Frases de John Updike
John Updike
Data de nascimento: 18. Março 1932
Data de falecimento: 27. Janeiro 2009
Outros nomes: Con Apdayk, John Hoyer Updike
John Hoyer Updike foi um romancista, poeta, contista, crítico de arte e crítico literário estadunidense.
Formou-se na Universidade de Harvard em 1954 e passou um ano na Inglaterra, no Knox Fellowsship, na Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, em Oxford. De 1955 a 1957, trabalhou na The New Yorker, contribuindo com contos, poemas e críticas de livros.
Tornou-se famoso e reconhecido mundialmente com sua séria de romances Rabbit, iniciada em 1960, que seguem a vida do jogador de basquetebol Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, escritos num período de mais de trinta anos e pelos quais ganhou por duas vezes o Prêmio Pullitzer.
Também de sua autoria, As Bruxas de Eastwick, escrito em 1984, tornou-se um best-seller e grande sucesso no cinema, no filme homônimo estrelado por Jack Nicholson e Cher. Já o romance Pai-Nosso Computador de 1986 aborda a questão da existência de Deus em face da ciência e tecnologia.
Em sua obra constam doze livros de ficção, cinco volumes de poesia e uma peça de teatro.
Considerado um dos grandes romancistas contemporâneos norte-americanos, faleceu em 27 de janeiro de 2009, vítima de câncer do pulmão, em Beverly, no estado de Massachussets, onde residia.
Citações John Updike
„A América é uma grande conspiração para fazer você feliz.“
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy
The early stories, 1953-1975 - Página 413, John Updike - A.A. Knopf, 2003, ISBN 1400040728, 9781400040728 - 838 páginas
„O primeiro suspiro de adultério é a liberdade; depois dele, constrangimentos imitam o desenvolvimento do casamento.“
The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.
Couples - Página 456, John Updike - Knopf, 1968 - 458 páginas
„Sexo é como dinheiro, apenas o demais é suficiente.“
Sex is like money, only too much is enough
Couples - Página 437, John Updike - Knopf, 1968 - 458 páginas
„Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.“
Fonte: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6
Contexto: Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.
„It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.“
Fonte: My Father's Tears and Other Stories
„Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.“
Fonte: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 3
„I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible.“
— John Updike, livro The Centaur
The Centaur (1963)
Contexto: I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible. My father for all his mourning moved in the atmosphere of such laughter. He would have puzzled you. He puzzled me. His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.
„The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.“
— John Updike, livro Rabbit, Run
Rabbit, Run (1960)
Contexto: He feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it. No flight would reach it. It was here, beneath the town, in these smells and these voices, forever behind him. The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.
„The pain of the world is a crater all these syrups and pills a thousandfold would fail to fill.“
— John Updike, livro Rabbit Redux
Rabbit Redux (1969)
Contexto: His insides are beginning to feel sickly. The pain of the world is a crater all these syrups and pills a thousandfold would fail to fill.
„Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe.“
Fonte: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6
Contexto: Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-Thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
„His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.“
— John Updike, livro The Centaur
The Centaur (1963)
Contexto: I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible. My father for all his mourning moved in the atmosphere of such laughter. He would have puzzled you. He puzzled me. His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.
„Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is.“
Act I
Buchanan Dying (1974)
Contexto: Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows.
„The city overwhelmed our expectations.“
On London, in “A Madman,” New Yorker (22 December 1962)
Contexto: The city overwhelmed our expectations. The Kiplingesque grandeur of Waterloo Station, the Eliotic despondency of the brick row in Chelsea … the Dickensian nightmare of fog and sweating pavement and besmirched cornices.
