E-mail a friendJohn Updike
airdate June 8, 2006
Writer John Updike has enjoyed success as a novelist, essayist and critic. He's won two Pulitzers and is one of the rare notables to win both the National Medal of Art and National Medal for the Humanities. His body of work also includes poetry and short stories. Encouraged by his mother to write, Updike attended Harvard, where he contributed to and edited the Lampoon. He started his career as a cartoonist, but shifted to poetry and prose. A former staffer with The New Yorker, his new novel is Terrorist.
John Updike
Tavis: Pleased to welcome John Updike to this program. The acclaimed novelist, poet, and literary critic has received just about every award a writer can get, including not one but two Pulitzers and the National Book Award. His latest novel is called "Terrorist, A Fictional Story Set in America in the Age of the War on Terror." John Updike, an honor to meet you.
John Updike: Thank you very much.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you on the program.
Updike: Honor to be on.
Tavis: How do you square those two things? A fictional story set in a very real world condition?
Updike: Well, some fiction relates, more or less, to the headlines, and the writer, like everybody else, reads the paper. And you try to use your imagination and get something out of it. So I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a terrorist, a young terrorist. And I tried to give a sympathetic portrait, really, of his motivations, his feelings. Don't know how well I succeeded, but that was the effort.
Tavis: Yeah. There's so much. Two or three things you said there right, just that fast, I want to pick apart. Let me start, though, by saying this is, by my read, a departure from your typical work. This is really pegged to, as I mentioned a moment ago, a news event, which is not what you typically do.
Updike: No, I don't, typically. Although my books in general have a certain period, a certain date, even. A year, or a couple of years. And this is located in the year 2004. It's after 9/11 but not now, not exactly now. And it involves an 18-year-old boy in northern New Jersey who was, well, it's a long story.
Tavis: That was my next question. Set the stage for me. Set the story for me.
Updike: Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy is the product of an Egyptian exchange student who disappeared when he was three, and an Irish-American mother who's sort of an artist and a Bohemian. At the age 11, he decides that he wants to start going to the mosque as kind of a tribute, perhaps, to his father.
I don't want to be a psychiatrist for him, but yes, that's his way, maybe, of coping with the father's absence. And so he becomes quite fervent and devout, and he slowly gets sucked into a terrorist plot which he's willing to sacrifice his life for.
Tavis: Tell me, one, how, to your earlier point, you put yourself in the mind of a terrorist, number one. Number two, a terrorist of a different ethnicity than yourself. And number three, a terrorist who's, respectfully, considerably younger than you are.
Updike: Yes, quite a lot.
Tavis: How do you put yourself in that mindset?
Updike: Well, I was 18 once, and I tried to remember that. (Laughs) What it was like. And I know some other young people. I have grandsons now, some of whom are about the age of 18. Not that they should be confused with this young man. So, I have some ties to the world of youth. And in the end, you just try. You do some reading, and a little thinking.
And I walked around northern New Jersey, looking at the city. The cities of northern New Jersey. And in the end, just sat down and tried to imagine. As to religion, it is about religion, in a way, this book. The boy is very much a believer, and he's protecting his God, as he sees it's from all the forces around him that would lead him to disbelief.
The opening sentence is something like, devils, these devils are trying to take my God from me. So I've been religious. Still am somewhat religious. And I thought that this was a way to get into the whole riddle of what makes some people terrorists, and what makes so many people in the world distrust and dislike the United States.
Tavis: I wanna come back to that later - see, you keep saying stuff that keeps me moving, trying to keep up with you. Your mind is still young, for certain. Let me come to this latter point you've just made now, and tie back to something you said earlier, if I might. Earlier, you used the word sympathetic. That you wanted to deliberately write a story that would be sympathetic to Ahmed's particular plight as a young man.
Tell me what the danger is, if there is danger for a writer, an American, a renowned American writer, to write a piece that is fiction, but nonetheless, set in a very real time. For those of us who are readers, where many Americans have issues, obviously, with terrorists. Have issues, legitimately or illegitimately, with certain members of that particular Muslim faith, and how they behave.
But you deliberately, knowing that as the background, knowing what the American reader thinks right now is X, decided to write a story that would contradict that. Does that make sense?
Updike: Yes. Yes, it was, in a way, an attempt to provoke a little thought and discussion. We are not generally given in this country to try to sympathize with terrorists, because they're evil people and we can't really imagine, we say, what they're thinking of. But I tried to write a story that showed their point, or his point of view.
He is a kind of a loner, my hero, whereas the people who are - we're being discussed in Canada now, were members of a group. But in many ways, it's similar. It is possible not just that people come up, arise in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are trying to kill American soldiers. But that there are home-grown terrorists. People who, out of one reason or another, feel more sympathy and love for the jihadists than they do for their own country.
Tavis: When you suggest that Americans are not given to, well, you didn't use a particular word. I don't want to put words in your mouth. If your suggestion was that Americans are not given to understanding, to introspection, to trying to feel for another's plight, if that is your sense, the point you were trying to make, why do you feel that way? And you might clarify what you were trying to say.
Updike: I suppose I begin with my own feelings, which are initially repulsion, like 9/11, what were these 19 men, most of them quite young, what were they thinking of? How could they do this? How could they willingly lay down their lives in this act of murder and destruction? So your first reaction is not to sympathize.
But I think we need to try to understand everybody. Part of fiction's role is to lead your sympathy into other avenues so you learn to read and love people that you would not want to sit down to dinner with. We're, in away, more open to others and thinking with them and feeling with them in fiction than we are in reality, where we tend to lead kind of narrow lives.
And so yeah, this was my attempt to say I have something to say about this kind of man and this kind of thinker and this kind of actor. And I liked him, 'cause in many ways, I identified with him. He's trying to defend his own identity against what he feels is an attempt all around him to erode it and to mock Allah, who is very real and important for him. At least at this point in his life.
Tavis: That was too juicy a morsel to not go back and pick apart, so I'm coming back to get that. When you say that you sympathize with him, that you understand him, what does John Updike, now I'm getting into your head. Now what does John Updike mean by that?
Updike: Well, that you can see why hatred of the U.S. and of materialism and of consumerism, or whatever you call it, but general, western culture. The culture of Capitalism and Democracy, why that would, not everybody would love it. I think Americans, at least of my generation, expect to be liked and loved and admired.
And we're sort of spoiled that way. So, here's a large group that announces it does not sympathize with our ideals. Distrusts our way of life. Thinks we we're too sexy, too selfish, too greedy, too wasteful. All these things. And there's some truth in all of it. Much of it. So, I can see how - I'm standing enough outside my own society to see how it could be the object of terror, a terror attack.
Tavis: See, I think that's a very informed conclusion. Some might argue it's too generous a read on how the world sees us. I tend to agree with you, for what it's worth. That said, what do you think that - let me step outside of the novel for just a second into the real world. Now, let me leave the fiction alone for a second and come to the non-fiction, the real world.
What's your sense of what happens long term to this place called America if we never come into the understanding of what the knowledge you've just shared with us? If we never, if we never start to see it in that way. If we never start to process or to be introspective about why they hate us so, why they don't like us, how we're viewed around the world. What's the danger in our never getting that?
Updike: There will be some danger, since a billion people, and they can exert quite a lot of force. And they've already done damage, both to our buildings and whatnot, and now they're scaring Canada, and we all live lives that are a little less free, I think, after 9/11. You don't fly a plane, don't go into an airport the way you used to, do you?
And so in that sense, they've succeeded in making us a little more fearful. The first title of my book was going to be "Land Of Fear." It was going to be about all the security precautions and all the ugly little barriers that are constructed around government buildings. I have great faith, though, in a certain resilience and willingness to learn on the part of the American people.
And part of the American government. It's not very fashionable to have many good words to say about government in general, and our government now, but I think the Iraq adventure - venture, let's call it, not an adventure - is working out poorly now. But I think there was some reason to it.
The Arab world is not as healthy and wealthy and happy as it should be. Let's face it. I think it's not all our fault. Some of it is, but we are basically scapegoats to vent their own frustrations, their own failures, their own unhappiness. I'm saying all this knowing it could be resented quite a lot by many Arabs and Arab-Americans. But I think we obviously have to make peace in general with the Islamic world, and clean up whatever messes we've made in the specific spots in the Mideast where we're present.
Tavis: Let me go back to pick this fiction book back up now again. Given your, to use your word of a moment ago, your adventure you're your venture into this kind of writing, pegged to news events and current affairs on some level, do you think you might do this again? Or you want to go back to more rabbits?
Updike: (Laughs) I wish I could go back to Rabbit, in a way. I was very at home with him, and nobody challenged my ability to animate Rabbit. But I killed him off because I was afraid of taking him too long. Running out of ideas; running out of good ideas. And so I retired him, and I'm sort of stuck without him. But I miss him. I miss him, in a way.
But yeah, I think my next novel will probably - I can't imagine what it's going to be, but it probably will be a little more domestic and a little less headline-oriented than this book.
Tavis: But there'll be no resurrecting the Rabbit? (Laughs)
Updike: That would be quite a blow.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Updike: That would be quite a miracle.
Tavis: Let me ask you right quick, in 30 seconds to go, first let me congratulate you. I saw that "New York Times" piece where they list your work, speaking of Rabbit, as one of the top 25, number five, in fact, but one of the top 25 best novel series of the last 25 years. Quite an honor, was it not?
Updike: I was pleased. I'd rather be on a list like that than off of it. Yes. (Laughs)
Tavis: (Laughs) Put very nicely. I can't even follow that up, so I'll leave that alone. The new book by John Updike, "Terrorist,' a novel. I think you'll enjoy the read as much as I've enjoyed this conversation. Mr. Updike, what a pleasure to meet you.
Updike: It's very nice to meet you.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you on the program.
Updike: Thanks.
Tavis: That's our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International, check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A. Thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.
Back to June 8, 2006