RIP America's Most Overesteemed Writer

Fosco Lives! bids a fond farewell to John Updike, known around these parts as The Most Overesteemed Man in American Letters. Updike is well-known for anthropomorphizing bunnies, making sex repulsive, and, well, being John Updike.

Fosco has read several of Updike's novels and each one is more unbearable than the last (especially his gimmicky "home-grown American terrorist" novel). This is not to say that Updike was talentless. Fosco does recall one or two short stories that were pretty good. And Updike's art criticism is pretty decent, especially his meditation on Renoir:

Renoir does not quite rank with the heroic masters of early modern painting--specifically, with his friends Monet and Cézanne. Compared with either, he didn't look hard enough. He saw what he wanted to see, and turned it as he aged into an inward vision, a mythology. [...] The brushstrokes turn greasier, the colors rawer, the drawing vaguer. In the end the people all look Mexican.

This is a critical bullseye, I would say, but we must remember that an occasional perceptive comment should not make one into a titan of American letters (deserving of a front page NYTimes obit).

So how did Updike come to be so overesteemed? The definitive history of this phenomenon is yet to be written; however, Fosco suspects it has something to do with the 1960s-70s and suburban adultery.

Updike had held the title of "Most Overesteemed Man in American Letters" since the death of Norman Mailer in 2007. Mailer had held the title for almost twenty years, with a brief hiatus from 1996-1999 when David Foster Wallace held the distinction.

Who does the title pass on to now? Unfortunately, David Foster Wallace is dead, as is Hunter S. Thompson. Robert Olen Butler may overly esteem himself, but I'm not sure anyone else likes him at all. Philip Roth and Don DeLillo are both highly esteemed, but deservedly so, in Fosco's judgment. Similarly, I think Cormac McCarthy could not be overesteemed. Are there any women who qualify? (After all, this title doesn't have to go to a man.) Again, Fosco believes that the esteem for Toni Morrison is entirely justified.

Richard Ford is a possibility, but he's actually pretty good and people don't really talk about him much anymore. We are probably going to have to go down one tier to find our new titleholder. In the second tier, I think Jeffrey Eugenides is a strong candidate. But instead, I am going to award the title of Most Overesteemed American Man of Letters to Michael Chabon. Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize-winner (for a ridiculously bad novel about comic books), as well as a promoter of stupid genre fiction. He has scraggly rock-star hair.

Congratulations, Michael Chabon! May you continue to be scandalously over-rated for many years to come.

Judy Blume Is Next

Although this news is not exclusive to Fosco Lives! (like our recent report of the death of Roberto "Len" Butler), we are sorry to note the passing of author Madeleine L'Engle. You can read the NYTimes obit.

Fosco recalls being thrilled by Ms. L'Engle's fiction, especially A Wrinkle in Time, as a seventh-grader. Fosco's English teacher Mrs. Eycleshymer (seriously!) assigned all of the L'Engle books to him for extra credit reading (yes, Young Fosco was just that obnoxious). It was even more thrilling when, a year or so later, Mrs. Eycleshymer and Young Fosco were able to attend a reading by Ms. L'Engle at a nearby community college. Young Fosco was selected by Mrs. Eycleshymer to be allowed publicly to ask Ms. L'Engle a question.

Young Fosco asked: "Which of your books is your favorite and why?"

Madeleine L'Engle answered: "You may as well ask me which of my children is my favorite."

To this day, Fosco considers this answer to be bullshit. Parents obviously have favorite children; there's no reason that authors shouldn't have favorite works. Fosco certainly knows which of his creative or academic endeavors he likes best. The nice thing about choosing the favorite of your textual progeny is that the other books don't get jealous and get pregnant to try to get your attention. Actually, come to think of it, Fosco still slightly resents her for that answer.

I would love to be able to say that Ms. L'Engle's books were important to the development of Young Fosco. Or that they somehow made Fosco who he is today. To tell the truth, Adult Fosco doesn't remember anything about any of her books. Was there time travel? That sounds about right. Precocious kids? Signs point to yes. Talking cartoon bats? Sure. Why not.

He does remember a diagram of a tesseract in one of the novels that completely blew his mind. There was this whole thing about trying to imagine the two-dimensional diagram in four dimensions. Fosco can honestly say that this was the last time he thought math was cool.

Actually, if you want to see a really nifty animated version of a tesseract, please check this out. But even so, math still isn't fun. Math: it's never fun. Oh, and it's completely useless.

What Fosco learned from Mother Teresa

Fosco doesn't like to discuss religion in polite company; and if my conversation with you here at Fosco Lives! isn't polite, I don't know what it is. Aside from a few good-natured jokes about the Morms, Fosco prefers to live his unrepentantly atheistic life and ignore all the silliness about this Jebus Jesus that people keep talking about. This is the understanding here at Fosco Lives!: let's not talk god.

Fosco is going to break this agreement to make a brief comment about the soon-to-be-released letters of Saintish Mother Teresa. This collection reveals that Mother Teresa may have had (gasp!) doubts about her faith and the existence of god, revealing what is described by the NYTimes as a "profound darkness." From the NYT:

"I have no Faith--I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart--& make me suffer untold agony," she wrote in an undated letter.

In 1956, she wrote: "Such deep longing for God and...repulsed empty no faith no love no zeal. ... Heaven means nothing pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything."

Mother Teresa acknowledged the apparent contradiction with per public persona, describing her ever-present smile as "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything."

Some writings seem to suggest she doubted God's existence. She wrote in 1959: "What do I labour for? If there be no God--there can be no soul--if there is no Soul then Jesus You also are not true."

Now Fosco has no interest in snarking at Mother Teresa. Even taking into account what Christopher Hitchens has (persuasively) argued, I still find Mother Teresa to be a lot more saint-like than say... me. Or Robert Olen Butler (R.I.P.). No, the target of Fosco's ire here is not MT herself, but rather anyone who thinks that christianity produces peace of mind.

Now Fosco's mind has a long and proud tradition of inquietude. And on several occasions has Fosco been assured by some glassy-eyed christo-zombie that a life of faith is pure blisssssssss. Fosco was once told (at a school board meeting, no less!) that only god could bring quiet to his troubled mind. And at least when Fosco is on an airplane or insomniac in the middle of the night, that kind of promise can seem pretty appealing.

But look at Saint Albanian Nun! This is what Mother Teresa's doubts suggest to me: the key to peace of mind is not faith in god, but rather near-vegetable idiocy. Apparently, even Mother Teresa was too smart for that.

(Of course, part of the Vatican's point here is that MT performed her saintly deeds despite her doubts--she lived a faith she didn't feel. Fine. I can deal with that. We can productively disagree over whether or not that's inspirational or pathetic--or some of both.)

So the next time Fosco finds himself in existential crisis in the middle of the night, he's going to think about Mother Teresa. And then he's going to roll over and make out with his boyfriend Oz, secure in the knowledge that christians all over the country are having similar midnight anxieties (and that most of them do not have a boyfriend with such a cute ass).

A Fosco Lives! Exclusive: Robert Olen Butler Dead.

Fosco refuses to be outdone by Perez Hilton's numerous (and increasingly less convincing) announcements that Cuban strongman Fidel Castro is dead, dead, totally dead.

Luckily, Fosco has his own EXCLUSIVE to report: the death of Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler.



Mr. Butler's graduate students were notified last night. They were asked to keep the news quiet until after an official announcement, but you know how that kind of thing gets around...

Oh, and you know who should be dead? That guy who runs Comcast. I hate that dick.