'm reading and commenting on a story from The Library of America's 'John Updike: The Collected Stories' each Wednesday until I finish the collection or give up.
Updike mined an African trip for his comic story "Ethiopia," published in 1974. It opens with a show-offy description of the Addis Ababa Hilton, which includes this marvelous passage: "Emerging from the pool, which feels like layers of rapidly tearing silk...."
Then Updike into gently satiric mode, describing the youngish American couple visiting the hotel, following ten days of the man photographing an insanely improbable list of wildlife: "lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyraxes, oryxes, dik-diks, steinboks, klipspringers, oribis, topis, kudus, impalas, elands, Thomson's gazelles...."
Everything but a hippotamus. But the hotel clerk/concierge, whom the nameless narrator dubs Prester John after the legendary Christian patriarch, offers to help. Soon Prester John and the gift shop operator, improbably dubbed the Queen of Sheba, are doing everything to entertain these Americans.
This being an Updike story, would you be surprised to learn the American man lies in his twin bed, imagining sex with this Queen of Sheba, relishing the fantasy of "how long and lustrous her ebony limbs would feel in the darkness." Perhaps more surprisingly, the American wife imagines sleeping with Prester John -- not for an exotic thrill, but as a talismanic way of coping with her dread of flying and her distrust of the national airline.
This is not Updike's most coherent story. But its title and setting put me in mind of the novel he would publish a few years later, "The Coup" (1978), set in a country much like Ethiopia and narrated by its bigamous dictator. It's one of my favorite Updike books.
Please join me Aug. 26 to consider Updike's story "Transaction."
If my weekly encounters with Updike leave you wanting more, visit The John Updike Society's blog. They're diligent about finding and linking to Updike news and commentary on the web.
Previous blog entries in this series (titles with a double asterisk would go in my hypothetical Best of John Updike collection):
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