They're diligent about finding and linking to Updike news and commentary on the web.Sorting through masses of historical archives to find your ancestors can be challenging. If my weekly encounters with Updike are stoking your appetite for more, visit The John Updike Society's blog. In his review of the biography in The New York Times, Dwight Garner finds both strengths and weaknesses in Begley's account. Speaking of Updike, please check out my review of Adam Begley's biography "Updike," a book I've found both entertaining and helpful. Please join me April 23 for a reading of Updike's story "The Astronomer." Here's a darker-toned version of "You Are My Sunshine" from The Civil Wars: But Theodore Pappas argues in a 1990 article that Oliver Hood wrote the song, and first performed it at a VFW convention in Georgia in 1933, years before Davis made his claim. Jimmie Davis claimed to be one of its co-authors, and it is one of the official state songs of Louisiana. "You Are My Sunshine" is one of the most recorded American popular songs. "Thus the world, like a jaded coquette, spurns our attempts to give ourselves to her wholly."īoth Jack De Bellis' wonderful "The John Updike Encyclopedia" (how I wish I owned a copy) and Walter Wells note that Updike will return to "Araby" in his classic story "A & P," which this blog will discuss on April 30. Tattooed guy thinks Ben's eyes are red and cheeks moist because he's lost his money Ben, not having studied Joyce's short stories yet, can't explain it's that way because he's having an epiphany about freedom! The misguided carnie inadvertently does something that offends Ben, leading to the bitter final line (in general, I prefer not to give away the last lines of these stories, but I have to make an exception here): He seeks this transcendence through fiscal attrition at a turning wheel game, where he loses all of his coins, only to be misunderstood by the tattooed man running the game. ![]() When the singers give away to a comic, Ben wanders off, still enraptured by the song: "Only the money in his pocket weighs him get rid of it, and he will sail away like a dandelion seed." He feels like a fool: "All of this machinery assembled to extract from him his pathetic fifty cents."Īfter buying a cone of cotton candy to break his fifty-cent piece, he watches and listens as a cowgirl trio sings "You Are My Sunshine." Their performance completely rocks his world: "And then the unbearable rising sugar of the chorus that makes his scalp so tight he fears his head will burst from sweet fullness." But he notices "there are not so many people here" - he wishes there were more of them. He's pumped up about the spectacle (as he imagines it will be), the games. The disappointment of the lad in "Araby" is partly romantic: He's thought of the bazaar in connection with his crush, who can't be there, and he flounders in his feeble effort to find a gift for her.īen's disillusionment with the carnival is pre-romantic, purer. ![]() ![]() Both youth arrive at the fair late: the unnamed youth in "Araby" doesn't get there until nearly 10 o'clock Ben, the 10-year-old protagonist of Updike's story, takes note of the "empty darkening streets" as he approaches the carnival. I'm reading and commenting on a story from The Library of America's 'John Updike: The Collected Stories' each Wednesday until I finish the collection or give up.Īfter I first read Updike's story "You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You," before I looked at any other commentary on it, I thought immediately of "Araby," a story in James Joyce's "Dubliners." They share the same situation: a boy anticipates a fair (or bazaar) with great excitement, only to leave disappointed.
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