Today some impressions from 80 pages worth of Updike’s reviews of several published collections of the letters of various 19-20th century writers. Interesting to contrast to some of my “correspondences” from today-emails sent at work, prose posts in various software we use, teasing texts to friends.
An email to my dad far and away most resembles a “letter”:
Not much character so I added footnotes.
Are you feeling better? I don’t think I realized how bad you were doing. Don’t get me wrong – you sounded pretty bad[1]. Maybe thinking about it as a “cold” downplayed it. Mommy said you considered going to the hospital [2].
I hope you’re feeling better.
[1] Refers to how he sounded when I was home visiting last weekend. I drove into town Saturday morning. He made all sorts of sounds you associate with a cold, in volume. Soreness in the back – or rather, he clarified, his glutes, any time he rose from a sitting position. We got lunch, went to see a move (The Witch [a]), ordered in dinner. The next day we met my uncle and his son, my cousin, for brunch. Then back North. Just a quick visit.
[a] Since childhood my father and I have watched horror movies together. We used to rent a few every weekend. We watched them on Sunday mornings. The rationale was if we watch in the morning, even time would pass before bedtime wouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep. 20-some years later and we’re still at it.
[2] This is in the days that followed my visit. The subject came up on a phone call with my mother. She asked whether dad and I had talked about a trip I’m planning. I told her no and confided that I had an impression he wasn’t very interested. Characteristically, she pounced at the opportunity to lord some information she knew (and I didn’t) over me and convey something like “Well I can assure you – ASSURE YOU – you’re wrong. You have no idea – your father put on an Oscar worthy performance while you were in town. He almost went to the hospital!” Etc.
The email is not so revealing-but the footnotes! I had to stop. I fear if I drift into personal narrative I will never stop; I will infinitely recurse into a version, of a version, of myself that feels, or at some time felt, like I feel, like I felt, like I feel…
Snap out it.
Back to the intended subject – My impression of Updike’s impressions of collections of several prolific 19-20th century writers’ letters.
The letters of Gustave Flaubert (of Madame Bovary fame) letters are, apparently, flawless. Unbelievably so. Even the “vulgar” ones (Updike’s word) directed to his mistresses (and misters). It is as if he intended his letters to be published. Could the man, naturally, have been so composed? Or, as a writer, was he sure to compose his letters as thoughtfully as his formal written works?
Next, James Joyce.
From Updike’s passage on Joyce, I imagine Joyce as a “blue collar” author. His letters do strike me as “literary,” but not self-consciously so. In contrast to Flaubert’s bloviating letters, the subject of Joyce’s letters (as conveyed by Updike) are more very utilitarian (e.g. trying to advance his work). Here’s one passage which captures both of those sentiments, wherein Joyce pins the poor reception of Finnegan’s Wake on the…
“personal rancours of disappointed artists who have wasted their talents or perhaps even their genius while I with poorer gifts and a dreadful lot of physical and mental hardship have or seem to have done something.”
Something of a validation-seeking “#humblebrag,” yet I admire the “blue collar” sentiment that he is not some brilliant writer; rather, somehow-I’ll posit “by deliberate work”-seemed to have “done something”
I’m not familiar with Colette, but Updike fascinated me. She brought out his best.
From provincial maiden to Paris bohemian, from marriage to lesbianism and back again, from the demi-monde to the Academie Goncourt [1] – Colette managed these transformations without sacrificing to her natural elasticity a central firmness and clarity of vantage marvelous in man or woman.
[1] Distinguished literary society.
And yet, despite the feminist qualification (her “central firmness and clarity of vantage marvelous in man or woman”) his prose constantly reflects his preoccupation with her femininity.
We are so secure in the lap of her velvety and resilient natural paradise that, knowing nothing very bad can happen, we sometimes doze. When her fiction drifts into essay, as in Break of Day, a kind of grand complacency throws a shadow of the orotund – a tone almost priestly, as of a maternal Chateaubriand [1].
[1] François-René de Chateaubriand, considered to be a founder of Romanticism in French literature (although a quick google may give you the impression it’s a preparation of steak).
Next, Hemingway. What a character. His correspondence seems far less composed (that is to say “deliberately arranged”) than the others. And perhaps the simple explanation is: it is (less composed)! He never intended, never desired, publication of such things. In his own word: “I figure to have all my papers and uncompleted [manuscripts] burned when I am buried. I don’t want that sort of shit to go on.”
Yet here, [Updike says,] just 20 year after the great man’s death, we have a towering excremental heap – nearly six hundred letters and over nine hundred pages published through the contrivance of Mary Hemingway, her attorney Alfred Rice, Charles Scribner, Jr., and Carlos Baker. By one of those disservices of which only reverence is capable, the letters are all reproduced uncut …
(My emphasis in bold-just calling attention to an excellent sentence.)
Of Hemingway’s letters, Updike said:
Words for Hemingway were elemental and chaste, spurning any secondary life of wordplay. In the over four hundred thousand words of these letters, there is rarely a simile[.]
So rarely, Updike says, one extended metaphor (written after his ex-wife’s sudden death) seems so unlike his writing it comes with a “grotesque effect”:
The wave of remembering has finally risen so that it has broken over the jetty that I built to protect the open roadstead of my heart and I have the full sorrow of Pauline’s death with all the harbour scum of what caused it.
A final impression of Hemingway conveyed by Updike is his violence (Updike describes him as “murderous” at some point). Perhaps the not little-known fact that Hemingway brought about the end of his life by blasting himself in the head with a shotgun should have been a strong indicator; yet, I am surprised. Some excerpts include Hemingway’s description of murdering a German POW, boast of having 122 confirmed kills, and complaint “I haven’t killed a son of a bitch for over four years now!”
A final passage before I move on to the next author. (Updike’s words.) Remember, all of this Hemingway excitement in only 10 pages or so!
In January 1954, in Uganda, he and [his wife] were involved in two crashes of small planes on successive days, and while recuperating from his very serious injuries (concussion; ruptured liver, spleen, and kidney; a crushed vertebra; temporary loss of vision in the left eye and of hearing in the left ear; and paralysis of the sphincter), Hemingway insisted on helping put out a brushfire and fell into the flames, acquiring second- and third-degree burns.
Next, and more quickly, John O’Hara. I relate, in some ways, to O’Hara as portrayed by Updike. Maybe that is a consequence of current circumstances; maybe it will hold up.
One way which I do not relate to O’Hara via Updike’s portrayal is his almost humorous need to belong. “In his youth,” Updike says, “he made up clubs for himself an a few others to belong to; in his maturity, he kept trying to turn professional associations-with his editors, his critics, his Hollywood employers-into fraternities, and winding up with more feelings hurt.” Summing up, he continues, “He who leads with his puss gets slapped; shame and exclusion lurk at the edge of every O’Hara page. He was an overcompensatory joiner.” (Bold emphasis mine-I love it.)
Updike constructs his humorous depiction with excerpts from letters seeking endorsement for memberships in clubs such as the Philadelphia Racquet Club-or, boasting in one such letter “I now belong to The Century, The Leash, the Coffee House, he Nassau Club, the Quogue Field Club, the Shinnecock Yacht Club, the National Press Club and The Beach Club of Santa Monica, which makes me the William Rhineland Stewart of Pottsville, Pa.”
Updike’s portrayal is so funny to me I wonder whether he didn’t have too much fun with it-O’Hara strikes me a supporting character in an Updike story.
Last but not least-and here I admit I am a bit weary of writing on this topic and, as such, will be brief-E.B. White. Knowing him only as the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, I should not have been surprised at Updike’s portrayal of him as a warm, spirited man. Updike strings together a sequence of silly replies he wrote to a variety of characters, including a student who sought his help writing a term paper.
I’ll end this post with a powerful blurb from Updike, extracted from the Hemingway vignette:
Any lifetime’s worth of letters read straight through will trace a grim organic curve from obscure and hopeful youth through success of some sort (else why would we be reading the letters?) into decay, decline, disappointment, and death.
A common theme of Updike’s review of these collections is the constant financial struggle. Struggles generally. Struggles to win audiences, critics, familial struggles, personal/psychological struggles. My initial thought was banal-something like Hmm, wasn’t easy to be a writer back then. But how different could such struggles be for writers now? For anyone now, any avocation or occupation? Struggles are all of our common theme. That’s what we talk about.
That and the weather, and traffic, and the nonsense we watch on tv.