Author: John Updike
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Defending himself against obnoxious talk show hosts and ready to move on.
Subjects Discussed: Epigraphs, faith and disbelief, starting Terrorist with a Catholic priest, first person vs. third person, on writing upon Americana, post-9/11 symbolism, humanism vs. pessimism, blow jobs, Christopher Hitchens, the state of the September 11 novel, Norman Mailer, Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat, applying “On Not Being a Dove” to Iraq, airport X-ray machines, external sexual imagery vs. internal emotion in prose, why Updike concentrates on explicit anatomical detail, Goths, language, challenging Updike on the BEA speech and the Internet.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Amazing.
I love how deep your questions go, how well you hold up your end of the conversation. I learned a lot just listening to your follow-ups for Updike. I think too many interviewers, myself included, get dulled by proximity to a great writer. You held up.
It sounded like he was pretty impressed by the time you mounted your defense of the Internet. You made me want to check out Witches of Eastwick again, too often I just think about Updike as the Author of the Rabbit Books. Keep up the good work.
I second the comment above — a remarkable performance. I think you even elicit a grunt of intrigued recognition from Updike when you ask about the three examples of visual sexual imagery. I bet that doesn’t happen too often with J-Up. Well well done and worth the extended wait.
Oh, and I meant to say: good work standing up for us “little people” of the internet. Most of what Up said was excellent, but it’s sad that he seems to be stubbornly holding on to this idea that all we do here on the internet is chat, misspell and post pictures to MySpace. I’m glad you let him know there’s more here than MySpace.
Overall, though, I think Updike came off very well, and in my opinion this is the best Bat Segundo interview of them all. Congrats on the big fifty.