Dead today and Ever More: John Updike, facepainter

John Updike is dead, an author fully realized, a conscious and attractive player in my idea of living literature. Unarguably so. On a more personal level, he took a paintbrush, dipped it into the white of America, and then tried to jump at my face with it, snarling. Actually, not snarling. With perfect psychotic, almost loving precision he approached me, a big man with a dripping paintbrush at his side, and he pinned me down and sat on my chest and, even as I was squeaking and struggling, he took out his gloriously wide wet paintbrush, the kind for walls, and began humming and singing and reverently painting my face in heavy strokes. All over my face. In the middle of this he conjured up a white headband with two long, floppy ears, and jammed it to snap around the top of my head, and kept crooning and painting until I screamed, choking on the paint dripping into my mouth. Finally when I was able to roll away, I almost ran straight into a mirror, and stood panting at the rabbit reflected.

Oh yes and he was Somebody "around", the guy providing positive criticism on the back of books that want to sell, who contributes something sassy to the New Yorker every six months or so.
To be honest, the death invokes all these stringy pangs of regret. Should have read more before he died. Kurt Vonnegut's was different, a more remorseful pang; more like I was in a fight with him and was just about to come around with flowers and then heard the news.

Writing is a private connection in that the reader can choose to engage. The writer has to wait for the reader to come around. To hear anything, one have to use one's eyes. Bizarrely different from trying to read music, or anything more aurally based. I wrote about starting to read John Updike last year, though I stopped when his narrative became too overpowering for me. What does that even mean? When an author infiltrates your brain, takes down your whole inner monologue and dominates the story line of your reality. Brandishes a paintbrush in your face, and bunny ears. Like JD Salinger or someone equally easy to mimic. Dominant narrators are fun, but they are best enjoyed sparingly, for the reader's own emotional consistency. So we don't get to a point where we can't see past the arc of our narrative. Detachment, drama, aestheticism of reality; yes all fun, but damaging if kept off the page for too long.
I should give him another shot though, even though I feel like artists are the only everlasting ones who can still get at you from the grave.