Chapter 4 Best Places to Read John Updike

When spring comes I think of John Updike, and when I read John Updike I think of the spring of 1968.There are several such chains in our minds.Although things are insignificant, isn't our life and world view supported by such insignificant things?I think. It was the spring of 1968 when I came to Tokyo to attend university.I'm too lazy to bring big luggage, and the necessary items are sent in advance.Just put cigarettes and John Updike's "Music School" in the windbreaker pocket and walk out of the house.The book is probably a paperback edition published by Benton Dyer. The cover paper is very good, clean and simple, and antique.After eating with my girlfriend, I said goodbye, and then boarded the Shinkansen.

Coming to Beijing with a copy of Updike in my pocket is a little bit "cool" now, but it was okay at the time.Driving to Tokyo in the evening, I rushed to Mejiro's new room to take a look. For some reason, the luggage that was supposed to arrive did not arrive.There is no change of clothes, no toiletries, no ashtray, no coffee cup, no kettle, it is extremely miserable.Playing "cool" is bound to be frustrated. The room was empty, except for an extremely simple desk (only one drawer) and an iron bed of incomparable simplicity.There was a heavy mattress on the iron bed. When I sat on it, it was as hard as the French bread I bought a week ago.

A gloomy and quiet spring evening.Open the window, and there is a broadcast sound in the distance.The record played was "In the Garden of Paradise" by "Iron Butterfly".Although fourteen years have passed, I still remember the singing so vividly. I don't have anything to do right now, and I don't feel like doing it.Reluctantly, I went to a nearby pastry shop to buy Coca-Cola (bottled, of course, just imagine the bottle) and biscuits, then lay on the hard mattress and watched Updike.As the sky darkened and the room darkened, I turned on the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, and the fluorescent tubes screamed non-stop.

When I watched Updike at 8:30, there were five centimeters of cigarette butts on the bottom of the Coca-Cola bottle.I put the book beside my pillow and looked at the ceiling for an hour.In this huge city, I have no bedding, no razor, no one to call, no place to go, so don’t leave me alone.Not in a bad mood though. If someone asks me where is the best place to read a book, I can only answer "the hard mattress in the empty room in April 1968".Every line of the page can slowly penetrate into the heart - that is my "study".Neither the Eames lounge chair nor the Mobilia lamp nor the Arkansas speakers are bad, but that's another story.There is a place to read John Updike, there is a place to read Dunbar—there must be places like that in the world, I think.

"Two nights before leaving for Harvard, he took her first time, and she cried. He went limp for some reason, feeling like he'd done something stupid. He lost his virginity himself. Orson His head is sober. Only when he is sober can he realize that Dao himself has a lot to learn and is willing to learn—if things do not exceed a certain limit. Harvard University has processed thousands of such young people and sent them to society. And the damage they suffered was almost invisible to the naked eye."