Dragons - Chapter 82 (DRAFT)

The next few hours were a blur. Ruthie must have helped me to my feet. She must’ve helped me back to my office. Offered to call someone: my wife, my doctor, 911, an undertaker -- someone. I must’ve chosen Jenny and this time Ruthie must’ve reached her. At some point Jenny appeared at my door and helped me out of my office, down the gauntlet of the office hallway, into the elevator, down into the parking garage, into her car, out onto the road.

She spoke to me, she must have; she was always speaking to me -- but I must not have answered her. I can remember sitting in the car, leaning pathetically against the window with my coat draped over my head, wanting to die. She must’ve gotten me home and out of the car and upstairs to our bedroom, where she must have helped me get under the bed covers with a tent of pillows over my head, turning off all the lights, lowering the shades, and closing the door.

All these things must have happened because that’s how I found myself a few hours later when I began to swim back to consciousness. Had I slept? I didn’t think so, but it was hard to know. Everything had hurt so bad, my head, the light, my eyes -- I had just curled myself up into a ball and had blocked everything else out.

Now I was feeling somewhat better. I sat up, surprised to find myself still in my work clothes, with my shoes flopped over and on top of each other on the floor. I swung my stocking feet out and sat precariously on the edge of the bed. With a croaking voice, I called out for Jenny.

The bedroom door opened slowly and my wife poked her head into the room.

“Yes?”

“What happened?”

She opened the door fully and stepped into the room. “You had a migraine. Are you feeling better?”

A migraine? Why did that sound familiar?

“Not really,” I said, realizing that there was an emptiness in my belly, but the thought of food was still making me nauseous. “Are you sure? I felt like I was dying.”

“Pretty sure,” she said, coming over and sitting gingerly next to me on the bed. “Both the Internet and the triage nurse agree, based on your symptoms.”

“What’s a triage nurse?” I knew what the Internet was.

“At the clinic,” she said, placing a hand on my back and giving me a gentle rub. “You have an appointment there this afternoon, if you’re feeling up to it.”

It was too much information, coming in too fast. The questions were exploding in my brain the way flashes of light previously had. I closed my eyes.

“What time is it?”

Jenny looked at the bedside clock. “One ten,” she said.

“Fuck,” I said, both believing and not believing it at the same time. “I have a call with Wes Howard at two.”

Even with my eyes closed I could sense the look that Jenny was giving me. “Can’t you reschedule it? Your doctor’s appointment is at three.”

I shook my head. “I can do both.”

Even I didn’t believe that, but there was nothing else that I could say. Like a hundred other things that had happened to me over the past several months, I was just going to have to start juggling another ball. 

“No, you can’t, Alan. You’re going to have to reschedule.”

I leaned into her heavily, and she wrapped her arm around me. “Can you do it for me?” I asked. “Maybe tomorrow afternoon? Or the day after?”

“You want me to call Wes Howard?”

“No,” I said. “The doctor’s appointment. Can’t you reschedule that?”

“Alan.”

“Please! Please, Jenny. Tomorrow, or the day after. I’m going to talk to Wes and then I’m going back to bed. I don’t think I can do anything else today.”

She started to argue with me, trying to convince me with her logic, but, as usual, it was a special kind of Jenny logic which presupposed that she was always right. Throughout our marriage, her arguments had always been presented more to persuade on that essential point, and not necessarily on the merits of any particular point of order. Mentally, I wasn’t up for the sparring match. I knew I would have to do that soon enough with Wes Howard. I gently pushed her away.

“Please. Jenny. Just go make me something small to eat. I think I can eat something small. And then I can talk to Wes. Let’s at least get that done before we attempt anything else.”

I think she would have argued with me some more but, oddly, Jacob came to my rescue, appearing at our door and also asking for something to eat. It made me wonder for the first time where he had been through my whole ordeal. Jenny didn’t bring him to the office, did she? But if she didn’t, where had he been? Jenny hadn’t left him home by himself, had she?

More questions causing more pain. I had to push them away, and gave my wife another gentle shove. Please. Jenny. Go.

Thankfully, she did, taking our son quietly with her, and I gave myself just two more minutes of dark silence, before getting shakily to my feet and getting myself positioned for my phone call at two. I looked in the corner where I usually kept my briefcase, saw that it wasn’t there, and realized that it, along with all my notes for the upcoming leadership meeting were likely back at the office -- my “To Do” list likely still open on my computer screen and my folders haphazardly stacked in the stand-up file I traditionally kept at my elbow.

I considered shouting downstairs to Jenny. Had she grabbed my briefcase and brought it or anything else home with us? But I decided against it, suspecting that shouting was something that would likely put me back in the dark hole I had just emerged from. Then I considered making my way downstairs to look for my briefcase and to ask Jenny about it, but dismissed that idea just as quickly. In my current state, I’d likely trip on the stairs and wind up breaking my neck.

For the first time I realized that the lump of my cell phone was still in my front pants pocket. I pulled it out and sat back down on the edge of the bed. I flipped it open, squinting at the light of its little screen in the dark room, and began hunting through my list of contacts. Was Wes Howard there? Had I ever called him on my cell phone before? I quickly determined that the answer to both questions was no.

I looked up and sighed. I slowly went through my options, while listening to the sounds of Jenny clunk and clatter around in the kitchen. I found a different contact, dialed the number, and pressed the phone against my ear.

“Good afternoon, Ruthie MacDonald speaking.”

“Ruthie. It’s Alan.”

“Alan! Oh my god. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Hey, I need you to do me a favor.”

“Where are you?”

“Can you-- What?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m home. I just woke up from a long nap, and realized that I have a call with Wes Howard at two.

“Are you feeling better? Everyone here is very worried about you.”

At first I thought Ruthie was being her usual motherly self, but something about her tone when she said ‘everyone’ made me suspicious.

“Are they?”

“Yes! You gave everyone quite a scare. You looked like you were dying.”

I kept my eyes focused on the fraying laces of my overturned shoes. “I felt like I was dying. But I think I’ve slept it off, whatever it was. You can tell Mary not to worry. I’m still in the land of the living.”

There was a strange silence on the line, and I had to pull the phone away from my ear to make sure I was still connected.

“Ruthie? Are you there.”

“Yes, Alan. I’m glad you’re feeling better. What can I do for you?”

There was that strange tone again, this time on the ‘I’m’. I shook my head to dismiss it, but had to stop when even that made me dizzy.

“I need Wes’s number. I didn’t bring any of my files with me and it’s not in my phone. Can you give it to me?”

“Sure,” she said, as I listened to her fingernails clicking away on her keyboard. “Do you have something to write with?”

“Yes,” I said, holding the phone in the crook of my neck to free up the hands needed to retrieve a notepad and pen from the nightstand. “Go ahead.”

She gave me the number and I wrote it down. “Okay, thanks.” I said.

“Take care of yourself, Alan.”

“Uh huh,” I said, my mind already pivoting to the next phone call I would need to make. “You, too.”

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.

Abel was running. He was alone and running, hard at first, heavily, but then easily and well. The road curved out in front of him and rose away in the distance. He could not see the town. The valley was gray with rain, and snow lay out upon the dunes. It was dawn. The first light had been deep and vague in the mist, and then the sun flashed and a great yellow glare fell under the cloud. The road verged upon clusters of juniper and mesquite, and he could see the black angles and twists of wood beneath the hard white crust; there was a shine and glitter on the ice. He was running, running. He could see the horses in the fields and the crooked line of the river below.

For a time the sun was whole beneath the cloud; then it rose into eclipse, and a dark and certain shadow came upon the land. And Abel was running. He was naked to the waist, and his arms and shoulders had been marked with burnt wood and ashes. The cold rain slanted down upon him and left his skin mottled and streaked. The road curved out and lay into the bank of rain beyond, and Abel was running. Against the winter sky and the long, light landscape of the valley at dawn, he seemed to be standing still, very little and alone.

This is how Momaday’s novel begins. I had to look up Dypaloh. It is from the storytelling tradition of the Jemez, a Native American tribe in the Southwest that built many of the pueblos tourists can now visit. “Dypaloh” is how their storytellers begin their stories, much like storytellers of a different tradition might say “Once upon a time.”

Abel, like Momaday, is a Native American, and House Made of Dawn is a story that focuses on Abel’s alienation, both from the world of his ancestral traditions, and from the ever-encroaching world of modern life. He belongs in neither place, and the metaphoric running with which Momaday opens the novel, is revealed in its closing paragraphs to have ritualistic significance as well.

Abel did not return to his grandfather’s house. He walked hurriedly southward along the edge of town. At the last house he paused and took off his shirt. His body was numb and ached with cold, and he knelt at the mouth of the oven. He reached inside and placed his hands in the frozen crust and rubbed his arms and chest with ashes. And he got up and went on hurriedly to the road and south on the wagon road in the darkness. There was no sound but his own quick, even steps on the hard crust of the snow, and he went on and on, far out on the road.

The pale light grew upon the land, and it was only a trick of the darkness at first, the slow stirring and standing away of the night; and then the murky, leaden swell of light upon the snow and the dunes and the black evergreen spines. And the east deepened into light above the black highland, soft and milky and streaked with gray. He was almost there, and he saw the runners standing away in the distance.

He came along to them, and they huddled in the cold together, waiting, and the pale light before the dawn rose up in the valley. A single cloud lay over the world, heavy and still. It lay out upon the black mesa. Smudging out the margin and spilling over the lee. But at the saddle there was nothing. There was only the clear pool of eternity. They held their eyes upon it, waiting, and, too slow and various to see, the void began to deepen and to change: pumice, and pearl, and mother-of-pearl, and the pale and brilliant blush of orange and of rose. And then the deep hanging rim ran with fire and the sudden cold flare of dawn struck upon the arc, and the runners sprang away.

The soft and sudden sound of their going, swift and breaking away all at once, startled him, and he began to run after them. He was running, and his body cracked open with pain, and he was running on. He was running and there was no reason to run but the running itself and the land and the dawn appearing. The sun rose up in the saddle and shone in shafts upon the road across the snow-covered valley and the hills, and the chill of the night fell away and it began to rain. He saw the slim black bodies of the runners in the distance, gliding away without sound through the slanting light and the rain. He was running and a cold sweat broke out upon him and his breath heaved with the pain of running. His legs buckled and he fell in the snow. The rain fell around him in the snow and he saw his broken hands, how the rain made streaks upon them and dripped soot upon the snow. And he got up and ran on. He was alone and running on. All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running on, and he was past caring about the pain. Pure exhaustion laid hold of his mind, and he could see at least without having to think. He could see the canyon and the mountains and the sky. He could see the rain and the river and the field beyond. He could see the dark hills at dawn. He was running, and under his breath he began to sing. There was no sound, and he had no voice; he had only the words of a song. And he went running on the rise of the song. House made of pollen, house made of dawn. Qtsedaba.

The novel begins and ends in the same place. And “Qtsedaba” is another word from Jemez storytelling tradition, signalling the end of a tale. By enclosing his novel in this form, Momaday, like his character Abel, seems to be trying to bridge two worlds -- in Momaday’s case, the tradition of oral storytelling handed down by his ancestors with the English-language tradition of the written novel.

Some of this I had to look up on the Internet, seeing as though I knew nothing about Momaday and House Made of Dawn before picking it up. No wait, I take that back. I knew one thing about it: it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, the only reason it had found its way onto my reading list.

My own reaction to it was more cryptic. Before looking into its backstory, I would have characterized it as an evocative novel, less about people and plot and more about emotion and loss. Even the title seemed obscure to me. A “house made of dawn” is mentioned several times in the novel, but I could never quite wrap my mind around what it was or what it might represent. The light framed by a mesa? A peyote dream? A song of one’s ancestors? That which had been lost? It seems to be all of these things at once, and something that seemed meant more to be felt than understood.

But perhaps I was wrong about that. There is a surprisingly lucid description of its plot on its Wikipedia entry, giving one the impression that it is clearer and better paced than I remember it being. Yes, sure, all those things you describe happened in the novel, but they did not seem to make the same kind of impression on my recollection than they perhaps would have in a more traditional novel.

And, evidently, I am not alone. The same Wikipedia entry lists several critical appraisals of the novel, in which the critics, while acknowledging Momaday’s talent, recognize the singular challenge he has set for himself: “attempting to transliterate Indian culture, myth, and sensibility into an alien art form, without loss.”

Yeah, I guess that could be it. I didn’t have the context to understand what Momaday was attempting, nor, it may seem, the awareness needed to pull the myths Momaday is expounding through the very filter through which he has chosen to transmit them. In other words, House Made of Dawn is an oral Native American story told through an written Anglo American form. No wonder something got lost in translation.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 81 (DRAFT)

I tried to focus on my work. In times past, work was always a kind of refuge for me. A thing I could do where progress could always be made. Even if it was nothing more than entering numbers in a spreadsheet, editing an article for our newsletter, or sending out a batch of emails and tracking the responses that came back -- they were all definable and executable tasks, boxes to check, steps to advance, goals to achieve.

But now there were so many things on my plate that there was no real refuge to be found. I kept a document on my computer desktop that served as my on-going “To Do” list, and as I opened it that morning I remember it spanning more than four pages of single-spaced 12-point type. Some of it was organized by project category, but much of it wasn’t. A whole extra page had just been added, representing the immediate tasks that Gerald had left behind, unceremoniously given to me in the same manner I had inherited items from Michael, and before that from Susan. 

It seemed like the first thing I should do was go through Gerald’s list and try to organize it and then prioritize it, line it up by project against the projects I already had and try to decide how to cadence them all in a way that the most pressing things got done first. But that seemed overwhelming to me, so I picked something simple off my existing list and began tackling that, far preferring to get something, anything checked off rather than try to comprehend the totality of the challenge I was facing.

As I worked, keystrokes and mouse clicks the only sound emanating from my workspace, I kept noticing a kind of glitch on my monitor. There was a little fuzzy patch on the screen. Any set of characters that tried to penetrate it got smudged beyond recognition. But the phenomenon was fleeting in a strange kind of way. When I tried to focus my attention on it, it seemed to slide off to  the side, but still there, wiggling and wavering in my peripheral vision.

I looked up and away from the monitor, and realized it wasn’t a computer malfunction at all. Staring up into empty space, it was still there, stuck against my blank office wall. And, frighteningly, when I closed my eyes, it was even still there, seemingly projected against the dark insides of my eyelids. Worse, it seemed to be getting bigger, now curving down into a tremendous crescent that obscured fully a fourth of my optical field.

What the fuck? Was I having a stroke? A brain aneurysm?

I got up from my desk, and had to steady myself. I was dizzy and I had a headache. I left my office and began making my way down the hall, trailing my hand along one wall to keep myself on course and eventually made it to the office restrooms, glad that one of the single, unisex rooms was unoccupied. Not knowing who might have seen my awkward journey nor what they might have thought about it, I closed and locked the door behind me and made my clumsy way over to the mirror.

I tried to look at myself, tried to look into my own eye, convinced that there would be the bright red splotch of broken blood vessels there, but the visual distortion was now so great that I couldn’t see anything clearly. I was dizzier than ever, and I fumbled and stumbled my way over to the toilet and sat down on its lowered seat.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head as gently as I could against the cold tile wall next to the toilet. I still had no idea what was happening to me, but was now too disoriented and experiencing too much nausea to seriously contemplate any wild speculations. The shimmery waves of light and shadow continued to pulse and surge in the darkness of my tortured solitude, and I began to lose all sense of my body in space. Was I sitting upright? Was I laying down? Was I spinning helplessly through yawning space? I couldn’t really tell, but I was suspecting more and more that it was the latter.

An intense way of nausea hit me and nearly vomited. Without opening my eyes -- it was too bright and painful to even open them a crack -- I slid myself down onto the floor between the wall and the toilet, pushed the seat up, and hung my head into the bowl. Without willing it, I started to retch -- once, twice, three times, each heave causing bright bursts of pain in my throat, in my neck, at my temples, and across the top of my head, but nothing but flimsy strands of mucus came up and into my mouth. When the retching was finished, I tried spitting them into the toilet bowl, but left most of the expulsion hanging off my chin and bottom lip.

I was dying. I had never experienced anything like this before, had no idea what it was, and found myself reasonably convinced that I was dying. The unisex bathroom was going to be my final resting place. Eventually, someone would have to break down the door and cart my mortal remains away.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. “Hello?” an unrecognizable voice said. “Is somebody in there?”

“I’ll be out in a minute!” I heard my own voice respond, exactly as if things were normal, as if it was simply the custodian, checking to see that the room was unoccupied before coming in to clean it.

I didn’t bother listening for the person -- whoever it was -- to knock or speak again. I didn’t even want to think about the fact that I was at the office, and that at some point, assuming I didn’t actually die, I would have to go back out there and face a group of mostly strangers and antagonists with my own overwhelming and undisclosed weakness. I suddenly had a vision of myself laying prostrate in front of Mary, fluids leaking from my orifices, begging her to help me, for the love of God, to call an ambulance.

Fuck that. I remembered the cell phone in my pocket. I wasn’t able to do anything with it, but I remembered it was there. If I should start to feel better, I realized, I might be able to pull it out of my pocket, call Jenny, and ask her to come get me. But how would she get me? She couldn’t come here and carry me out. I’d have to find a way to crawl downstairs without anyone seeing me. Crawl down to the parking garage and get in her car. I could do that. Couldn’t I?

All this thinking was making things worse. I dry heaved again, and then rested my head on the lip of the toilet bowl. Willing my worrying brain to be silent, and focusing only on pulsing flashes that continued unabated on the inside of my eyelids, I zoned out, marking neither the passage of time nor my chances for a positive outcome.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the symptoms began to abate. At some point, I was able to open my eyes a bit, and could actually make out objects in the center of my vision and at the appropriate focal length. Experimentally, I lifted my head up and leaned myself back against the bathroom wall. I looked at my watch, trying to get a sense of how much time had passed, but since I didn’t mark the time I came in, it was difficult to come up with a precise estimate. Twenty minutes maybe? Surely no more than a half hour.

Now I did fish my phone out of my pants pocket. Flipping it open and squinting at it with one partially-opened eye, I pushed the necessary buttons to make my home phone ring. I placed it against my ear and waited patiently for Jenny to answer.

After four rings, our home answering machine picked up. I hung up on my end, and made the difficult dialing maneuver again. I got four more rings, and then the click of the answering machine picking up again.

Okay. Fine. I’m going to have to do this myself, then. I can do it. At least I think I can.

I did not move for at least ten more minutes. By that time I could hold both eyes partially open, and felt strong enough to push myself back up to my feet. This I shortly accomplished, and weakly made my way over to the sink. I splashed some water on my face. I dried my hands on some paper towels. I straightened my shirt as best I could.

Here goes.

I had only one objective in mind. Make it back to my office. Once there, I would re-evaluate my next step. Thinking too far ahead felt paralyzing. It was simpler, and somehow more achievable, if I only attempted one thing at a time.

Slowly, I opened the bathroom door. The light was even brighter outside and at first I had to shrink away from it. But I pushed myself forward. Thankfully, there was no one in the short corridor immediately outside the restrooms, and I used that space to carefully regulate my gait so that I could make it down the major thoroughfare without attracting any attention.

Or so I thought.

“Alan?” It was Ruthie. I was having trouble holding my head up, but I recognized the blouse and flouncy skirt. “Alan, are you all right?”

“No,” I said, seeing no reason to lie, and no reason to stop my forward progress. “No, I’m not feeling well. I’m going home.”

She reversed direction and began walking beside me. I felt her grip on my arm as I stumbled into the wall and stopped. Goddammit, the lights were just too bright out here. When I cracked my eyes open even a little, it felt like lightning shooting into my brain. Another wave of dizziness overcame me, and, like a marionette with its strings cut, I crumpled to the floor.

“Alan!” I heard Ruthie say, but I did my best to block her out, too. Even the sound of her voice hurt, and it felt like the only way to respond was to try and crawl inside my own navel. In my misery, I was no longer worried that I was going to die. More than anything else, I pathetically hoped that someone would kill me.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source

http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

This is what I call a prose novel -- something that can be delightful to read for its turns of phrase and picturesque phrasings -- but which, in the final analysis, seems to be more about its prose than its plot, pacing, or purpose.

Here’s a taste from the novel’s opening pages.

She returned to putting up Mason jars of spaghetti sauce, sauce for more spaghetti than she and her children could consume even if bewitched for a hundred years in an Italian fairy tale, jar upon jar lifted steaming from the white-speckled blue boiler on the trembling, singing round wire rack.

“She” is Alexandra Spofford, one of the three titular “witches” of Eastwick.

It was, she dimly perceived, some kind of ridiculous tribute to her present lover, a plumber of Italian ancestry. Her recipe called for no onions, two cloves of garlic minced and sautéed for three minutes (no more, no less; that was the magic) in heated oil, plenty of sugar to counteract acidity, a single grated carrot, more pepper than salt; but the teaspoon of crumbled basil is what catered to virility, and the dash of belladonna provided the release without which virility is merely a murderous congestion.

Alexandra is a middle-aged widow, the matriarch of her coven of two other similarly situated women, and her “magic” is more typically expressed in Updike’s stylized symbolism than in more overt actions of witchcraft.

All this must be added to her own tomatoes, picked and stored on every window sill these weeks past and now sliced and fed to the blender: ever since, two summers ago, Joe Marino had begun to come into her bed, a preposterous fecundity had overtaken the staked plants, out in the side garden where the southwestern sun slanted in through the line of willows each long afternoon. The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. Picking the watery orange-red orbs, Alexandra felt she was cupping a giant lover’s testicles in her hand.

Maybe you get the point. Updike has a theme, and he’s going to squeeze every last drop of tomato juice out of it -- trying to delight you with his prose at the same time he’s clobbering you over the head with it.

She recognized as she labored in her kitchen the something sadly menstrual in all this, the bloodlike sauce to be ladled upon the white spaghetti. The fat white strings would become her own white fat. This female struggle of hers against her own weight: at the age of thirty-eight she found it increasingly unnatural. In order to attract love must she deny her own body, like a neurotic saint of old? Nature is the index and context of all health and if we have an appetite it is there to be satisfied, satisfying thereby the cosmic order. Yet she sometimes despised herself as lazy, in taking a lover of a race so notoriously tolerant of corpulence.

The whole novel is like this. It weaves its spell over you, but when it’s finished you have to sit back and wonder what the heck it was all about.

It seems to be saying something. The Wikipedia entry I read on it talks about the controversy with which it was met. Did Updike write a feminist novel? Alexandra and her coven, after all, rise in their power only after their husbands have been dispatched. Or did he write a sexist one? After all, Alexandra and her coven succumb to the wily charms of Darryl Van Horne (so clearly the metaphoric devil in this allegorical tale that one barely needs to mention it). Or did Updike write a satirical novel? After all, Alexandra and her coven only rise and fall amidst the bevy of blinkered characters that populate Eastwick, a New England town that can only exist in Updike’s imagination because its patterns and passions must exist in his actual experience.

Yes. In the final analysis, I would have to say that Updike wrote exactly the kind of novel you might want this one to be. Feminist. Sexist. Satiric. Pick your poison -- or perhaps your witch’s potion. It’s all there for you to find if you look hard enough.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.