Read Online Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: And Other Excursions by Martin Amis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Martin Amis
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else, he was the healthiest man there): tall, 'storklike', distinctly avian, with the questing curved nose and the hairstyle like a salt-and-pepper turban.
'How are you?' I said with some urgency.
'They didn't take it out. It's still here!' He raised his hand to the light. It seemed a gratifying intimacy, after ten seconds' acquaintance. John Updike, warts and all. Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual. Updike's is called psoriasis, 'skin disease marked by red scaly patches', as my COD unfeelingly puts it. He has written about the condition himself, rather more feelingly, in the New Yorker. Actually the growth seemed quite inoffensive, like a sizeable and resolute freckle.
'How frustrating. You must be...'
'Yes, I'm very sad,' he said, and looked - as he would continue to look for the next two hours - like a man barely able to contain some vast and mysterious hilarity. This generalised twinkliness has been much remarked. It is almost the demure expression a child has when gratified to the point of outright embarrassment — but with an extra positive charge, flowing from hyperactive senses. 'No, apparently it's more complicated than I thought. They're going to do it later in the year. The incision will go from there to there. I'll have to wear a support for a while. I won't be able to play golf. I won't be able to type! But listen. How are your This, too, was said with unusual concern. Updike ducked and briefly grappled with the Boston Globe. He pointed to a piece that I had read, with quivering fingers, half an hour earlier. The previous evening I had flown in from Provincetown: fifteen minutes in a Wright-Brothers seven-seater. That same day, according to the Globe, one of these little aeroplanes had lost height and come skimming in over Boston Bay. Sunbath-ers had dived into the sea from their rafts. The article ended with a reassuring review of the airline's safety record: it was grounded, quite recently, after a series of accidents, all of them rich in fatalities.
'You flew! I warned you not to.' 'Yes, and I'm flying back. After I've done you.' And he said to me what I had been planning to say to him: 'You're very brave.'
The hospital cafeteria was bright, airy, oceanic; there was foliage, a sun-trapping terrace, a smoking section: it seemed positively fashionable. The atmosphere differed from its British equivalent in many ways - most crucially in that its patrons were, of necessity, on some kind of spree, pushing the boat out, spending big. We joined the queue with our tray. I had coffee, while Updike bemusedly dithered over the half-dozen kinds of tea on offer.
'The ordeal of choice,' I said, suavely enough - though one should stress that these occasions are not suave at all.
However genial, they are always anxious and exhausting, with the interviewer fielding about 80 per cent of the nerves. 'Have you read Saul Bellow's new novel?' I went on. (The novel was More Die of Heartbreak.) 'He says that in the East the ordeal is one of privation, in the West one of choice.'
'Yes, I keep meaning to get it. There's just something about forking out the twenty bucks. Why don't / carry that?' he said, and smoothly commandeered the trembling tray. The gesture was protective, courteous, very able, above all. 'So the Observer is paying for my tea. How nice.'
The tea cost fifty cents. Nor was this the extent of the moneys I would disburse on Updike's account. Later, when we drove to Harvard, I gave the novelist a quarter for the parking meter. He fanned a handful of change at me, but I told him that Tiny Rowland would pick up the tab. Throughout he showed, not a sensitivity, but an awareness about money. 'I was raised in the Depression,' he has said, 'when there was a great sense of dog eat dog and people fighting over scraps.' This feeling has partly survived two decades of book-a-year bestsellerdom and the fact that 'Reagan has turned America into a tax haven'. Nowadays Updike could probably hold his own
'How are you?' I said with some urgency.
'They didn't take it out. It's still here!' He raised his hand to the light. It seemed a gratifying intimacy, after ten seconds' acquaintance. John Updike, warts and all. Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual. Updike's is called psoriasis, 'skin disease marked by red scaly patches', as my COD unfeelingly puts it. He has written about the condition himself, rather more feelingly, in the New Yorker. Actually the growth seemed quite inoffensive, like a sizeable and resolute freckle.
'How frustrating. You must be...'
'Yes, I'm very sad,' he said, and looked - as he would continue to look for the next two hours - like a man barely able to contain some vast and mysterious hilarity. This generalised twinkliness has been much remarked. It is almost the demure expression a child has when gratified to the point of outright embarrassment — but with an extra positive charge, flowing from hyperactive senses. 'No, apparently it's more complicated than I thought. They're going to do it later in the year. The incision will go from there to there. I'll have to wear a support for a while. I won't be able to play golf. I won't be able to type! But listen. How are your This, too, was said with unusual concern. Updike ducked and briefly grappled with the Boston Globe. He pointed to a piece that I had read, with quivering fingers, half an hour earlier. The previous evening I had flown in from Provincetown: fifteen minutes in a Wright-Brothers seven-seater. That same day, according to the Globe, one of these little aeroplanes had lost height and come skimming in over Boston Bay. Sunbath-ers had dived into the sea from their rafts. The article ended with a reassuring review of the airline's safety record: it was grounded, quite recently, after a series of accidents, all of them rich in fatalities.
'You flew! I warned you not to.' 'Yes, and I'm flying back. After I've done you.' And he said to me what I had been planning to say to him: 'You're very brave.'
The hospital cafeteria was bright, airy, oceanic; there was foliage, a sun-trapping terrace, a smoking section: it seemed positively fashionable. The atmosphere differed from its British equivalent in many ways - most crucially in that its patrons were, of necessity, on some kind of spree, pushing the boat out, spending big. We joined the queue with our tray. I had coffee, while Updike bemusedly dithered over the half-dozen kinds of tea on offer.
'The ordeal of choice,' I said, suavely enough - though one should stress that these occasions are not suave at all.
However genial, they are always anxious and exhausting, with the interviewer fielding about 80 per cent of the nerves. 'Have you read Saul Bellow's new novel?' I went on. (The novel was More Die of Heartbreak.) 'He says that in the East the ordeal is one of privation, in the West one of choice.'
'Yes, I keep meaning to get it. There's just something about forking out the twenty bucks. Why don't / carry that?' he said, and smoothly commandeered the trembling tray. The gesture was protective, courteous, very able, above all. 'So the Observer is paying for my tea. How nice.'
The tea cost fifty cents. Nor was this the extent of the moneys I would disburse on Updike's account. Later, when we drove to Harvard, I gave the novelist a quarter for the parking meter. He fanned a handful of change at me, but I told him that Tiny Rowland would pick up the tab. Throughout he showed, not a sensitivity, but an awareness about money. 'I was raised in the Depression,' he has said, 'when there was a great sense of dog eat dog and people fighting over scraps.' This feeling has partly survived two decades of book-a-year bestsellerdom and the fact that 'Reagan has turned America into a tax haven'. Nowadays Updike could probably hold his own
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