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Authors: John Updike
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as an instrument, a means whereby a time and a place make their mark. To become less and transmit more, to replenish energy with wisdom—some such hope, at this more than mid-point of my life, is the reason why I write.
* Given in New York City, in March 1964, in acceptance of the 1963 National Book Awards fiction prize, awarded to
The Centaur
.
† Given in Bristol, England, in February 1969, after a dinner arranged by the Bristol Literary Society.
‡ Given in Seoul, South Korea, in June 1970, at a conference of the International P.E.N.; the general conference theme was “Humor.”
§ Given in Adelaide, South Australia, in March 1974.
‖ That year awarded to Australia’s Patrick White.
a Oswald Mtshali, Zulu poet. Both he and Nadine Gordimer were present at the Adelaide Festival.
b As, say, by Iris Murdoch, in the 1972 Blashfield Address.
LONDON LIFE
Notes of a Temporary Resident
(for
The Listener
)
January 1969
A N A MERICAN IN L ONDON , whether he has come here to work for Esso or to escape the draft, cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The monumentality of Washington, the thriving busyness of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco—all these he finds combined for his pleasure. If he is on foot, considerately designed buses and taxis offer to lift him along a maze of streets; if he has a car, the roadways, however intimidating to a pedestrian instinctively looking in the wrong direction, reveal themselves as paragons of clear marking and disciplined flow. This, surely, is a city, a
civitas
in the root sense, a collection of citizens whose collective life and conscience is bespoken by the wealth of parks and museums, the gracious abundance of public services. Food, for example, which in France must be won by slightly daring forays into restaurants and
épiceries
that have the shuttered air of brothel-fronts, is here everywhere—fresh fruit heaped for sale in the most densely trafficked streets, candy machines on trees, counters of meat in clothing stores. If the telephone booths are scarcer than an American is used to, at least the ones he finds have not been vandalized. He moves through London with no fear, as in Rome, of being cheated and with no fear, as in Paris, of being willfully misunderstood. It is not merely the English language that makes this ease, it is a language of social expectation and response that in his own country is a rather harsh dialect. He finds, in London, tickets to concerts and plays easy to come by; yet when hearrives the hall is full, or nearly. The balance between supply and demand is maintained with a reasonableness as mysterious as the opaque imbalances of Moscow. Its central institution is, I suppose, the docile, ubiquitous queue.
In the house that I rent hangs a large map of London and environs in 1741. City blocks stop at Marylebone: the eye travels north across stippled fields to Hampstead. Paddington, St. Pancras, and Kentish Towns are villages; St. John’s Wood a matter of two or three houses. Elsewhere on the map, Brompton and Chelsea, Camberwell, Peckham, and Stepney are all distinct and full of delicately etched orchards. Why should this seem special to me? All cities grow by swallowing their satellite towns. But these have kept their names and, somehow beneath the asphalt, a sense of locality, of neighborhood. If, as everyone (or at least every American) says, London is a city one can live in, credit the variety of demi-cities within it, few of them hopelessly unfashionable or ugly, all of them with some possibilities and style. London’s genius is conglomerate; how restricted, relatively, is New York, four of its five boroughs more or less unheard-of and the Manhattanites with pretensions to respectability penned into a few dozen blocks east of lower Central Park, or clinging to several side-streets in the increasingly decadent Village, or to the once solidly
* Given in New York City, in March 1964, in acceptance of the 1963 National Book Awards fiction prize, awarded to
The Centaur
.
† Given in Bristol, England, in February 1969, after a dinner arranged by the Bristol Literary Society.
‡ Given in Seoul, South Korea, in June 1970, at a conference of the International P.E.N.; the general conference theme was “Humor.”
§ Given in Adelaide, South Australia, in March 1974.
‖ That year awarded to Australia’s Patrick White.
a Oswald Mtshali, Zulu poet. Both he and Nadine Gordimer were present at the Adelaide Festival.
b As, say, by Iris Murdoch, in the 1972 Blashfield Address.
LONDON LIFE
Notes of a Temporary Resident
(for
The Listener
)
January 1969
A N A MERICAN IN L ONDON , whether he has come here to work for Esso or to escape the draft, cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The monumentality of Washington, the thriving busyness of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco—all these he finds combined for his pleasure. If he is on foot, considerately designed buses and taxis offer to lift him along a maze of streets; if he has a car, the roadways, however intimidating to a pedestrian instinctively looking in the wrong direction, reveal themselves as paragons of clear marking and disciplined flow. This, surely, is a city, a
civitas
in the root sense, a collection of citizens whose collective life and conscience is bespoken by the wealth of parks and museums, the gracious abundance of public services. Food, for example, which in France must be won by slightly daring forays into restaurants and
épiceries
that have the shuttered air of brothel-fronts, is here everywhere—fresh fruit heaped for sale in the most densely trafficked streets, candy machines on trees, counters of meat in clothing stores. If the telephone booths are scarcer than an American is used to, at least the ones he finds have not been vandalized. He moves through London with no fear, as in Rome, of being cheated and with no fear, as in Paris, of being willfully misunderstood. It is not merely the English language that makes this ease, it is a language of social expectation and response that in his own country is a rather harsh dialect. He finds, in London, tickets to concerts and plays easy to come by; yet when hearrives the hall is full, or nearly. The balance between supply and demand is maintained with a reasonableness as mysterious as the opaque imbalances of Moscow. Its central institution is, I suppose, the docile, ubiquitous queue.
In the house that I rent hangs a large map of London and environs in 1741. City blocks stop at Marylebone: the eye travels north across stippled fields to Hampstead. Paddington, St. Pancras, and Kentish Towns are villages; St. John’s Wood a matter of two or three houses. Elsewhere on the map, Brompton and Chelsea, Camberwell, Peckham, and Stepney are all distinct and full of delicately etched orchards. Why should this seem special to me? All cities grow by swallowing their satellite towns. But these have kept their names and, somehow beneath the asphalt, a sense of locality, of neighborhood. If, as everyone (or at least every American) says, London is a city one can live in, credit the variety of demi-cities within it, few of them hopelessly unfashionable or ugly, all of them with some possibilities and style. London’s genius is conglomerate; how restricted, relatively, is New York, four of its five boroughs more or less unheard-of and the Manhattanites with pretensions to respectability penned into a few dozen blocks east of lower Central Park, or clinging to several side-streets in the increasingly decadent Village, or to the once solidly
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