Words

The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me

said John Updike who died today. I came to Updike relatively late in my life when I picked up the first Rabbit book one summer and read it voraciously. And then each summer thereafter it became a sort of mini-tradition for me to read another. I felt like I was discovering him and it was such a relief at the time to read such stately prose. Fine, old-fashioned stuff that didn't mask the often vulgar material, just enhanced it.

I saw him last fall, here in Los Angeles, and marveled at his easy depiction of writing as industry. I had gone to hear him speak thinking that he'd be impossibly effete, New Englandy, haughty. And he wasn't. He was charming and witty and so, so literate. I wrote about it here.

I'm sad that John Updike died today and that his voice is gone.