Rabbit at rest indeed

I was at a party last night for venerable publisher John Murray at its former headquarters on 50 Albemarle Street. It is a grand Georgian house, the upstairs kept essentially as it was during John Murray II's time in the early 1800s. Original portraits of golden age Murray authors like Robert Southey, Walter Scott and Byron grace the walls. The book-lined main room is kept almost exactly as it was when shortly after Byron died, JM II burned the manuscripts of the poet's undoubtedly scandalous memoirs. I stood by the very fireplace last night and wondered if Murray later ever stared at the grate, regretting what disappeared up the flue.

Towards the end of the evening I got to talking to an author and she said, 'And what do you think about Updike?' I did what I do whenever I am caught unawares by breaking book news: I furrowed my brow and asked: 'What do you think?'

Though I had missed the news that John Updike had died, I'm not sure I would have spared too much time regretting his passing. I have always been ambivalent about his WASPy upper-middle class preoccupations. I could always feel the cold patrician in his books; above all, he lacked empathy. However he did have one saving grace: he was a Boston Red Sox fan and wrote a piece for The New Yorker in 1960 about Ted Williams' last game at Fenway Park. The essay encoded a mythology about the team and Fenway Park ('a lyric little bandbox') that in the 80-odd years without a championship, enabled Bostonians to sneer at those vulgarians from the Bronx: We may not win anything, but at least Pulitzer Prize winners write about us.

Some of the language may be incomprehensible to The Expat Files' non-American readers: 'The Orioles were hitting fungos on the field', for example. But the main theme is about youthful infatuation with a star, and anyone who ever obsessed about a film, music or sporting hero will relate to it. The denouement is perceptive about the star/fan divide. Williams has gone out with bang, hitting a home run in his last at-bat. He leaves the field and the crowd chants his name wanting him to come out of the dugout to wave goodbye (Williams was a bit of cock, it has to be said. He never acknowledged the fans no matter how loudly they cheered). Williams doesn't come back onto the field, but Updike is sanguine: 'Gods do not answer letters.'