Chaos Program

A friend of mine and I have developed something of a tradition of drinking a shot in honor of famous people when they pass on. Not just any famous person will do. It has to be someone we, personally, consider interesting or significant. We did a shot for George Burns and one (or was it 2?) for Ronald Reagan.

On the other hand, we did not have a shot for Heath Ledger, despite his fantastic turn as the Joker because, a) We had not yet seen Dark Knight when he died and b) neither of us was very familiar with his previous work and so had no very strong reaction to his death. I’m not claiming it’s fair. There has to be some kind of system since the idea is just to show a token of esteem for someone, not to get massively drunk. If you want to get drunk, you can come up with much more frequent excuses to drink shots!

Anyway, after some consideration I think it’s unlikely we’ll do a shot for John Updike, despite his status as one of the most highly regarded American writers of all time. Or possibly, because of that status.I don’t remember for sure if I ever read anything by John Updike. I may have been forced to read one of his short stories in an English class at some time but I can’t be sure. I’m reasonably sure I never read any of his novels. There are several reasons for this. Here are some:

1. I don’t read things just because critics or English professors think I should.
2. There isn’t enough time in the world to read everything and I still haven’t even read all of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. (Don’t worry. They’re over there, on the shelf. I’ll get through them eventually)
3. Yes, as the above item implies, I prefer science fiction and sometimes fantasy. Mostly, Updike was not known for those.
4. When English professors (or, worse, critics) say a writer is important or merely very talented, I tend to think it likely that that writer’s work is unreadable and probably devoid of meaning. Years of harsh experience taught me that.
5. The last few years (10?) I read mostly textbooks. I’m working on a master’s degree currently. There’s a lot of reading.

And so on. Notice, however, that not one thing on this list has anything to do with Mr. Updike himself, or his actual writing. I have nothing against the man and am completely willing to believe that the world is diminished by his passing. My sympathies to his family.

Now I have to get back to reading about Malware.

Tags: creativity, obits

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 4:31 pm and is filed under literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.