In “From Bedtime Stories to Cultural Struggles: Updike’s Domestic Lens,” Original Magazines examines an Updike short story that appeared in The New Yorker, “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” The article called Updike’s literary snapshot of a bedtime ritual happening all across … Continue reading →

Thomas Bevilacqua, a Ph.D. who teaches high school English at The Maclay School in Florida, recently posted his reaction to John Updike’s Roger’s Version on his Substack blog: “It’s pretty clear to me why Roger’s Version is frequently pointed to as one … Continue reading →

Since the Selected Letters of John Updike was published in October 2025, there have been dozens of interviews with the volume’s editor, James Schiff, and with Michael Updike, the family’s representative on the John Updike Literary Trust, who also has … Continue reading →

Time magazine asked “25 literary luminaries to pick one book that they believe reflects where American life is headed or speaks to the present in a meaningful way. Their answers bring together poetry, nonfiction, and fiction from across the nation’s … Continue reading →

Christopher J. Scalia tweeted that “John Updike invented The Elaine.” As Exhibit A he offered this description from Updike’s short story “The Happiest I’ve Been” (The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1958): “There being no answer to Neil, I went into … Continue reading →

Those who attended the joint Updike and Roth societies conference in Greenwich Village in October 2025 found two groups that, like their namesakes, were friendly rivals . . . mostly friendly. Only one person had an obvious axe to grind, … Continue reading →

In a recent blog-post musing, Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, talked about picking up a copy of the LOA two-volume set of Updike’s Collected Stories and reading “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” Which … Continue reading →

“I had a special link to John Updike, the celebrated writer who died in 2009. I once served as his muse,” began William Ecenbarger, who has won 17 writing awards from the Society of American Travel Writers. His latest feature, … Continue reading →

WFMZ, which covers the Lehigh Valley and Berks County, published a piece today by historian Frank Whelan on “History’s Headlines: John Updike of Berks County.” Like Adam Begley’s biography, it begins with a story about journalist William Ecenbarger following the … Continue reading →

Michael Updike has been touring to promote Selected Letters of John Updike—as his father would have done, were he still with us. Interest in Updike has remained high in Ipswich, where the Updike’s lived for many years and where he wrote … Continue reading →

Bob Batchelor’s podcast John Updike: American Writer, American Life is active again. The new episode is titled “Why You Should Be Reading John Updike: The; Writer Who Predicted Everything.” From the site: “Hosted by cultural historian and Updike biographer Bob … Continue reading →

On “Ninety-Nine Novels: The Coup by John Updike,” Graham Foster explained, “In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess’s interest … Continue reading →

In “David Szalay: ‘If you want to be a proper writer, you have to deal with the sordid; The Booker prize-winning author of Flesh on class, punctuation, and what he learned from Amis and Updike,” Observer book critic Anthony Cummins … Continue reading →

On one of their “Thurber Thursdays,” Ink Spill: New Yorker Cartoonists News, History, and Events was inspired by the recent publication of the Selected Letters of John Updike to do a little sleuthing and post the results. A footnote on … Continue reading →

The Nov. 11 episode of BBC’s Front Row spotlighted art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer and radical Christianity, James Schiff on Selected Letters of John Updike, and director Edgar Wright on the new dystopian film The Running Man. The Updike … Continue reading →

Trevor Meek, of The Local News (Ipswich, Mass.), published a Jan. 31, 2026 piece on the Selected Letters of John Updike that began, “Living in Ipswich in the 1960s and ’70s with John Updike as a neighbor meant playing a … Continue reading →

In Sheena Meng’s “A requiem for Raritan,” published on The Point, one thing rings pointedly clear: “The editors were not particularly fond of Updike. Richard Poirier and Thomas R. Edwards, both literary critics and professors of literature at Rutgers, leveled … Continue reading →

James Schiff, vice president of The John Updike Society and editor of The John Updike Review, gave a great interview to Charles McElwee on The Real Clear Pennsylvania Podcast. Schiff, a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, talked … Continue reading →

Andrew Gelman, in reviewing The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers for The Future of Statistical Modeling (Substack), relies on John Updike and Philip Roth for a core comparison: “Going back a bit in literary time, The Ten Year Affair … Continue reading →

From The Falling Knife by Harvey Sawikin (Substack): “The critic Ted Gioia recently posted a Substack called Is Mid-20th Century American Culture Getting Erased? He noted that among those being forgotten are literary giants like John Cheever and Saul Bellow; musicians like Duke … Continue reading →