When I got up this morning, I thought that I would write about Mozart and my love for his music. Appropriate because today is Mozart's birthday. I have recently been quite enamored with the genius of his music, lately becoming quite preoccupied with Mozart's piano sonatas(my late Uncle Charlie's favorite). One of my uncle's favorite books was "In the Beauty of the Lillies," a novel by John Updike which describes a pastor's severe crisis with faith. This afternoon I learned that Updike(my favorite author) died at the age of 76 of lung cancer. His writing was meticulous and marvelously descriptive. I found some very interesting interviews on Youtube. Here is John with Charlie Rose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRjgnGVJBg&NR=1
Here is an interview with the Boston Globe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlD6DmWBU4o
Here is perhaps his last TV interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZexDdfd-lg
Jay Parini of The Guardian wrote this great piece about Updike today:
knew John Updike a little. When I was in high school, I sent him a letter asking about some aspect of his novel The Poorhouse Fair (1959), which I adored. He replied generously, with care and kindness. We corresponded occasionally, and met once for lunch in Boston. I saw him now and then at various literary occasions. He was a shy, slightly awkward, gentlemanly person, with a courtly and self-effacing manner that seemed out of place in the noisy and boisterous world around him.
He was also, of course, one of the luminous figures – with Bellow, Mailer, Vonnegut, Sontag, Snodgrass - of his literary generation. I have in my study a dog-eared row of Updike's novels, story collections, poetry volumes, and fat compilations of essays that stretches the width of the room. Year after year, from the delicate early stories and novels of life in small town Pennsylvania, through his countless adventures in other fictive arenas, Updike never ceased to produce books that found a wide readership and critical acclaim - although many shrewd critics, such as James Wood, offered cogent dissenting voices.
For my money, the best Updike lies in the early work that he set in Pennsylvania. I grew up nearby, in a small town, and 'identified' - as they say in high school classes - with his heroes. Nobody caught the special smell and taste of the air in that part of Pennsylvania, its quality of light, the appeal of its surrounding woods and undulant farmlands, as well as Updike did. Pigeon Feathers (1962) is perhaps still his best volume of stories in this regard. The Centaur (1963), too, is unforgettable as a portrait of high school life in the 1950s. Updike's father was a high school teacher, and he knew that world as well as anyone - from the inside out. The ennui and frustration of living in rural Pennsylvania suffuse Rabbit, Run (1960) and the remaining three Rabbit novels. The four of them, taken together, form a vivid tapestry of life of a certain kind, a certain era.
Updike hit the bestseller lists with Couples (1968), which caught the sexual amorality of the 1960s in wealthy suburbia with an almost visionary energy of perception. I reread this novel many times, marvelling at how the author lovingly evoked the surface details of life, and how he slowly but surly creative narrative momentum.
Narrative momentum was often a problem in his novels. I had trouble finishing them, especially toward the end. I wouldn't happily reread A Month of Sundays (1975) or Memories of the Ford Administration (1992); nor have I any urge to revisit S. (1988) or Brazil (1994).The last few novels did not tempt in the slightest, although I dutifully paid for and began each of them.
But Updike could be a fine critic, too. One always looked forward to his reviews in the New Yorker, as well as his essays on art in the New York Review of Books. I recall with genuine relish his early essays on Karl Barth, Borges, Nabokov, and others. And yet I doubt I shall revisit most of his criticism. (Great critics, I suspect, are rarer than great novelists or great poets.)
What I prized most about Updike, though, was his marvellous ear for a sentence. In the stories especially, he caught the shimmer of light on the grass, for example, with uncanny skill. He could describe a twitching face, a wrinkled elderly hand, a fond gesture of affection, with shocking ease. I doubt I shall ever forget the painful stories about a family coming apart in Problems (1979); 'Separating' is one story I've read again and again through the years, with increasing admiration.
My guess is that he will long be remembered as a master of the short story, the American equivalent of Maupassant. He will also be considered as a faithful reporter of his era, one of those writers who live fixedly in their own time, paying a kind of rueful but affectionate attention to its idiosyncrasies, its foibles, and its passing glories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRjgnGVJBg&NR=1
Here is an interview with the Boston Globe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlD6DmWBU4o
Here is perhaps his last TV interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZexDdfd-lg
Jay Parini of The Guardian wrote this great piece about Updike today:
knew John Updike a little. When I was in high school, I sent him a letter asking about some aspect of his novel The Poorhouse Fair (1959), which I adored. He replied generously, with care and kindness. We corresponded occasionally, and met once for lunch in Boston. I saw him now and then at various literary occasions. He was a shy, slightly awkward, gentlemanly person, with a courtly and self-effacing manner that seemed out of place in the noisy and boisterous world around him.
He was also, of course, one of the luminous figures – with Bellow, Mailer, Vonnegut, Sontag, Snodgrass - of his literary generation. I have in my study a dog-eared row of Updike's novels, story collections, poetry volumes, and fat compilations of essays that stretches the width of the room. Year after year, from the delicate early stories and novels of life in small town Pennsylvania, through his countless adventures in other fictive arenas, Updike never ceased to produce books that found a wide readership and critical acclaim - although many shrewd critics, such as James Wood, offered cogent dissenting voices.
For my money, the best Updike lies in the early work that he set in Pennsylvania. I grew up nearby, in a small town, and 'identified' - as they say in high school classes - with his heroes. Nobody caught the special smell and taste of the air in that part of Pennsylvania, its quality of light, the appeal of its surrounding woods and undulant farmlands, as well as Updike did. Pigeon Feathers (1962) is perhaps still his best volume of stories in this regard. The Centaur (1963), too, is unforgettable as a portrait of high school life in the 1950s. Updike's father was a high school teacher, and he knew that world as well as anyone - from the inside out. The ennui and frustration of living in rural Pennsylvania suffuse Rabbit, Run (1960) and the remaining three Rabbit novels. The four of them, taken together, form a vivid tapestry of life of a certain kind, a certain era.
Updike hit the bestseller lists with Couples (1968), which caught the sexual amorality of the 1960s in wealthy suburbia with an almost visionary energy of perception. I reread this novel many times, marvelling at how the author lovingly evoked the surface details of life, and how he slowly but surly creative narrative momentum.
Narrative momentum was often a problem in his novels. I had trouble finishing them, especially toward the end. I wouldn't happily reread A Month of Sundays (1975) or Memories of the Ford Administration (1992); nor have I any urge to revisit S. (1988) or Brazil (1994).The last few novels did not tempt in the slightest, although I dutifully paid for and began each of them.
But Updike could be a fine critic, too. One always looked forward to his reviews in the New Yorker, as well as his essays on art in the New York Review of Books. I recall with genuine relish his early essays on Karl Barth, Borges, Nabokov, and others. And yet I doubt I shall revisit most of his criticism. (Great critics, I suspect, are rarer than great novelists or great poets.)
What I prized most about Updike, though, was his marvellous ear for a sentence. In the stories especially, he caught the shimmer of light on the grass, for example, with uncanny skill. He could describe a twitching face, a wrinkled elderly hand, a fond gesture of affection, with shocking ease. I doubt I shall ever forget the painful stories about a family coming apart in Problems (1979); 'Separating' is one story I've read again and again through the years, with increasing admiration.
My guess is that he will long be remembered as a master of the short story, the American equivalent of Maupassant. He will also be considered as a faithful reporter of his era, one of those writers who live fixedly in their own time, paying a kind of rueful but affectionate attention to its idiosyncrasies, its foibles, and its passing glories.
John, your gentile and perceptive spirit will be missed. Your literary brilliance will live on forever!
Back to Mozart, Garrison Keillor shared an interesting Writers Almanac segment today about Wolfgang Mozart, who died a pauper and was buried in a mass grave.
It's the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born in 1756 in Salzburg, which is now in Austria.
Mozart's father, Leopold, was one of Europe's leading music educators, and he took Mozart and his sister on tours throughout Europe. Young Mozart began composing original work at age five. During a trip to Italy, Mozart amazed his hosts when he listened only once to the performance of a Gregorio Allegri composition and then wrote it out from memory.
Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, and in 1782 he married Constanze Weber. The couple had six children, but only two of them survived into adulthood. Mozart continued to compose music, and he wrote his famous opera The Marriage of Figaro (1786).
No one knows for sure why Mozart died at age 35. Many people speculate that he died of mercury poisoning while being treated for syphilis. Others think he died from eating badly cooked pork. Some insist that Mozart was murdered by his rival, Antonio Salieri. Mozart was buried in a mass grave because the country was battling an outbreak of bubonic plague, not because his family could not afford a proper burial.
Mozart said, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep — it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them."
That last quote is marvelous. Here is to great minds :)
p.s. The great writer Kurt Vonnegut was slammed by Fox's James Rosen in his obituary. I wonder how the mainstream will paint Updike? Interesting.
Is this fair and balanced??
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