"On Being a Self Forever" / 22 People often point out that the greatest thing about traveling abroad is that you can begin to see yourself more objectively. Seeing one's self is difficult, because it is impossible to totally remove yourself from your self to be objective. And if you're not objective, you're not uncovering everything that's influencing who you are. Updike is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist who investigates this question by "traveling" in writing. He continues to lecture and write for The New Yorker on the role of literature in society, and American life and customs. "On Being a Self Forever" is from Self-Consciousness (1989), the last of six essays in his self-reflective memoir:

"A Soft Spring Night in Shillington," the first essay in the sequence, has Mr. Updike brooding on his happy-on-the-whole childhood. "At War With My Skin" tells of his psoriasis. "Getting the Words Out" is a fluent account of his intermittent speech problem, variously called stammering and stuttering. Gradually we hear of further ailments: bronchial asthma, emphysema, claustrophobia, dental trouble. "On Not Being a Dove" explains why, in the Vietnam years, he didn't join the peace movement. "A Letter to My Grandsons" is an edifyingly complete family tree. "On Being a Self Forever" is a meditation on an anticipated afterlife, culminating in the remarkably daring claim that "one believes, not merely to dismiss from one's life a degrading and immobilizing fear of death, but to possess that Archimedean point outside the world from which to move the world." (http://partners.nytimes.com/books/97/04/06/lifetimes/updike-selfconsciousness.html)

Additional, useful biographical information on Updike can be found at http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/updike.htm. You should read it. And in a recent interview with SALON magazine, Updike spoke on the decline of popular literature and the role of television and motion picture on contemporary politics (http://www.salonmag.com/08/features/updike.html). This is also good. Updike shares some strategies on how to really get at who your self is; or, more precisely, who your selves are. This is something your teacher might ask you to write about. He begins "On Being a Self Forever" by thinking about his name, and this is perhaps where we can begin as well. What's at the heart of your name? Who are you? Read this piece very closely, and when Updike hypothesizes about something, like the afterlife, read his ideas and come up with your own perspectives as well.

The supplemental critical readings convey similar themes.