John Updike, RIP

John Updike, my favorite novelist, left us this week. I've said something in earlier entries here about the reasons for my admiration. Here's an example: on his novel Seek My Face.

For a man so wonderfully prolific, it is astonishingly difficult to find a sloppy sentence from any keyboard of his.

In TOWARD THE END OF TIME, he writes a sentence that plays with the "first robin of spring" cliche in a manner I find ... well ... intrepid.

"Yesterday," he writes, in the voice of his protagonist, "I spotted my first robin, strutting along the driveway's gravel shoulder in his familiar dusky uniform, gawkily startled into flight by my approach: a stuffy bird, faintly pompous in its portly movements, spoiled by too many songs and poems unaccountably devoted to him."

Now THERE's a man with a way with a cliche! At first you think, "oooh no, first robin of spring! This is going to be like one of those posed pictures of some grinning tourist pretending to hold up the leaning tower of Pisa."

But he is soon taking the picture from an unexpected angle. The robin is in a very particular place, the driveway's gravel shoulder. This isn't nature description, it is a sample of one of the pieces of natue that make it into the regulated spaces of suburbia. Nothing about the "redness" (which never seemed to me properly red) of the robin's breast. Rather, we're reminded of the duskiness of the overall uniform, the creature's propensity for startled gawkiness, etc.

Then we're given some gently unstressed alliteration with the letter "p": "pompous ... portly ... spoiled ... poems" on the way of a shocking bit of anthropomorphism.

Of course we don't believe that the robin is aware of his fame in the cliched songs and poems, but we see the free associations going on in the head of the protagonist to that effect, and to some extent we are drawn to share in them.

Cheers, then, to Updike. I'll miss him.

Resolutions, old and new

It's time to come to terms with my resolutions for 2008, and how I did or didn't do. Then to launch the new ones.

Last year at this time I wrote as follows:

1. Set my feet down in some far Eastern city at some point this year
2. Learn some Cantonese and/or Mandarin
3. Weigh no more than 180 at some point this year
4. Forget about agents, pitch my novel outline directly to book editors
5. The Met. In a Tux.

I can credit myself with success on points 1 and 5 on that list.

As to (2), I bought Cantonese-language tapes and listened to them prior to my travels. But the only but that has stuck in my mind is the word for "thank you," which I used liberally in Hong Kong. But I don't thing "dah-jay" (a more-or-less phonetic rendition of that word) by itself warrants a claim of success for (2)! I'm going to make it a carry-over.

Numbers (3) and (4) are even more abject failures. Further, I went backwards this year in one crucial respect. I've lost the habit of taking daily morning walks. I want to reacquire that one.

Also, I should mention here that I lost my prescriptionglasses well traveling in mid-December. I've been using drugstore glasses since. I've got to re-acquire new proper eyeglasses and resolve to get through a year without losing them.

The new list of resolutions is as follows:

1. Resume my morning walk.
2. Be more frugal in general, this year. Pay down debts.
3. More specifically, don't leave the US this year (travelling is my most expensive indulgence).
4. Forget about the novel. Focus on production/sale of a non-fiction work on the criminal prosecution of insider trading.
5. Learn some Cantonese.
6. Don't lose glasses.

A lunch, and Anne Hutchinson

A friend and I had lunch this Friday with an author's group in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

Why? Well ... as I mentioned in this August entry I have a way-too-unwieldy manuscript sitting around that is meant to be a novel. In recent weeks I've formulated a plan to get the ms into publishable shape, by trimming and re-writing it in the YA model.

The lunch meeting's authors involved those with YA experience and success, and I was happy to hear from them. I've since ordered three of their books.

One of the authors there was Jeannine Atkins, the author of Anne Hutchinson's Way.

I'm especially curious to see how that one is written. It involves I have to expect not just the conveyance of events, an adventuresome narrative, but the conveyance of the ideas. What the events were all about to the participants.

Anne Hutchinson was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her antinomian theological opinions.

Booklist says, "Atkins is able to take the issue of religious freedom and make it personal ... this offers something solid for children, especially those studying early American history."

Janus

Here we are again, and here are the two faces of Janus. It's time to come to terms with my resolutions for 2007, and how I did or didn't do. Then to launch the new ones.

Last year at this time I wrote as follows:

"1. Breakthrough at work (I'll leave the nature of it indefinite here -- but I'll know it if it happens)

"2. Weigh no more than 185 at some point this year

"3. Contact agents/editors who might be interested in my novel on antebellum US. Begin work on revisions.

"4. Be in Dublin for Bloom's Day

"5. Follow-up on Reason publication, place something else there."

I can credit myself with success on points 2 and 4 on that list.

I accomplished 2 in early November, and again in mid-December. I'll make a related resolution, going a bit further, for this year.

As to 3, I did contact some agents, but those who replied said they couldn't help me with the kind of book I'm trying to sell. And I did no work on revision at all. Black ball for me.

I was in Dublin, though, for Bloomsday 2007 and aye, a fun time I was havin'. There was no Bloomsday tour such as I had envisaged. There were various events that day centered on the James Joyce Centre, and I attended the breakfast. The novel has two breakfast scenes -- one at the castle and one at the Bloom household -- ingrediants from both were included. I also saw a play with a Joycean theme that evening, Himself and Joyce, and generally explored the city for myself the rest of my stay.

No follow-through on the Reason publication. Nor can I claim the kind of dramatic "breakthrough" I had in mind for my resolution 1 of last year, although my worklife has been satisfying in general this year. I feel that when a breakthrough comes, it will involve the rise of the far east within global finance and my ability to contribute to coverage of that trend.

So ... where is the new list of resolutions? Here:
2008

1. Set my feet down in some far Eastern city at some point this year
2. Learn some Cantonese and/or Mandarin
3. Weigh no more than 180 at some point this year
4. Forget about agents, pitch my novel outline directly to book editors
5. The Met. In a Tux.

As the vernal equinox nears ....

Back in January, on my "other" blog, the one I'm now abandoning, I listed my resolutions for this year.

As part of my move, I'd like to list them here. Drum roll please.

1. Breakthrough at work (I'll leave the nature of it indefinite here -- but I'll know it if it happens)
2. Weigh no more than 185 at some point this year
3. Contact agents/editors who might be interested in my novel on antebellum US. Begin work on revisions.
4. Be in Dublin for Bloom's Day
5. Follow-up on Reason publication, place something else there.

I've made some of the necessary preparations for (4), and I've heard good things that may indicate I'll keep (1) on schedule. The other three remain, for now, in the realm of projects.

I have plenty of excuses, as I always do. Because I've picked up the intensity of my focus on my work, in hopes of helping with (1), the cause of (3) has rather suffered. Also, it has been too cold of late to do as much outdoors walking as I'd like, a fact that has limited my progress toward (2).

We can consider this posting to be my self-flagellation, though, and now I'll get on with the business of keeping the lot of them.