While reading this fun article by Jill Lepore on New Yorker writers and editors, I came across this jarring note:
Updike later wrote to Angell with his own worries about being put out to pasture, citing the sorry rejections sent to Nash: “One of the less happy tasks of an editor must be holding the hand of a coddled old contributor as he loses his fast ball, curve, and sinker.”
Updike never saw that pasture. “I wanted to get this down to you before anything more befuddling befell me,” he wrote to Finder from his sickbed, sending in what would be his last piece. “They must begin, surely, with chemo soon.” He died the next month. He never lost so much as his fastball.
What’s up with that? Of course Updike lost “his fastball,” and there’s nothing wrong with that. We had a post on the topic the other day, even mentioning Updike. He wrote some brilliant early novels; his later novels were not so good. His later stories were good but they didn’t have the same intensity–in fastball terms, “velocity”–as his classic early work. That’s fine; it’s to be expected. He was still a solid writer of short fiction and nonfiction until the end, but no one could with a straight face say he was still throwing heaters.
My take on this is that Lepore was using letter-of-recommendation-speak. She writes for the New Yorker, she has warm feelings about the institution, Updike is a New Yorker hero, so she turns on the hero worship. There are worse things than to shower extravagant praise on a dead man, and if the New Yorker’s editors were ok with that sentence in Lepore’s article, who am I to say otherwise? It just rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve been bothered for awhile by the scientist-as-hero paradigm, that I’m attuned to exaggeration in hero worship in other settings as well.
Whether or not “Updike lost “his fastball,” I seem to have lost one of my most precious attributes:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2025/07/08/tsa-shoe-remove-airport-security/84508322007/#:~:text=Passengers%20are%20no%20longer%20required%20to%20remove%20their,in%202006%20following%20a%202001%20shoe%20bomb%20attempt.
“Passengers are no longer required to remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the immediate policy change on Tuesday.
The shoe removal policy was implemented in 2006 following a 2001 shoe bomb attempt.”
Previous policy had it that those over 75 could keep their shoes on; so from 2006 onward, I proudly stepped forward to claim my benefit. Now, albeit still completely shod, I am being passed by others with better footwear.
Now everyone gets the same shod-dy treatment as you.
In honor of the creator of this blog who is now footloose in France, there is always “sabotage.”
Sabotage (pronounce “saboru” (the “ru” at the end makes it a proper Japanese verb)) in Japanese means to cut class. I never did figure out why.
If the creator of this blog sabaticalled in Tokyo and taught a class, I’d not sabotage it.
And you may be wrong about Updike losing his fastball.
Anon:
All takes are possible, but I find it difficult to put one of Updike’s later stories–let alone his later novels–next to his earlier work and not say that he lost something. This is fine–it happens!
If Lepore wanted to make a considered argument that Updike’s later fiction had the power of his early stuff, I’d listen. But my guess is that she wasn’t really planning to make such an argument–I think she was just using letter-of-recommendation speak without reflecting on it. Just an oversight. I’m a big fan of Lepore, and it’s interesting to see the places where even a very careful writer can slip up.
I feel compelled to write that I could not finish Rabbit is Rich after tearing through the first two books.
Peak Updike for me was “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” published in 1960. I have never been a fan of his books Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe in ‘The Sportswriter’ is far superior to Rabbit Angstrom. Even average Joyce Carol Oates books beat Updike. The New Yorker probably thought Updike to be the successor to John Cheever; it didn’t happen.