Johnnie I Hardly Read Ye

Much of the civilized press recently noted the passing of John Updike with much fanfare and ballyhoo - marking him as a literary genius with a mountainous output - more than 50 books, countless short stories and essays, poems, grocery lists, and acceptance speeches for "The Best Writer in the Whole Wide World Award." Me, I could never get past chapter one, maybe chapter two, but no further. My shame is my own. I have hidden it well and avoided those cozy conversations trading tidbits from the latest Updike novel.

Maybe this is my non-Ivy League education coming home to roost, those night school courses at state universities where the beauty of the campus was less important than than balancing a job and an education with a family and a car payment.

I will admit that I tried. John Updike novels made the round-trip from the library to my night stand, but with all those first pages of Updike novels I managed to read, I admit that I never read a last page. But there is still time and I may use my retirement to become conversant in the antics of Rabbit Angstrom, but I doubt it. Anyway, another giant has passed.