Updike's Self-Obituary

It came to me the other day:

Were I to die, no one would say,

“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full

Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes

Will greet my overdue demise;

The wide response will be, I know,

“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,

And death is real, and dark, and huge.

The shock of it will register

Nowhere but where it will occur.

-- "Requiem" by John Updike

When I saw this headlined in the Times today, I thought, "Leave it to Updike to continue expanding his métier even in death, as he writes his own obituary." But this creative move is due just as much to the Times, as it is a poem taken from an upcoming collection of Updike's poetry. I did find it a little spooky at first.

Updike's Self-Obituary

It came to me the other day:

Were I to die, no one would say,

“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full

Of promise — depths unplumbable!”

Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes

Will greet my overdue demise;

The wide response will be, I know,

“I thought he died a while ago.”

For life’s a shabby subterfuge,

And death is real, and dark, and huge.

The shock of it will register

Nowhere but where it will occur.

-- "Requiem" by John Updike

When I saw this headlined in the Times today, I thought, "Leave it to Updike to continue expanding his métier even in death, as he writes his own obituary." But this creative move is due just as much to the Times, as it is a poem taken from an upcoming collection of Updike's poetry. I did find it a little spooky at first.

And they say romance is dead

Babe is auctioning off her virginity

I’m a 22-year-old woman who recently earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies, and soon I’ll be entering a Masters Degree program in Marriage and Family Therapy. During the time in between, in addition to my regular 9-to-5, I’ve been exploring my upcoming thesis project: the value of virginity. To be more specific, I’ve put my own virginity up for auction on the Moonlight Bunny Ranch website, and I recently received my highest bid so far: a cool $3.8 million.

...

[I]t became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

Are you rolling your eyes? I knew this experiment would bring me condemnation. But I'm not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing. You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point! For me, valuing virginity as sacred is simply not a concept I could embrace. But valuing virginity monetarily—now that’s a concept I could definitely get behind. I no longer view the selling of sex as wrong or immoral—my time at college showed me that I had too blindly accepted such arbitrary norms.

~

Now this is a branch of feminism that I can appreciate!

I clipped off the part that the highest bidder is not necessarily the one who gets the cherry, that she reserves the right to choose who enjoys that treat. Very empowering. In this day and age, a woman should have the right to be her own pimp! I only wonder whether the winner gets to tape it and broadcast the deflowering on the Internet.

And they say romance is dead

Babe is auctioning off her virginity

I’m a 22-year-old woman who recently earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies, and soon I’ll be entering a Masters Degree program in Marriage and Family Therapy. During the time in between, in addition to my regular 9-to-5, I’ve been exploring my upcoming thesis project: the value of virginity. To be more specific, I’ve put my own virginity up for auction on the Moonlight Bunny Ranch website, and I recently received my highest bid so far: a cool $3.8 million.

...

[I]t became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

Are you rolling your eyes? I knew this experiment would bring me condemnation. But I'm not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing. You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point! For me, valuing virginity as sacred is simply not a concept I could embrace. But valuing virginity monetarily—now that’s a concept I could definitely get behind. I no longer view the selling of sex as wrong or immoral—my time at college showed me that I had too blindly accepted such arbitrary norms.

~

Now this is a branch of feminism that I can appreciate!

I clipped off the part that the highest bidder is not necessarily the one who gets the cherry, that she reserves the right to choose who enjoys that treat. Very empowering. In this day and age, a woman should have the right to be her own pimp! I only wonder whether the winner gets to tape it and broadcast the deflowering on the Internet.