Posted on Sun, Jan. 06, 2008

-- The theme that peals most distinctly throughout John Updike's latest collection of essays, "Due Considerations," is that he is a gentleman.

Updike must be a pleasant and mannered man lacking a bone of contention. His amiable studiousness informs the commentary.

In the brief essay, "Eudora Welty," Updike allows compassion on her inability to create memorable fiction during her later years, a worry, as we are told by her biographer, Suzanne Marrs, that Miss Welty also shared. He handles her diminished powers with a lambskin glove: "Her sociability was inseparable from her creativity and in her last decades came to replace it."

His criticism lands lightly even on those who may deserve a stern word. On the flawed novel, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer, Updike writes, "But, overall, the book's hyperactive visual surface covers up a certain hollow monotony in its human drama...

. less graphic apparatus might let Foer's excellent empathy, imagination, and good will sound out all the louder." A less-mannered critic may have called the plot as boring as the label on a can of tuna.

Throwing a punch will splatter blood on a review. In contrast to Updike's style, the novelist and critic Dale Peck commented on David Foster Wallace's novel, "I found 'Infinite Jest' immensely unsatisfactory, which is a polite way of saying that I hated it. I resent the five weeks of my life I gave over to reading the thing." Wallace is on the mat with a nosebleed.

The judicious use of a solid right hook should be part of a critic's arsenal. It is the clanking bell that warns the reader. With an intellect as encompassing as Updike's, it would be instructive to read a thought or two from him with his gloves off.

On topics beyond literature, Updike can be witty. About playing poker with the guys, "Only my children command a longer loyalty than this poker group."

A competent essayist strolls the obscure walkway, the side path masked by brambles and dimmed from the bright sun by the dense canopy and aged vines. Updike on a trip to China: "The 'free' market we walked through in the relatively small town of Yangshou, presented a superabundance of perishable goods; bony men and sun-baked women squatted beside baskets of roots, beans, and live chickens amid an overriding stench that suggested the inside of a huge sardine can."

We glimpse the China that the Chinese government and public relations wind tunnels prefer that we not discuss. Beyond the supernova brightness of Beijing, a rural, subsistence economy remains the norm for tens of millions of Chinese. "Bony men" (read ill-fed) and "sun-baked" women (read long hard days stooped in fields) attest that the capitalist revolution has not trickled throughout the country save for a few metropolitan areas. "Roots, beans, and live chickens" suggest the most rudimentary of subsistence farming absent mechanical implements and techniques of fertilization. Finally, the point is brought home through the nose, "stench that suggested the inside of a sardine can."

Use of the verb "squatted" alliteratively hints at squalor. The wealthy never squat. There will never be statements that begin "Queen Elizabeth squatted" or "Donald Trump squatted." Squatting is reserved for the disadvantaged, humbled low by circumstances.

Updike, with a trim use of words to create a vivid image, subtly editorializes.

The essayist's mind must be porous to allow experience to flow through yet astute enough to catch and observe the meaningful. Insight is rarely brandished on the side of a charging freight train, but may be sensed on the underside of an early morning drop of dew.