Kaleidoscopically Gifted

I've never read any of John Updike's writing. I believe I've mentioned that, in the years I was growing up Adventist, the church banned the reading of fiction. Or at least the powers-that-were in my high school banned it. It seems that fiction is lying, and lying is killing the truth or stealing the truth. That would be contra to the commandment that says "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt not steal". Whatever.

The result of this religious higgledy-piggledy is that there's a world of literature that has escaped me. I've recently bought "Grapes of Wrath", in an effort to start rectifying this gross error.

So when I heard yesterday that John Updike had died, I had to learn more about him. My Goodling took me to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's tribute in yesterday's New York Times.

I loved this quote:

“I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles, if I had to,” he told The Paris Review in 1967. “The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”

Inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words. Marvelous.

John Updike is being added to my list of must-read authors.