Emily and John--and maybe "Faith in a Tree"

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see -
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

This by the divine Miss Em--and this by NYT on John Updike. (from "Gods and Monsters," by Gail Caldwell)

For all the hosannas or complaints aimed at John Updike, we tend to regard him as the author of a certain kind of novel: gorgeous prose, white-guy existential despair, sex in the suburbs. These are the cliches about Updike, of course, grounded in fact but limited and unfair. In his half-century as a grand master, he has written, sometimes beautifully and sometimes badly, about art, politics, witches, science, Shakespeare, and yes, lots and lots of brightly lit sex. But his greatest and most persistent eloquence as a subject has been faith -- faith in some semblance or possibility of God, faith in the crack of light that defines a day, faith in the presence, joyful or anguished, of the "inaudible tumult" of the soul.

I think this is a dead-on evaluation of John Updike's thematic concern--this same "vision quest" is evident in his books on art, too. I have Terrorist on my to-read-after-MFA list.

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The NYT also had a recent survey of the best book of American fiction published in the last 25 years: Beloved was the top vote-getter. Updike's Rabbit books were high in the ratings, too. Toni Morrison is a fabulous writer--so is Mr. Updike. She writes gorgeous, emotional "poetic" prose--he is master of the sentence, of characterization. I don't know for whom I'd vote--does it have to be either/or? I was surprised to see that some writers really slammed Morrison--Cynthia Ozick, for one. I think she's retreading the ground where Stanley Crouch (think that's his name) first trampled on Beloved. Morrison is a genius--I don't know whether I prefer Song of Solomon to Beloved, but I'm glad for me it doesn't have to be either. (And Song's outside the 25-year limit).

Where were the other women on the list? Marilynn Robinson's Housekeeping was there--but where was Gilead? Joyce Carol Oates? Anne Tyler? Shirley Hazzard? Jane Smiley--Horse Heaven and A Thousand Acres are fabulous, totally different reads.

And, if Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From qualified, where was Grace Paley's Enormous Changes at the Last Minute? Where's Andre Dubus?

Edwin P. Jones made the list--and should for some time to come...his writing's smart and heartbreaking. And so did Tim O'Brien..."The Things They Carried" is the sort of fiction to which I aspire. I cannot think of a better story.

Don Delillo's work I have trouble reading. Ditto for Cormac McCarthy--but the work there is worth it. I like big books, though, and I wonder about Richard Price--where's Clockers? No one else writes like he does...

Just curious...I guess I'd have to expand the list and add Nabokov, N. West, H. James, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Peter Taylor--on a list of best American fiction writers of the 20th century? Whom do you think deserves to be there?

Add John Cheever and serve immediately...