Rabbit reads
“It’s fairly easy to destroy a civilized society,” noted John Updike, during the Q&A session of his Union Square reading of Terrorist.
He’d recalled watching the Twin Towers fall — “like a telescope,” he said, while mimicking the sound and motion of a collapse — from a safe distance and said that it was “the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” (He was too young for combat in WWII.) He also said, I thought grudgingly, that “the fact that there hasn’t been another attack is to the administration’s credit.”
Updike was asked if, at this stage in the game, he paid attention to critics. Yes, he admitted, if the criticism was constructive.
But, he cautioned, “It’s suicidal to try to please everybody.”
He also said, I thought grudgingly, that “the fact that there hasn’t been another attack is to the administration’s credit.”
Rabbit Re-ducks?
“It’s suicidal to try and please everybody” should be our new tagline!