An appreciation of his appreciation
Three weeks late, I come across this small memorial to John Updike by Garrison Keillor and I’m struck again by the economical virtues of Keillor’s writing. I also find more and more that I enjoy Keillor because of our shared values. Nothing so leads to agreeableness as agreement.
For instance, this, about his young daughter’s score of 96 on a spelling test:
Having begotten a good speller is no small matter to a writer. Writing is an act of paying attention, and if you don’t care about the difference between “their” and “there” or “needle” and “noodle,” then I am sorry for you.
Just so. Keillor is a nice man. With others among us, blood squirts from our eyes when people who should know better confuse “their” and “there” (as well as “they’re”). On Facebook, someone who knows me well enough recommended that I join the group “Seriously, Learn the Fucking Difference Between Your and You’re.” I joined. Whoever started this group must be kin.
I also like this, from Keillor’s piece on Updike:
I saw him a year ago in New York, and my wife and I rode the subway with him from 155th Street down to 72nd, and he grinned all the way, a white-haired gent of 75 in a tan raincoat, like a boy going away to school, and a little nervous. As it turns out, that was my very last chance to tell him, standing above him, the train swaying, that “The Centaur” and the Rabbit Angstrom books are permanent masterpieces and also his Olinger stories, and I didn’t tell him that. I opted to be cool. And then a gaggle of college kids boarded and crowded around him, not recognizing him, and in all that chatter and attitude, Updike sat soaking it all up. Material.
The description of Updike as “a white-haired gent of 75 in a tan raincoat, like a boy going away to school,” matches what I’ve seen of him too; it just feels right. Something like 14 verbs move that little paragraph, only two of them forms of the indolent “to be.” I enjoy the way Keillor uses “and” to string you along until the final end note: “Material.” He often employs “who” in the same way, appending clause after clause, building to a penultimate sentence launched with that conjunctive pronoun before coming to a full stop with a final brief line:
And I think of John Updike, who illuminated private lives and wrote so lovingly of the world, who called snowfall “an immense whispering” and compared a brilliant snowy day to overdeveloped film. Who re-created the backyards and clotheslines of small-town 1940s Pennsylvania and described the way a girl walked in the hall of high school carrying her books against her body, and in a great story, “My Father’s Tears,” three years ago in the New Yorker, he gave us his father bidding him goodbye on a train platform. Nothing was beneath his careful attention.
Keillor has a strong voice. I can hear him in this piece of writing, just as I hear him in “A Prairie Home Companion.” It flows from his phrasing and from his point of view. He has something to say and he says it simply and well.