Posted by David Post: John Updike, R.I.P. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_01_25-2009_01_31.shtml#1233154986
I don't have much to add to the many Updike obituaries out there, except to say that I'm sorry to see him pass. I was never a enormous Updike fan, personally -- but his prose could achieve incandescence at times, and there can never be too many people about whom that can be said. To my eye, his greatest works are ones that hardly anyone mentions -- "The Coup," a truly hilarious and outrageous look at Africa through an American's eyes and American through an African's, and his true masterpiece, "In the Beauty of the Lilies," a sprawling family saga that brings the turn of the century (19th to 20th) to life in a way that no other book I've ever read has done. He was a true "man of letters," in the best old-fashioned sense of the term -- reviewer, essayist, letter-writer, poet, novelist, etc. A real writer's writer, and, as someone who likes to think of himself as a writer, I give him a last salute. _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
