Updike novels have that “grab you” quality that we as writers all would love to have the ability to capture. A waiting room experience with an article in the AARP magazine rekindled my memories of Updike. Here is an excerpt from the article:

“When, against my better judgment, I glance back at my prose from 20 or 30 years ago, the quality I admire and fear to have lost is its carefree bounce, its snap, its exuberant air of slight excess. The author, in his boyish innocence, is calling, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, upon unseen powers—the prodigious potential of this flexible language’s vast vocabulary. Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling into your ear.” — John Updike

Full article at:
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/people/john_updike_writer_in_winter.html

Oh, to rip life chunks from earth,
Set them under crystalline glass,
Form characters of personal worth,
Drawn from wealth or underclass.

Oh, to take those words from air,
In just-so shapes and colors sought
Jeweled beads ordered with care,
Strung on threads of golden thought.

Oh, to write such nuance and verve,
Decades ago — or the latest day,
Make semantics careen and swerve,
Narratives fold his peculiar way.

Oh, for a fraction of his timeless gift,
To bask in that — the writer’s all,
But alas, we got mostly short shrift,
And Updike— writing still— stands tall.

© 2008 R. Leland Waldrip