John Updike writes his own eulogy

We'll end the week with some last words from John Updike, a famous writer-guy who died late last month, saddening the New Yorker crowd. (Well, and a lot of other folks, too, as he seems to have been a decent fellow who worked hard at his craft right up to the end.)

In April, a last book will be released, "Endpoint and Other Poems." This, courtesy the publisher, is one of them:

"Requiem"

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.

Kind of a downer to end the week on, I suppose. Well, how about this Updike anecdote of sorts from Richard Jenkins, nominated for an Oscar for "The Visitor," who early in his film career worked on the film adaptation of Updike's "Witches of Eastwick:"

"I kept expecting to see him at the craft services table, maybe eating a donut," Jenkins told me, laughing at his naïveté. "But of course he never came to the set."

Oh, my. That's kind of anti-climactic and an equally unsatisfying note to close the week on, isn't it? Oh well then, enjoy this, in which Updike wrote under the nom de plume of William Lee: