John Updike | Mockingbird

Long Suffering, Teary-Eyed, Catch-Playing Fathers (and Their Grateful Children)

by David Zahl on Jun 18, 2012 • 1 Comment

A couple of post-Father’s Day items to make us all cry. The first comes from Tiffany Thompson and appeared in The Toronto Standard, a funny, honest, and ultimately incredibly touching account of a father-daughter relationship “Disappointing Dad: Reflections on Father’s Day”. One part Protestant guilt, three parts Grace equals more than an echo of heavenly dynamics. Of course, for maximum impact, read the whole thing. For the Reader’s Digest version, look no further, ht SJ:

My dad is one of the most calm, intelligent and selfless people that I know. I’m prone to hysterics and attempt to hide my stupidity by…

Books / Grace in Practice / Law

John Updike on Children’s Feet and the Repose of Grace

by Brian on May 9, 2011 • 1 Comment

Came across this passage in a volume of John Updike’s short stories:

Last night I was coming back from across the street, fresh from an impromptu civic lamentation with a neighbor at how unsightly, now that the snow was melted, the awkward-shaped vacant lot the bulldozers had left looked, with its high raw embankment gouged by rivulets and littered with old chimney bricks. And soon, we concluded, now that spring was here, it would be bristling with weeds. Crossing from this conversation, I noticed that where my path had been lopped the cliff no longer existed; feet — children’s…

Art / Literature

Updike at 19

by David Zahl on Jun 24, 2010 • 3 Comments

From the fascinating article “John Updike At Work” in this past Monday’s NY Times, the late great author writing to his parents at age 19 (ht CWZ):

“We do not need men like Proust or Joyce; men like this are a luxury, an added fillip that an abundant culture can produce only after the more basic literary need has been filled. This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to…

Poetry

John Updike (1932-2009)

by David Zahl on Jan 27, 2009 • 5 Comments

In memory of the great author, who died today, here are his Seven Stanzas at Easter, written in 1960:

Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the eleven apostles;it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,the same valved heartthat–pierced–died, withered, paused, and thenregathered out of enduring Mightnew strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,analogy,…