Speaking of John Updike...

From the Editor's Desk

***EDITOR'S NOTE: This post was published just moments before the Editorial Board heard of the passing of John Updike, 76, whose work is discussed herein. This post is therefore dedicated to the memory of John Updike. See "John Updike, Lyrical Writer of the Ordinary," NYTimes.com 1/27/09.

The Editorial Staff is quite enamored with the 2006 collection of essays written by Cynthia Ozick, author of Quarrel & Quandary, Fame & Folly, Metaphor & Memory, and Art & Ardor. The collection at hand, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., is pertinently titled The Din in the Head.

One essay in particular caught our attention, "John Updike: Eros and God." Here are a few excerpts:

The everyday seizes [John] Updike's tireless gaze--babies, adolescents, couples, sometimes in stasis, as in genre painting, sometimes kinetic, like the swoop of a thought. ...

What is notable, and curious, in Updike is that his sexual scenes seem as distanced and skeptical as a lapsed seminarian's meticulously recited breviary, while his God-seeking passages send out orgasmic shudders, whether of exaltation or distress. In "The Deacon," a decaying old wooden church--rotted wiring, warped boards, leaky ceiling, worn hymnals, superannuated remnants of congregants--is nevertheless instinct with holy ardor, and with a kind of intergalactic holiness. ...

His is not a social faith. Though [the short story] "Lifeguard" closes with an exhortation to "be joyful," the Kierkegaardian singleness of the God-possessed, quivering among the darker stars, predominates. This singleness, this historyless aloneness, turns up in the essayist apercus and musings and final exhalations that thread through both plot and plotlessness, alongside the vernacular, between, so to speak, the acts. The acts are tremendously variegated; in the spacious precincts of eight hundred and more pages, human faces teem, landscapes and interiors are elegiacally documented, a thousand three-dimensional objects cast realistic shadows, time is phosphorescent, moods coagulate and dissolve. Updike owns the omnivorous faculty of seeing the telltale flame in every mundane gesture.

For us here at the Journal, such a description of talented writing, itself talented writing, makes us wish to be talented writers.

(For more on the book, see The Din in the Head at Amazon.com)

The Wealth of the Stone

Here is a story handed down through the years by wise folks...

It is said that one day a monk came in from the desert and reached the outskirts of a village at dusk. He had just settled down under a tree for the night, when a young man of the village came running up to him. The villager cried out to the monk, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!"

"What stone?" asked the monk.

"Last night, the angel of the Lord appeared to me in a dream," said the villager, "and he told me that if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk, I would find a monk sleeping under a tree, a monk who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich forever!"

The monk rummaged through his satchel and pulled out a stone. "Perhaps he meant this one," said the monk, as he handed the stone to the villager. "I found it along a mountain path some days ago. You may certainly have it."

The young man gazed at the stone in wonder. It was a diamond, perhaps the largest diamond in the whole world, the size of a large rutabaga. He took the diamond and walked slowly back to his village.

All night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep. The next day, as the sun began to rise in the eastern sky, he returned to the tree at the outskirts of the village and woke the sleeping monk.

And he begged him, "Please, give me the wealth you have that makes you able to give this diamond away so easily."

adapted from Anthony de Mello, Selected Writings, ed. William Dych, S.J. (Orbis Books 1999) 55-56. For more information about Anthony de Mello, go to http://www.demello.org/.

Welcome to The Rutabaga Harvest Law Journal

Why Not Do It All?

I look forward to reading your comments and sincerely thank you for taking the time to read my bloggings. I hope you will continue, even after reading this drivel for the first time...

For my very first post, I will recycle a note I posted yesterday (1/23/09) on Facebook:

Thomas Friedman writes:

President Obama will have to decide just how many fences he can swing for at one time: grand bargains on entitlement and immigration reform? A national health care system? A new clean-energy infrastructure? The nationalization and repair of our banking system? Will it be all or one? Some now and some later? It is too soon to say.

But I do know this: while a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, so too is a great politician, with a natural gift for oratory, a rare knack for bringing people together, and a nation, particularly its youth, ready to be summoned and to serve.

So, in sum, while it is impossible to exaggerate what a radical departure it is from our past that we have inaugurated a black man as president, it is equally impossible to exaggerate how much our future depends on a radical departure from our present. As Obama himself declared from the Capitol steps: "Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed."

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/opinion/21friedman.html)

I have been asking, until now just within my own mind, why can't we do all of these major social-contract changes right now, right away, within this very moment in time? How long the moment will last depends substantially on what we decide to do, how quickly we pace ourselves, how well we construct and execute our ideas, and most importantly, how long the attention span of society lasts.

I suppose the other major stalling point will be the bloc of voices that opposes change as a matter of principle--how strongly it objects, the pitch and volume of it shrill screams, and to a smaller degree, the legitimate, reasoned bases for their objections. Typically they will create an ideological prophylactic against any substantial change to the system it defends, despite the fact that in the past the set of ideology has led directly to the problems we now have to repair, to the suffering we currently endure.

So as we go forward into the historical moment--ready to work, equipped for service and primed for change--we must entrust the design and execution of the programs of change to leaders wise in judgment, prudent in action, skilled in political maneuvering, astute and insightful within their fields, clear in public communication, foresighted, sensible, and intelligent. And if opponents of progress try to stall their advancement, then we must become these people with these qualities ourselves, for we, the governed, must be or become qualified to govern.

We must become comfortable with the notion of "radical departure from the present." And we must encourage our new president to utilize the best of his gifts and the gifted people around him to turn crisis into opportunity, opportunity into action, and action into positive, long-term social change.

Best wishes for 2009-13!!!

jdchuck