Posted 1:33 PM by Gene

John Updike, the "laureate of bad sex", has died. RIP.

P. S. at 5:00 p. m. All right, ALL RIGHT, he was a GREAT PATRI-OT, but I still recall with anger the piece of junk he "wrote" for a trade rag called Meetings and Conventions about public golf courses, the sort of thing he could write with his toes, or his behind, or a pen stuck in his mouth -- and frequently did. (It's not on the site, but it has been anthologized, I don't remember where.) He was the acme of logrollers, he wore his nonjudgmentalism on his sleeve, he wrote a book called C--ts, and he never wrote in the heat of passion, except for one of his infernal sex scenes. All RIGHT, he was a GREAT PATRI-OT, but he wasn't THAT good.

What is with the KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! of con-SER-va-tive typists these days? Do really think they can hector B. HUSSEIN!!!!! into mediocrity? He has his own reserves.

P. P. S. at 5:22 p. m., from a man who knows infinitely better than I:

His prose style in fiction struck me as unpleasingly gray and thick, his essays and reviews as fluent but essentially conventional....

In the end I finally gave up, and decided that Updike was one of those undeniably important artists, like Wagner or Dreiser, to whose virtues I would always be deaf.

And most of the time I'd say Terry has a pretty good set of ears.