Last week I found myself again on the same route from
Southern NH to Wingaersheek Beach travelled on by my family for more than fifty
years. Originally the route we traced followed the Merrimack River between my
mother’s childhood home in Sandown NH to our beach house in Gloucester. The
route as it passes through Essex and Ipswich is pastoral, full of old New
England architecture and plenty of antique shops. With many of the large
estates still intact one can imagine that it will never change. In those days
it was my mother who drove accompanied by my grandmother. I was often on the
floor of the car playing with my cars not considered unusual in the Fifties before
seat belts. My younger sister was typically suffering from carsickness as we
debated whether to pull over or hope that the nausea would pass and my older
sister would be gloating over her ice cream cone that she was still savoring long
after I had gobbled down mine. Now the
back and forth which starts from our house in Durham NH to the beach home that
we have since inherited has become routine. It was the requisite visits as we monitored my
mother’s aging and then the long process of preparing the house for Summer
rental. As memories are embedded in the
scenery I relate a few of them to my daughter who rolls her eyes and reminds me
that these recollections are oft repeated. I came up with what I hoped was a fresh
memory of seeing John Updike crossing the street in Ipswich. My daughter Eve
acknowledged that she had never heard that story before. Not much of a story,
just a flash of recognition as the author tried to negotiate the five-corner
intersection of downtown Ipswich.
The memory instigated by our slow traversal of the center of
Ipswich was suddenly interrupted by the telltale crunch of being rear-ended. I
looked behind me and caught the gestures of the driver who acknowledged the
incident. We signaled to each other to turn into the next side street to
appraise the damage. The accident took place in front of the fire station.
Before long several of the firemen walked over to see what was going on,
presumably to make sure there were no gasoline leaks. They lingered awhile but
one of them remained. While I was looking for a pen to take down driver license
#s and insurance information, he took out his cell phone and in the most
efficient modern way photographed everything, the damage to the car, my license
and insurance card. My daughter, equally at ease with the powers of the cell
phone did the same of his documentation. I thanked him for his consideration
and attention to the accident. He introduced himself as the father of the young
man who just plowed into me. Someone in the back seat of a passing car haled us
and asked if we needed any help. The fireman chuckled that it was the local
tower looking for an opportunity to make a buck. The accident had thrust me into
the middle of a small community of Ipswich “locals”.
As we awaited the arrival of the Police to document the
accident, I thought I would pick up where I left off before the accident and
ask them if they had known their famous Ipswich resident John Updike. Yes! they
knew of him and saw him around town. The fireman asked me if I knew that the Rite
Aid down the street had once been the A&P, that was the local of one his
best known short stories. I recalled having read it, vaguely remembering that the
narrator was a store clerk.
Since the recent death of Philip Roth, there has been a lot
of chatter about Updike: Their friendship and their falling out. Who was the
greater author? Both had their territory: Roth, the chronicler of New Jersey
and in particular the Jewish immigrant’s move from the city to the suburbs
and the middle class. Updike’s territory was Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and
in particular that of the Protestant America. Today, Updike is typified as a
narcissistic white male by David Foster Wallace, who would have not survived
unscathed the #metoo era. Roth in his later years was somewhat reclusive but
socialized on the phone with with the
guardian of the Western Canon Harold Bloom.
Once home, I decided to read the short story “A&P”. Online there
were a few copies most transcribed with misspellings. A neat version was a PDF
from the Littleton NH library. The setting was undoubtedly Ipswich and the Rite
Aid down the street had the emblematic A&P cupola on it. It was about the
right size for an A&P .The company went out of business before the era of the
megastores.
It was a good read.
The first time around I found the conformity/non-conformity take a
little stale. The corporate versus sexual dichotomy may have been part of the
early percolation of the sexual revolution and carried more psychic impact when
the work was first published. A split that was less pronounced in the story but
indelibly there was that the girls were upper class and Sammy, the nineteen old
towny, was aware of it in the way they moved and talked and in the choice of
hors d’oeuvres that they were picking up for their parent’s cocktail party.
Just the nonchalance of the girls walking into a supermarket in their bathing
suits implies that they didn’t feel compelled to follow the priggish rules of
the middle class. These girls probably lived in those beautiful estates that are protected by conservation easements that
make the ride through Essex and Ipswich so scenic. I once wrote a blog about
the insider/outsider phenomenon experienced by the Armenians. As a member of youth sailing at the Annisquam Yacht Club, coming from the then
decidedly middle class Wingaersheek Beach I experienced first hand the
self-assuredness of the well-to-do descendants of the Mayflower in contrast to
my adolescent insecurity. They lived in the large shingle style estates that probably had
been in their families since the 19thc. Clearly Updike was impressed by their demeanor that radiated self confidence. In the end the narrator
tries to insert himself into the story by making an attempt to resolve all the
moral quandaries he has set up within the writing. He quits his job in protest
of the boss’s embarrassing the girls for walking in to his store half-naked.
Sammy may have hoped they would have noticed but like the rich in "The Great
Gatsby" they move on unaware of the effect they have had on others.
Like so much literature the story is about the nature of writing
itself: the artist as observer, always looking from the outside in. Updike
keeps trying to pin down the meaning of the sensory experiences; what do they
mean in terms of larger societal constructs:
corporate/sexual or rich and poor. So much of the writing is just raw
data: e.g. the movements of the actors through the store being like a pinball
game and the detailed description of the cloth and color of the girl’s bathing
suits. He has created a world for himself held up by incisive description and
cultural insights but in the last lines of the story it forbodes a life time that
is described as going to be hard. Could it be because he will always be on the
outside looking in, never fully owning or identifying with the setting in which
his description takes place. For the corporation the world is a site for the
display of its brands. The artist, is a competitor in this realm but his power
only comes from the fertility and staying power of his imagination not his bank account. However, we can say
Updike has had the last word: his A&P of the mind* still exists whereas the
original is long gone.
*a play on Henry Miller's comment about Coney Island as a state of mind that was used as a title of Ferlinghetti's "Coney Island of the Mind"
*a play on Henry Miller's comment about Coney Island as a state of mind that was used as a title of Ferlinghetti's "Coney Island of the Mind"
