Will not miss.

So, y’all hear? John Updike kicked the bucket. Boo fucking hoo.

The blurb on the front page of the SFGate described him as an “erudite chronicler of sex.” You know, “erudite” doesn’t mean “smart” or “wittily verbose” or whatever they seem to be saying here; it means “possessing or displaying erudition,” which means “extensive knowledge acquired chiefly from books.” Which is, of course, hilarious, because since I know he thought of himself as a legendary cocksman, and probably he did poke it in a whole bunch of starstruck, too-ignorant-to-know-any-better females, I think A)he’d be really pissed at anyone suggesting he learned about balling from books, and B)as far as I can tell, everything he thought he knew about the female half of the human race was likely learned from printed matter (mostly Penthouse Forum and such hacky drivel as his buddy Styron’s written spooge).*

And I’m not sure I’d give the SFGate “chronicler,” either; Updike was totally, completely obsessed with penistry in all its forms (except for teh ghey secks, of course! He was a MAN, DAMMIT!), but “chronicler” implies some sort of … I dunno, anthropological or documentary interest, which he certainly showed no signs of. That would’ve required some sort of investigation into the matter, and he was mainly concerned with misogyny and contempt for the various receptacles of his & his characters’ jizz. He was one of those mid-to-late 20th-century Manly Man Authors who professed to “love women,” but for whom all women were so thoroughly and profoundly Other (not to mention Lesser) that there was never any real chance of knowledge or connection.

So anyway: Good riddance. Buh-bye now.




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*Maybe they meant "erudite" to describe his famously well-read childhood or whatever, but it doesn't read that way in the blurb, and anyway: fuck him, who cares?