Tarbox Town Criers
Sir: On opening my mailbox and catching a glimpse of Robert Vickrey's cover portrait of John Updike tumble out [April 26], I was instantly impressed with a feeling of Andrew Wyeth's nostalgic quality. Being a Wyeth fan, I immediately dove into your cover article and was quite pleased with myself and with Robert Vickrey on reading of John Earth's comparison of the artist Wyeth to the author Updike. I am now hurriedly on my way to our library to uncover every novel by Updike I can find.
MRS. ROBERT B. JOHNS Lenox, Mass.
Sir: Updike made a talented try at marrying priapism to poetry by using hard-breathing language as the preacher. Your review almost succeeded where Updike's novel fails—that is, to see beyond the current public American view of sexuality as a gee-whiz genital performance. But neither your reviewer nor Updike ever really found a way out of Updike's Tarbox. I believe you ought to get some reading done away from the Greenwich commuter's bar car. There's a whole landscape of really living people outside who aren't the lost adolescents of most modern fiction.
JAMES R. MILLMAN South Euclid, Ohio
Sir: Saying that Updike is not in the mainstream of contemporary American letters is manifestly absurd. Since when is creativity governed by conformity? Updike would not deign to wade in Mailer's muddied mainstream. Updike, in his personal life and his writings, is a lover. Mailer, in both, is a hater.
(MRS.) RUTH ROSENER New Haven, Conn.
Sir: It will be interesting to note whether future historians refer to this decade as the Sexties or the Sicksties.
C. M. WILLIAMS
Jacksonville
Sir: What a pity that Updike has dedicated his talent to the "boudoirsie."
JAMES L. SCHLAGHECK Washington, D.C.
Sir: Man, am I glad that we now have John Updike to tell us all about the ins and outs of Tarbox. Down here in our benighted society we have difficulty finding privacy with our own husbands, much less anyone else's. What with raising a family, providing for them and maintain ing the virtues, we just don't have time for marital adventures outside our own home. Although admittedly we have to resort from time to time to sending all the children to a wickedly expensive Disney film in order to attain dark at the top of the stairs.
H. A. BALLENGER Spartanburg, S.C.
Sir: Gee whiz, that kind of carryin' on has been all the rage from these Kansas plains clear out West to Hollywood and beyond. You mean it's just startin' to catch on back East?
EVELYNE L. GORDON Wichita, Kans.
Sir: I'd be interested in knowing why he picked the name Tarbox for the town in which the action, among other things, was laid. While reading, I watched carefully for a cause for civil action, but ended feeling more envious than damaged. In Pasadena, about the most daring thing mixed couples do that I know of, is play a fast game of croquet.
JOE W. TARBOX Pasadena, Calif.