Word: stammeringly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...malign agents who represent books he considers vulgar. He has called Janklow the literary equivalent of a heroin dealer for handling novels by authors like Judith Krantz. "They have no lasting value and two years after they've been published are worth nothing," he says with a Grottlesex stammer...
...blights on his happy childhood seem small, but, Updike argues, they inexorably determined the life he would lead. As a boy, he developed psoriasis and a sporadic stammer; he could savor reality's entrancing parade but never feel comfortable joining it himself. The recurring rashes on his skin kept him apart, drove his attention inward: "You are forced to the mirror, again and again; psoriasis compels narcissism, if we can suppose a Narcissus who did not like what he saw." One of the hallmarks of his fiction became elaborate celebrations of the status quo. Updike thinks he knows...
Similarly, his stammer posed a problem: how to get the attention he craved without risking public humiliation. In retrospect, the solution seems obvious: "The papery self-magnification and immortality of printed reproduction -- a mode of self-assertion that leaves the cowardly perpetrator hidden and out of harm's way -- was central to my artistic impulse." Redemption beckoned: "To be in print was to be saved...
...Anyone can hit a home run," he shrugs. "The part I enjoy the most is running. They say a base runner should learn the pitchers' moves, but if I concentrate on my own moves, I think I can steal on anyone." He sounds confident, not arrogant. A stammer aggravated in the minors is dissipating daily. "The good side of being sent down was that it made me not take anything for granted. It made me work. And if you can deal with rejection, that can make you a better person...
...poor freshman will give away his lowly status by his quizzical gaze and questioning stammer when an upperclassman friend simply says, "After my Science A, I'll be swimming at the IAB--I mean MAC--you know, right around the corner from OCS, by D.U. Meet me there and we'll have lunch in A-house...