John Updike - The Persistence of Desire

John Updike The Persistence of Desire
Page: 561

“Already it was 1:29, and while he watched, the digits slipped again; another drop into the brimming void. He glanced around for the comfort of a clock with the face and gracious, gradual hands. A stopped grandfather matched the other imitation antiques.”

Clyde is acutely aware of time as it rushes onward. Each minute that the see flick away serves as a reminder that his life is passing. It is this awareness of time and life that leads him to grasp so tightly to his past; be that hometown, family doctor, or old relationships. The ‘imitation antiques’ represent the natural, yet false, attempt to retain that which is already gone.

John Updike The Persistence of Desire
Page: 568

“ ‘Clyde, I thought you were successful. I thought you had beautiful children. Aren’t you happy?’ ‘I am, I am; but’- the rest was so purely inspired its utterance only grazed his lips- ‘happiness isn’t everything.’”

Clyde realizes that while he has what he believed he needed to be happy, he is not satisfied with life. He feels that there must be something more to happiness then what he has, so Clyde clings to what had offered a feeling of fulfillment in the past. He realizes this all in a single moment while attempting to recreate his youthful happiness through old love.

Presentation topic

My topic for this term with be - Literature/poetry: Beat Writers- stay tuned

John Cheever The Swimmer

John Cheever The Swimmer
Page: 1492

“It would storm. The stand of cumulus cloud- that city- had risen and darkened, and while he sat there he heard the percussiveness of thunder again.”

Up until the storm hit, Cheever had created a story where Ned was a modern-day explore. Swimming through all the pools on the way home would be an adventure full of friends and pleasant surprises. After the storm, the tone of the story changes. Ned’s world is striped of is simple façade to reveal a more complicated and confused reality.

John Cheever The Swimmer
Page: 1496

“It was probably the first time in his adult life that he had ever cried, certainly the first time in his life that he had ever felt so miserable, cold, tired, and bewildered…He had swum too long, been immersed too long”

This quote is the onset of reality for Ned. His adventure had turned ugly forcing Ned to face a more complicated reality he had blocked out. In the process of completing a simple goal, Ned’s entire image of reality had begun to crumble in his waterlogged mind. He had been surrounded by it for so long that he had not even seen it coming or he had refused to acknowledge it.

John Cheever - The Death of Justina

John Cheever The Death of Justina
Page: 543

“When I abstain from sin it is more often a fear of scandal than a private resolve to improve on the purity of my heart, but here was a call for abstinence without the worldly enforcement of society, and death is not the threat that scandal is.”

It is well known that Cheever often wrote about suburbia, and it is my opinion that in this quote he captures the force behind “suburbia” utterly. It is the idea that you do good not because it is good, but because of what the neighbors would say if you did not do good. He is more willing to sacrifice something to conform to society than for health reasons because death is nothing next to a scandal.

John Cheever The Death of Justina
Page: 548

“It’s just that it happened in the wrong zone and if I make an exception for you I’ll have to make an exception for everyone, and this kind of morbidity, when it gets out of hand, can be very depressing. People don’t like to live in a neighborhood where this sort of thing goes on all the time.”

This quote is the mayor’s argument against “allowing” Justina to have died. Zoning regulations prevented funeral parlors from opening, anything from being buried, and death. The idea of zoning against death clearly is a satirist take of suburban lifestyles. The struggle to obtain a zoning exception after Justina’s death is takes the spoof on step farther mocking the over the top bureaucratic ways of small towns and neighborhoods.

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super awsome new blog Thomas made me create - so cool