Results tagged “johnupdike”

John Updike has died of lung cancer. He was 76. He was just in town in mid-November for a talk at Seattle Arts & Lectures that we attended and wrote about. It was our first and last time seeing him in person. We feel very lucky to have had that chance, now, and so we repeat what we said then: "He mentioned that the name Updike is what happens when the Dutch name 'Op de Dijk' hits American shores. Maybe that’ll be our updated image of this writer who has never lost his boyish enthusiasm for fiction’s impossible task. There he is, in front of his earthworks, holding back the sea—though the sea of course will inevitably win."

Author John Updike was at Seattle Arts & Lectures this week. The upcoming SAL appearance of Annie Leibovitz (November 19) is sold out. Michael Pollan (January 12) is almost sold out.

JOHN FUCKING UPDIKE: His gallivanting rabbits may have lost a step, Updike reports: "When, against my better judgment, I glance back at my prose from 20 or 30 years ago, the quality I admire and fear to have lost is its carefree bounce, its snap, its exuberant air of slight excess." But as a critic he's an admirably close, inquisitive reader, and of course he's still John fucking Updike to all of us, so having him in town is a delight. In theory he'll be talking to the Seattle Arts & Lectures audience about small towns and the middle class.

All music all the time wears us out, so we decided to hopscotch around Bumbershoot this year and take advantage of the talks, arts performances, and art exhibits.

Do you like book readings but wish they were louder and perhaps featured more music, alcohol, and cigarette smoke? Well, tonight The Stranger and Chop Suey will make your dreams come true, as they host what has to be the best (and free-est) author reading/dance party ever, with Jonathan Safran Foer reading from his new novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Like his previous book, Everything is Illuminated, the story is told from the viewpoint of a remarkably precocious young man. This time it's nine-year-old Oskar Schell, a renaissance boy dealing with his father's death in the 9/11 attacks. The book is a heartfelt, inventive, empathetic, literally colorful, and funny piece of work, which has been fairly well received, even by that curmudgeon John Updike.