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My Early Life Intertwined With Updike's

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JOHN HERBERT From Where I Sit

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 1, 2009

It would be terribly presumptuous to compare myself with John Updike, arguably the greatest American author in the past half-century, and who he died after a brief illness a few days ago. Updike produced over 50 novels, many winning Pulitzer Prizes, National Book awards, and just about every other gold-embossed literary honor.

While Updike was chronicling Middle American mores, I ghost wrote four business books and tons of speeches for my various CEOs in Sweden.

But, it's rather startling how our early years intertwined. We were both sickly kids from small towns (he hadbody-length psoriasis; I had polio), we both graduated from the same college, both lived in a brick and ivy dorm called Lowell House, both lived off campus after marrying betweenour junior and senior years, both were turned down, twice each,for the university's top creative writing course, both cracked the same snobbish Boston Brahmin clubs, and both were editors of the Harvard Lampoon, the country's oldest humor magazine.

Updike was president of the Lampoon's editorial board; I was its treasurer. Joining the Lampoon as a cartoonist (he had ambitions of being an animator for Walt Disney), Updike wrote about two-thirds of the 24-page monthly all by himself. I peddled the ads, which gave us a handsome $35net profitmost months. Not that bad, considering a whole case of watery Schaefer's beer was going for $1 in Harvard Square at the time.

Both Updike and I appreciated a good prank, too. In fact, an outrageous gag still seems to be among thecoming-of-age rites forcollege boys everywhere.Updike's were obviouslyenjoyed a bit more than mine by the college administration.

While trying to scold him, the college dean at the time praised Updike for some of the "funniest gags in a decade."In contrast, Iwas chewed out by my college dean, humorless McGeorge Bundy, whom JFK promoted to the White House a few years later, for "interfering with the due process of education."

While I wouldn't claim that my college pranks were any funnier than Updike's, they certainly created front-page headlines in nearby Boston's daily newspapers. "3,000 students captured in Harvard Yard," screamed several. Fortunately, I had 21 friends to help mefence in the nerdy "grinders."

Bored by lecture hall routine,I thought it would be amusing todress in a gorilla suitand sit down to take notes in a popular anthropology class. It was then I realized Harvard had a serious group of studious football players.

In anotherlive tableau, I fed a martini to a rabbit in an exclusive downtown Boston barroom. I'm still trying to figure out how that one "interfered" with the due process of education. It was all part of my learning curve.

Updike pulled off a few classics. He and a half-dozen other 'Poonies followed the underground network of steam pipes heating the university's 3,000 rooms. Unfortunately, the group tripped a silent alarm as they descended into the sewer-like cavern. The university police were waiting for the culprits at the end of their two-hour nighttime odyssey.

He also redirected the Harvard band, en route to a New York football game,to play an impromptupre-dawn concert on the Yale campus. Everyone seemed to love it - except for the unfunny New Haven Police, who briefly jailed 100 Harvard band members for allegedly disturbing the peace.

Every decade or so, the Lampoon's stained (by pigeon-droppings) mascot, a copper-plated ibis, disappears from its weather-vane perch on the clubhouse roof. The villainsare alwayseditors of the Harvard Crimson, the college daily up the street. Deciding enough was enough back in the 50's, Updike and Co. sought revenge. They grabbed a hostage, the Crimson editor-in-chief, and demanded the return of the ibis in exchange.

Years later, Updike recalls, "We realized we were doing something very illegal and had to let him (the Crimson editor) go." The Lampoon eventually got its ibis back, but it's disappeared a half-dozen times since. Seems like the Crimson spawns a spiderman among its newspaper editors at least twiceper generation.

I'm a bit miffed that the Nobel Prize is about the only honor Updike - unlike Steinbeck and Hemingway - never won. Maybe he over-wrote and is difficult to translate. Possibly, he was victimized by the shortage of words in the Swedish language.

Not long before he died, Updike confided to a British interviewer, "It's fun to be active. People don't care about a writer's age." He must have been aware of his own mortality earlier on, though. As he wrote in a prize-winning "Rabbit" epic 25 years ago, "When you think of the dead, you got to be grateful."

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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