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RIP John Updike

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:48 pm
by KillerTomato
According to Fox. Age 76, and a great, if somewhat uneven, writer.
Cause of death was lung cancer.

Re: RIP John Updike

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 12:53 pm
by VAdame
Aw, RIP, Rabbit.

Re: RIP John Updike

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:24 pm
by etaoin22
F*** the Swedes. Another worthy North American author bites the dust without a Prize.
No writer whose working life was in Canada has ever won, (although the inglorious view of war in "The Cruel Sea" might have attracted attention to those sponsored by Nobel money, and Monsarrat later lived and worked across from Ottawa).

No native=born American writer except for Toni Morrison in the last 47 years.

Re: RIP John Updike

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 1:47 pm
by silverscreenselect
etaoin22 wrote: No native=born American writer except for Toni Morrison in the last 47 years.
John Grisham and Stephen King are overdue.

Re: RIP John Updike

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2009 2:28 pm
by Weyoun
It's not just who hasn't won - it's also who has won. I've tried reader some of the winners, when their works are bother to be translated into English. The only one who has won in recent years that has been compelling to me is Coetzee.

Re: RIP John Updike

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:15 am
by Spock
Weyoun wrote:It's not just who hasn't won - it's also who has won. I've tried reader some of the winners, when their works are bother to be translated into English. The only one who has won in recent years that has been compelling to me is Coetzee.
I like Naipaul. I have looked at Coetzee, but never read her yet. I am not a big fiction guy-I much prefer non-fiction.

I am currently reading The Loss of El Dorado.

Also, I have said this before-but there are 2 things that I am very thankful to BAM for-(Besides this damn, addicting board)

1)Compelling me to finally watch some of the classic movies (Netflix has helped immensely) and thus move to more obscure movies.

2) Compelling me to read Faulkner. I don't understand everything he writes-but I love his writing(The little I have read of it) for the occasional passage that just sings to me. I much prefer him to Hemingway-who I had previous.

Recently finished The Village.

Re: RIP John Updike

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:49 am
by etaoin22
There is no question the Academy has strange tastes at times, and if there is an aged obscure poet with high renown working in a relatively difficult language -- that person will get. Roth, Atwood, Salinger -- fugeddaboutit, and as far as anyone whose work is damned by having started off as genre fiction -- well, at least there are the Hugos. (for SF).

And as far as Pynchon, DeLillo and so on, not to mention Salman Rushdie: when pigs fly.