In my late 20’s, I read the first two novels of John Updike's Rabbit Run novels. Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is a former basketball
star bouncing between youth and adulthood in post WWII America. At age 26,
Rabbit abandons his wife and young son and moves in with a prostitute. Updike
depicts a world of immature characters, endless lust, serial adultery, and
permanent personal isolation.
Though Updike’s writing captivated me, his characters angered
me. They were neither wise nor mature. Updike did not seem to offer any insight
for transcending the hollowness he describes. The books depressed me and I did
not finish the series.
Twenty years later, I read The Maple Stories,
published in 2009. Over three decades, Updike had written 18 stories about Joan
and Richard Maple’s marriage and divorce. His detailed, clear sentences still
amazed me. In these stories about the painful unraveling of the Maples’
marriage, Updike’s pen seemed less pointed. His characters were more appealing
and there was a softer, gentler acknowledgement of their suffering. The story Separating, in particular, moved me.
The Maple Stories were on my mind when My Father’s
Tears was published after Updike’s death in 2009. Unlike many authors I
admire, Updike doesn’t focus on developing his characters’ psychological
etiology. Clues about childhood development or traumatic experiences are not
scattered in his stories. His books are not psychological in the ways that I
appreciate.
Yet, in this last collection of stories, he beautifully
captures the ruminations of an older man reflecting on his life. Yes, Updike’s
constant themes of unfaithful spouses and sexual restlessness become
irritating. However, these final stories
focus more on his parents, grandparents, kids, and grandkids. He looks back
where he came from and tells the stories that made him who he is. He describes
recognizable events and makes them feel sacred.
In the title story, My Father’s Tears, Updike evokes
the deep unspoken love of a father for his college bound son. They are saying
good-bye at a train station. The son says, “…I was going somewhere, and he was
seeing me go. I was growing in my own sense of myself, and to him I was getting
smaller. He had loved me; it came to me as
never before. It was something that had
not needed to be said before, and now his tears were saying it. Before, in all the years and small adventures
we had shared, there was the sensation stemming from him, that life was a
pickle, and he and I were, for a time, in the pickle together.” This father knows that his son will not
return home except to visit. The son
continues, “But my father did foresee, the glitter in his eyes told me, the
time consumes us--- that the boy I had been was dying if not already dead, and
we would have less and less to do with each other. My life had come out of his, and now I was
stealing away with it.”
My favorite story is Walking with Elizanne. It is the best story I have read about a high
school reunion; in this case, that of David Kern, Updike’s alter ego. “Though
the year 2000 inevitably figured in yearbook predictions and jokes, nobody had
really believed that a year so futuristic would ever become the present. They
were seventeen and eighteen; their fiftieth class reunion was impossibly
remote. Now it was here, here in the function room of Fiorvante’s, a restaurant
in West Alton, a half-mile from the stately city hospital where many of them
had been born and now one of them lay critically ill.” Updike captures the
determined denial of young people toward the inevitable passing of time. But would it have changed anything if David
Kern and his classmates understood that their 50th reunion would quickly be
upon them?
The most poignant line is when David encounters a woman at the
reunion named Elizanne. She reminds David that he had once walked her home
from their date and kissed her. As she describes that evening to him, he can’t
recall it. Later he reflects on their conversation and remembers their date of
50 years ago. He says, “Elizanne, he
wanted to ask her, what does it mean, this enormity of our having been children
and being old, living next door to death?”
Updike’s ability, in a few sentences, to evoke emotion, capture
places, and stimulate empathy is stunning. He does not offer a transcendent
moment or resolution, but he offers his readers a moving experience. He is like
a hiker who runs ahead to the top of the mountain and comes back to tell the
rest of the hikers about the view from the peak. It’s not a perfect view, there
are clouds in the sky and obstacles on the trail, but if we are lucky, that is
where his readers are heading. His clear and haunting prose invites his readers
to ponder the meaning of their lives before they reach a point where they cannot
change paths. Updike does not have the answers, but he points out the signposts
along the way.
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