was the ungrateful tone of reviewers who complained about the heft, the bulk, the sheer immensity, the allegedly self-indulgent inclusiveness of Updike's most recent collection of prose. Containing -- by my count and including the preface -- some 191 separate items, the size of this assemblage of "Essays and Criticism" (as Updike subtitles the volume, despite his protestation on page 810 that "I write not criticism but book reviews") would seem to justify such complaints. But such carping must really have been due to the understandable and forgivable (albeit unprofessional) readerly fatigue of grubstreet reviewers laboring against a deadline. Their griping is as absurd as nieces and nephews complaining that some rich uncle has left them too much money. The grace and insight that have marked Updike's prose since he became a professional writer almost fifty years ago distinguish every page of this collection.

The volume is arranged in four parts. About 100 pages address "Large Matters"; in this election year, it would be well if every American read the first piece, on freedom and equality. Five hundred pages consist of "Matter under Review," mostly book reviews but including some articles that a candid Updike would have to admit to be genuine criticism, since they go far beyond the "matter under review." Especially good are essays on Mickey Mouse, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, Camille Paglia, and the Titanic, as well as collective reviews on (1) the novel per se, (2) five books on evil, (3) sex and fashion, and (4) the new edition of *Fowler's Modern English Usage*. (Other readers will have their own favorites, of course.) The third part, entitled "Visible Matters," contains about 100 pages, mostly on movies and art. Here I especially liked a personal essay on a 1941 photograph, a piece entitled "Descent of an Image" on the famous Iwo Jima photograph, a review of a book of 19th-century photographs of the dead and dying, and a historical exploration of the relationship of Daniel Webster and a portrait painter named Sarah Goodridge. *More Matter* concludes with about 100 pages on "Personal Matters"; leading off is a Borgesian teaser entitled "Updike and I" that will doubtless become an anthology piece, and further in lies Henry Bech's hilarious account of interviewing Updike. As he grows ever more eminent, the author of *Self-Consciousness* takes increasing delight in satirizing himself.

John Updike's first serious ambitions were, it seems, directed toward the visual arts. What is sometimes a weakness in his fiction -- the obsessive, voyeuristic need to *see* -- is, when he turns to non-fiction, almost always a strength. Is this because he can then spare himself the effort of conjuring up his subject before his mind's eye and devote all of his discriminating intelligence to the task of understanding and seeing *into* the matter at hand? Updike believes that "devotion to reality's exact details . . . characterizes literary masters" (p. 697) -- a category in whose first rank Updike will, surely, long remain. If you love literature, you'll be grateful for *More Matter*.

Nowhere on the modern scene do we find a writer with an appettite as voracious as John Updike's. Thankfully, Updike has the skill and savvy to handle his way around just about any subject with artfulness and dignity, so that his appetite never seems to consume his talent. Only Updike would be able to put together a collection like this for the third time without having to let it flounder in sub-par material-- most writers wouldn't stand up through just one such collection. Each piece, with only the rarest of exceptions, finds its feet and leads the reader someplace interesting and substantial. Most of all, this collection shows that Updike is just plain good at the modern essay. He has such a nice, consistent balance of content and flair, that reading his pieces becomes enjoyable no matter what the subject interests of the reader may be. Reading his collections can be a sort of tour-de-force clinic in the art of the essay: this one is no exception. Read it as an exercise in appreciation for the master of modern literary form.

Usually I'd be happy to let Updike fend for himself, but the misguided comments below finally got my goat. His status as a first-rate critic--not to mention a first-rate novelist and essayist--is so glaringly apparent that I must take Mr. Finn's remarks as perverse contrarianism. And that goes double for his loopy defense of Tom Wolfe, whose amusing and observant novels can't hold a candle to the brilliance of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom series. Do you really believe that 100 years from now, old men will be uttering lines from "A Man in Full" on their deathbeds? What an absurdity!

I could plump just as vigorously for any of Updike's other collections of non-fiction ("Hugging The Shore" is my sentimental favorite, probably because it was my first) but since this, being the most recent, is the one I am likeliest to persuade you to buy, I'll say here that he seems to me virtually the ideal book reviewer: unfailingly interesting and articulate, fair minded, broad searching, neither too breezy nor long-winded.

The feud set off by his filing Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full" under Entertainment rather than Literature (not, to my mind, a seriously disputable judgement) is a very silly bit of sibling bickering, not even as compelling in its own tiny dimensions as the old hostilities between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. (Any geezers out there who remember the ink spilled over that one?) That it has taken away even a small bit of the attention that should have been paid to Updike's delightfully long-lived vitality in this field is a downright shame.

No matter where you open this one up, there's something interesting to read about, described in beautiful prose. The range and variety of topics and styles of essay are astounding.

As varied as HUGGING THE SHORE, but far more eloquent and intorspective. His remarks on Welty are the best I've ever read and he is not afraid to be honest about literure's flavor of the month: Tom Wolfe. (Agree with him or not, he presents a thought provoking argument and isn't that what an essay is for. His comments about Melville add to the previous work, but stand on their own. Updike is a stud!

As a long-time reader of Updike's essays, I was extremely disappointed with this new collection. Updike has always been judicious in his appraisals, but recently he has become picky and fault-finding, like a crotchety old man. It is as if he has narrowed his gaze, and will only praise works that fit a pre-conceived standard. But art is not like that - it will not be forced into a mold.

Updike's attack on Tom Wolfe's amazing "A Man in Full" illustrates this point quite well. Updike dismisses the man and his talent in a decidedly UNjudicious manner, in which assessment he is completely wrong. Tom Wolfe may not be to his taste, but Wolfe is clearly a major literary talent, possibly the finest journalist and novelist at work today, and to pretend otherwise is just plain silly. Updike is so far from the mark, and his criticisms of Wolfe are so extreme, that one could almost conclude that he is jealous!

I miss the Updike of "Hugging the Shore" - I could always learn something from him, not only about the work under consideration but also about how to approach a work of art. It seems that Updike has set aside his own criteria and indulged in some ill-advised potshots. I hope that he will return to these criteria soon - they have served him well during his career.

The amazing intelligence, industry, skill, art, of Updike are at work in this fifth collection of essays. There are according to one count one- hundred and ninety- one separate items and they touch upon a vast variety of literary and cultural matters. Some readers are angry at Updike for taking apart Tom Wolfe in one piece, and other readers are angry at still other readers for not appreciating Updike's genius enough. I admire Updike and his work a great deal. I wonder how he does it all. But my problem is that in reading him my mind tends to lose itself in the long sentences. I enjoy it when I am reading it but I do not remember it very well.
This is probably my problem and not Updike's. He certainly has in the reading a tremendous amount of interesting things to say about a tremendous amount of different things.

One learns here that Helen Keller was not a spontaneous writer and that the author, John Updike, felt as a younger person that it was almost unethical for Sinclair Lewis to mock the pretensions of the middle class. Updike is indefatigable and inclusive in his enthusiastic embrace of arts and letters. Kierkegaard's method is dictated by his volatile temperament it is reported. Melville had a great-hearted truthfulness. For a novelist, it is asserted, the halls of memory and imagination are adjacent spaces. Updike holds that Edith Wharton was a writer of empathy. He regrets that the Library of America produced such a skimpy selection of Sinclair Lewis's works.

Wallace Stevens is of particular interest to Updike because he came from Reading, PA. He finds that the journals of Edmund Wilson are not quite literature but delightful anyhow. He believes that Wilson's energetic entries stimulate our appetite for literature. Happiness is a recurrent theme in Nabakov.
Updike notes that the way of doing business, a comparative rarity in literature, is covered in GAIN by Richard Powers. Tom Wolfe is accused by John Updike of serving up preening expert architectural details in A MAN IN FULL. Alice Munro's stories are compared to those of Tolstoy and Chekhov. The metier of Marguerite Youcenar was aloofness. She used dignified diction. Frank Kermode believed that as a Manxman he was excluded from the life and the language of the English. Martin Amis's NIGHT TRAIN resembles the American tough guy school of crime fiction.

John Cheever cloaked family facts in the mythifying Wapshot chronicles. Theodore Dreiser was so dependent on other people for editorial services that his last two novels could be described as collaborations. Arguably Dreiser never recovered from the suppression of SISTER CARRIE by his own publisher. F. Scott Fitzgerald's life has become more celebrated than his fiction. Raymond Chandler felt tht Scott Fitzgerald just missed being a great writer. It is the wise suggestion of Updike that Fitzgerald, like Wordsworth, experienced in youth something transcendent. Biographies are called great scholastic mounds. Some of the more interesting essays involve one of two subjects--art and the NEW YORKER magazine.

everything john updike writes is written beautifully, and nearly everything he writes is worth reading, if for no other reason than making the acquaintance of a beautiful prose style. and his opinions are always lucid and engaging. and then there's that 19th century tone of the missionary/anthropologist equipped with an array of pens and pencils and sketching pads, traveling everywhere for his book reviews, abroad and home.

opening this huge collection, a vast portion from the pages of the new yorker magazine, is the first essay, freedom and equality: two american bluebirds. here one begins to get the feeling that for updike the question of race on these shores is unavoidable.

In this essay, and essays on lincoln, melville, and a review of tom wolfe's a man in full, and, catching me off guard, an essay on mickey mouse, updike includes african-americans in the national fabric, and generously mentions, in passing, african-american authors--some of them, toni morrison, rita dove, amiri baraka and frank yerby while, questionably, choosing not to review any novels by african-american authors.

updike is most interesting describing his first love, cartoons, as apprentice and as journeyman, and his adulation for the greats of the genre. his essay, cartoon magic, reads like cellini describing sculptural casting.

his satires are the weakest writing in the collection, for which updike himself might offer reason from his review of a biography of dawn powell, describing satire as 'taking on a dated, somewhat petty air'.

there's plenty good reading between the covers of more matter, some information to be found about favorite authors, and quite a few writers i have not yet read worth searching.