notes from behind the coffee counter

John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com

Sad day, big loss. I consider John Updike as one of America’s greatest writers. I was taking a creative writing class when I was first introduced to his work. It was the short story “A&P.” Sammy, the protagonist, has always been one of my all time favorite characters in literature, right up there with Holden Caufield. Yeah, I’m one of those. In that creative writing class (which by the way is where I fell in love with my wife, Jennifer) we all had to write a research paper. I can’t remember what the parameters had to be but I chose to write about how Sammy was a catalyst to the counter culture that would eventually follow in the later years of the sixties. I later expanded the paper to include Holden Caulfied for another English class at a different school. (I got an A on both papers, BTW.) Updike’s writing has always fascinated me because he made it look easy. As if. The News Hour on PBS has a great interview with John Updike from 2003. In it he talks about Sammy. Actually he’s asked about that short story. Probably because it’s become a staple in English departments nation wide. When he talks about Sammy its as if, for just a moment, he became real person for me. And Updike’s explanation of Sammy feelings in the end helped me recognize I was on the right track in my paper of long ago. So, thanks John for all your works and especially thank you for introducing me to not only Sammy but writing in general.