Sunday 26 October 2008

JOHN UPDIKE in GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Today’s Guardian.co.uk carries an interview with John Updike.

Excerpts:

On creativity - “When you sit at your desk, if you're lucky there's a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin. It's what Keats called negative capability. There has to be some gap between you and the other life, which the creative spark can jump across.”

On politics – “'I'm for Obama, 100 per cent,' said Updike. He has a personal reason for his enthusiasm: his memoir Self-Consciousness is dedicated to his two half-African grandsons and contains a letter to the boys, assuring them that all Americans are 'of mixed blood'. 'Things have moved on since I wrote that. I now have three grandchildren who are Obama's colour: my daughter married a Ghanaian, and my son has a Kenyan wife. The colour brown has come around, as the song says!
'I really think Obama would regenerate this worn-out country. I'm such a believer that I probably won't be able to watch the debate tonight. I get so upset when I think about the alternative. McCain is blameable for choosing Palin as his running mate. She's a bird-brain, she annoys me terribly.”





Full interview HERE

2 comments:

Julia Bohanna said...

Palin is more than a bird-brain - that's actually quite a gentle rebuke. She's has done many dubious things, including trying to deregulate polar bears from the endangered species list. The woman is gun-toting crazy.

Updike on the other hand.....is sublime. May he live forever, or thereabouts...........

Vanessa Gebbie said...

Yup, Mr Updike is a good egg.

I was reading about Palin in the newspaper yesterday, and my blood was running cold. She refuses to listen to argument, insists that if she thinks something is so, then it IS so - or you get fired.

So - what hope has the world if she gets to power... won't listen to advisors, and has little grasp of international affairs?