cosmopolis

DFW and Updike

The Web is afire with tributes to Wallace; several hark back to the blogger's encounter with the novelist at a reading and how he or she was like a lover spurned because of something Wallace said or didn't say, did or didn't do. He inspired, and dreaded, that sort of reaction. Many emphasize he was their favorite living writer, quickly followed by, "and I'm sure that's true of so many others."

But there is one person, I think, yet to be heard from: John Updike, whose sci-fi novel Toward the End of Time and career in general was taken down many pegs by Wallace in 1998 in a piece that used the deadliest tone: disappointed admiration. (Plus occasional savagery. The line I remembered for a decade, "Has the son of a bitch ever had one unpublished thought?" is, to be fair, quoted from an anonymous friend of Wallace's. Not that he disputes the point.)

Anyway, no one would have thought Updike would outlive Wallace, but he's still here, publishing a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, which was a much much better book than Toward the End of Time although the same will not be said of this new volume, The Widows of Eastwick. In it, Updike makes his now-familiar complaint:

 "... print doesn't mean to people what it used to, it may be. A considerable number get what news they need off the internet. They don't need much. Sports, celebrities. For self-advertisement there's all this blogging. It's amazing to me that anyone has time to read such crap, but I guess they do."

That'll make him the toast of the blogosphere!

Curiously, Wallace was also a happy luddite: he had very mixed feelings toward TV, and only looked at his email once a week. Go beyond the pop culture affect and he was nearly as retro as Updike. This adds yet another bitter note to his suicide; for all his criticism of what he called the GMN, for Great Male Narcissists (Roth, Mailer, Updike), he, their heir, paid much more attention than the other writers of his generation did.

"What exactly was the whole big Roth hysteria?" he wrote me once. "I'm way behind on my Roth, admittedly. I still reread Portnoy's Complaint, but I flagged in the middle of one of the Zuckerman books and now am like 8 novels behind. The same thing happens to me with Mailer."

Can we get a graduate student to work on Humor in Portnoy and Infinite Jest? Thanks.

Meta-Love fetches $$$

At age 64, John Fowles fell in love with a 21-year-old Cambridge graduate named Elena. Depressed, impotent, ill, he told Elena she saved his life, and she probably did. His letters and notes to her went up for auction at Sotheby's, which described them as:

"33 autograph cards, or series of two or more cards on particular dates, including some autograph notes on slips of paper, and c.92 typed letters and cards, usually initialled "J", some partly autograph or with autograph corrections, one letter enclosing a five-page photocopy of printed "Diagnostic Criteria for the Major Mood Disorders"; together with eight letters addressed to Elena's parents, Jack and Olive; twenty-three pages of journal entries by Fowles in typescript with autograph corrections, partly photocopied, sent by him to Elena; several typed poems by him with autograph corrections; a photocopy of another one; and a typescriot of "A Dialogue to be performed on a tightrope", c.240 pages in all, various sizes, chiefly 30 September 1990 to 25 February 1992 (where dated), a few in 1997-1998"

Fowles was, as he well knew, as passionate and eloquent and foolish as any 17-year-old: "Lyme without you is so stale, so empty, you can't imagine ....I get desperately bored with my own company... This leads to frequent philosophical musings on the intensity of his feelings for her. As well as on the nature of love and of beauty...I'm not just in love with you, I'm in meta-love....I live in and by you..." etc.

Estimated to go for between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds, the material went anonymously at the bottom of that range: 25,000, including buyer's premium.

Thomas M. Disch, RIP

  On March 26, 1995, I published the following in The Washington Post under the title, "The Writer: A Happy Guy":

IN 1968, A promising young science fiction writer named Thomas M. Disch wrote an autobiographical story called "The Masters of the Milford Altarpiece." Noted at the time for its in-group references to other SF writers, it's still a fine sketch of the passions that animate a writer's life.

Jealousy, for one. The narrator, Tom, is at a writing conference with his good friend, Jim, who is all of 23. "For his age he is fantastically successful," reports Tom. "I envy his success, though it isn't a personal thing -- I can envy almost anyone's. I need constant reassurance. I crave your admiration."

At the end of the story, a couple of decades has passed. Jim comes to visit. The years have been kind to him, Tom notes. "Your books have enjoyed both popular and critical success . . . The youth of the nation acclaim you and have no other wish than to pattern their lives on yours."

"And you, Tom?" Jim asks.

"I've been happy too in my own small way," Tom says. "Perhaps life did not bring altogether everything that I once expected, but it has given me . . . your friendship."

As fiction, this is pretty funny, but as prophecy it was lousy. Jim -- presumably modeled on James Sallis -- was inactive as a writer for many, many years before recently resurfacing with a mystery series. Tom, meanwhile, went on to become one of the most acclaimed SF writers -- three of his novels are included in David Pringle's respected survey, Science Fiction: The Hundred Best Novels -- and in recent years a writer celebrated for his range.

This, of course, is a problem. What readers want is more of the same, and many are the writers who have become millionaires by hewing to this formula. Doing many things, even if you do them well, produces a blur in the reader's mind.

"No defined readership has taken me to its bosom," Disch admits. "A lot of individual critics have, but it's never coalesced into an image. I can't complain -- images are marketable, but the degree I've eluded one is a strength. I've got too many moves to easily classify what I do and who I am."

Take a look at the "also by" page on his new novel, The Priest: A Gothic Romance -- a timely tale about an unrepentant pedophile priest who is being blackmailed and, even worse, having nightmares about a past life. Eleven novels are listed, ranging from the nuclear anxiety fantasy Echo Round His Bones to Clara Reeve, a Victorian pastiche. There are also seven books of poetry, five short story collections, three children's books, four libretti and plays and even a work of interactive software. A volume of Disch's criticism will appear later this year; he was down here to cover the NEA hearings for Harper's. Only John Updike could claim to be as well-rounded.

But the most astonishing thing about the 55-year-old Disch, something virtually no other American writer has ever admitted to me, is this: He's happy.

He appears surprised this is surprising. "If someone's earning enough money, and they're busy with their work, and they have enough work to do, and have good energy, usually they're not going to be too upset at not being famous."

Maybe, but one of the reasons writers are never happy is they, like most of the rest of the nation, feel that no matter how much money they have, it isn't enough.

"One of the advantages gay writers have is they don't have kids," Disch points out. "If you give hostages to fortune, you damn well better arrange your life so you can bring them up properly. And that means sacrificing a freelance career."

He adds that writers who are parents too often let their children know that they sacrificed their muse to provide for the child's well-being, which naturally complicates the relationship, often tragically. "I know very few writers who are good parents."

Another reason for Disch's contentment is his work as a critic: "I can say what I think all the time. It's a wonderful restorative to calm the spirit."

Still, many critics are cranky souls. Disch's professed happiness probably has more to do with his innate enthusiasm. "You have to be passionately devoted to the ripest fruits of civilization. It's for you to respond to them, not them to you."

Etc. 

Tom Disch killed himself Friday, a victim of bad health and massive unhappiness. His self-destruction is so recent his Wikipedia page says he is still alive.