Book reviewer references Updike and Roth

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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 is a lot like the novels of John Updike: various suburban married couples having affairs. The writing style is different–Updike is famously lyrical, whereas Somers uses a Millennial flat writing style: This happens, then This happens, then That happens, etc. Kind of like Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver if they had a sense of humor.

“I think Somers does a much better job than Updike in conveying what it feels like to be a parent. To me, Updike, like Philip Roth, was to the end of his life always a son, never a father. Updike did have four kids, but I guess his wife did most of the parenting. Updike’s characters often have children but always seem to be thinking only about themselves. Not so much that his adult characters are self-centered–I mean, yeah, they are, but that’s kind of the point–but more that their children don’t seem to exist at all, except to the extent that they sometimes have to be dealt with as obstacles when they get in the way of the parents. In contrast, the adults in The Ten Year Affair are very aware of their kids. In some ways this is similar to Little Children by Tom Perotta, a book whose entire theme is that these adults are thinking only of themselves and are not shouldering the responsibilities of parenthood.”

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In Memoriam: Joe McDade

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We are saddened to report that Joe McDade, a longtime member of The John Updike Society, has died. His obituary reads, simply, “Joseph Skelton McDade was born on May 29, 1965, in Needham, Massachusetts. He passed away on January 16, 2026, at the age of 60. Joseph was a resident of Katy, Texas.” The site has a place to add memories and offer condolences. Friends have left messages on his Facebook page as well.

For 30+ years, Joe was Professor of English at Houston Community College, where, according to Rate My Professor, his students found him to be “hilarious” and a “tough grader” who “gives good feedback.” Updike society members who interacted with Joe also found him to be quick-witted and wryly jocular. Joe attended a number of John Updike Society biennial conferences, including the very first one in 2010 at Alvernia University in Reading, Pa., where he presented a paper on “Updike’s Great Ambivalence: Rabbit and Emersonian Romanticism.”

Those who attended the fourth conference at the University of South Carolina, when Joe applied Emersonianism to Updike’s A Month of Sundays, most likely remember him as the exuberant organizer of the first (and thus far only) Rabbit Open best ball golf tournament at Cobblestone Park in Columbia. Always one to go all out, Joe had t-shirts made especially for the occasion, as well as printed golf balls for every entrant and a trophy for the winning foursome to hoist. And being such a golf nut as he was—a passion Updike also shared—Joe finished on the winning team. Society members last saw Joe at the 7th Biennial JUS Conference in Tucson. His passing leaves a hole in one—a joke, we think, he would have appreciated.

The Guardian ranks Updike’s top not-always-dirty dozen

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We love lists, and so does The Guardian (UK), which named John Updike’s debut novel, The Poorhouse Fair, as his twelfth best, despite calling it “a curio.” Number 1 on their list—no surprise—is Rabbit Angstrom, the Everyman’s Library compilation of the author’s four “Rabbit” books, which they ranked (best to least) Rabbit at Rest (1990), Rabbit Is Rich (1981)—both Pulitzer Prize winners—followed by Rabbit, Run (1960) and Rabbit Redux (1972).

Roger’s Version (1986) placed No. 2 on their list, with Couples (1968), notorious as Updike’s raciest book, not far behind at No. 3. Then comes the Everyman’s Library compilation of Updike’s Henry Bech sagas, and Updike’s slender Of the Farm (1965) at No. 5, followed by The Witches of Eastwick (1984) at No. 6 and The Centaur (1963) at No. 7.

The biggest surprise is that Memories of the Ford Administration (1992)—generally dismissed by most readers, critics, and scholars—came in at No. 8, ahead of the much-acclaimed Gertrude and Claudius (2000) at No. 9, S. (1988)—Updike’s final volume in his Scarlet Letter trilogy—at No. 10, and the under-appreciated Seek My Face (2002) at No. 11.

Read what The Guardian had to say about each pick.

Is reading Updike, even ‘Golf Dreams,’ an ‘act of rebellion’?

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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 Ellington and Charlie Parker; and movies like Citizen Kane. John Updike not long ago was one of America’s most prominent living writers, yet reading him today would be, in Gioia’s words, ‘an act of rebellion.’

“Call me a wild-eyed revolutionary, because I’ve just finished a book of Updike’s essays, Golf Dreams. I’ve been reading his novels since I was a teenager, starting with The Centaur, moving on to Rabbit, Run (which I was too young to understand), and over the decades getting to most of the others (Rabbit Is Rich is my favorite). Updike could write anything — novels, stories, poetry, essays — and bring to it his gift for the exquisite image and the revealing metaphor, as well as his insight into human psychology.”

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Updike cited as a Guardian of Language

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If your pet peeves include people who speak the language with little regard for or knowledge of correctness, you might be interested in a Jan. 10 Quillette article by Bruce Gilley on “Guarding the Gates of Our Language; One hundred years after the publication of Fowler’s ‘Dictionary of Modern English Usage,’ it is more important than ever to uphold standards of correct English.”

Of course, “America’s Man of Letters,” as William Pritchard dubbed him, was cited. John Updike, the master stylist and a precise practitioner of the language, was apparently involved in a kerfuffle involving his beloved New Yorker:

“Most surprising, perhaps, is the enduring allegiance to Fowler at The New Yorker, citadel of oppressed writers, and writers on oppression, in modern American letters. In a curtain-raiser in September 2025 for the Fowler centenary, the University of Delaware academic Ben Yagoda traced the inextricable links between the magazine, launched in 1925, and Fowler, almost as if the magazine was founded as a sort of Society for the Propagation of the Fowler in the United States. In one telling anecdote culled from the magazine’s archives, Yagoda found that the young John Updike, while studying at Oxford in 1954, had submitted a poem to the magazine that was caught up in a minor storm of editorial debate on punctuation according to Fowler. Updike bowed before the strictures, and his corrected poem was published later that year. Thereafter, he seems to have become Keeper of the Fowler at The New Yorker. His scathing review of Burchfield’s 1996 desecration is a monument to fine English sensibilities in the New World. ‘It has the charm, in this age of cultural diversity and politically correct sensitivity, of assuring all users of English that no intelligible usage is absolutely wrong,’ Updike writes. ‘But it proposes no ideal of clarity in language or, beyond that, of grace, which might serve as an instrument of discrimination.’ That word again.

“As Updike foresaw, the globalisation of English and the radicalisation of the academy mean that the need for Fowler has become greater not less. ‘The language is a mess, except as scoured and rinsed and hung out to dry by Fowler.’”

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Taylor Brown is named 2026 John Updike Tucson Casitas Fellow

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In perhaps its most competitive year, with at least a third of the 138 applicants being highly accomplished writers and artists, a trio of judges from The John Updike Society selected Taylor Brown as the recipient of the 2026 John Updike Tucson Casitas Fellowship. The award consists of a two-week residency at the Mission Hill Casitas within the Skyline Country Club in Tucson, Arizona—casitas that John Updike owned and where he wrote during a part of each spring between 2004-09. The casitas stay is made possible by a generous donation from Updike Society members Jan and Jim Emery, owners of the casitas. The fellowship includes a $1000 prize provided by the Society, which administers the fellowship.

While staying at the Casitas, Brown will work on Rise, River, Rise, a literary novel-in-progress set amid the continent’s largest blackwater wetland, the Okefenokee Swamp. The novel interweaves deeply researched swamp history and lore with a contemporary storyline of environmental activists (“tree sitters”) trying to halt mining activity in the area.

Fellowship coordinator Robert Luscher said that the judges were unanimous in their selection, impressed by Brown’s high level of meticulous research reminiscent of the research Updike did for many of his novels, and by a narrative construction and character development that was compelling on multiple levels. “We perceived echoes of Mark Twain and Richard Powers in the scene that was submitted, enjoyed the Southern Gothic atmosphere, and were impressed by the seamless introduction of significant cultural and environmental elements,” Luscher said.

Brown, who grew up on the Georgia coast, is the recipient of the Southern Book Prize, the Montana Prize in Fiction, the Ron Rash Award for Fiction, the Audie Award in Fiction, the Weatherford Award in Fiction, and was named Georgia Author of the Year for Literary Fiction. His work has also been a finalist for the John Steinbeck Award, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Doris Betts Fiction Prize, and the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. Like Updike, Brown is a prolific writer, best known for his novels: Fallen Land (2016), The River of Kings (2017), Gods of Howl Mountain (2018), Pride of Eden (2020), Wingwalkers (2022), and Rednecks (2024), with another novel, Wolvers (2026), forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press. He is also the author of a short story collection (In the Season of Blood and Gold), and his reporting, essays, and short fiction have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, The Southwest Review, and numerous literary journals. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, where he is the founder and editor-in-chief of the custom motorcycle publication BikeBound. Besides old motorcycles, he says he likes thunderstorms and dogs with beards. You can find him at www.taylorbrownfiction.com or @taylorbrown82.

 

 

Festivaltopia lists 19 novels that detailed American suburbia’s rise

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When you see an article on “19 Novels That Captured the Rise of the American Suburb” in the Travel and Guides section of a website, you know you can gas up the car and head to either Shillington, Pennsylvania or Ipswich, Massachusetts, because one of Updike’s domestic novels likely will be included.

This time it’s Pennsylvania.

“John Updike’s 1960 novel introduced readers to Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, perhaps the most iconic character in suburban literature. Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom is a middle-class man who feels there is something missing from his life. The novel follows Rabbit as he flees his suburban responsibilities—his pregnant wife, his job, his entire life—in a desperate attempt to recapture the vitality of his youth. Frank Wheeler, Piet Hanema, Frank Bascombe – these are a handful of the suburban men in the fiction of Richard Yates, John Updike, and Richard Ford. These writers all display certain characteristics of the suburban novel in the post-WWII era: the male experience placed at the forefront of narration, the importance of competition both socially and economically, contrasting feelings of desire and loathing for predictability, and the impact of an increasingly developed landscape upon the American psyche and the individual’s mind. Updike’s genius was in making Rabbit both sympathetic and infuriating—a man whose suburban malaise drives him to make increasingly destructive choices. The novel launched a series that would span four decades, chronicling the evolution of suburban America through one man’s journey.

See what other books made Fritz Von Burkersroda’s list

Blogger shares favorite Updike story

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OnJan. 3, 2026, Patrick Kurp posted comments on his favorite Updike story on Anecdotal Evidence: A blog about the intersection of books and life: “The Happiest I’ve Been.”

“Of all Updike’s stories, this is my favorite, the most emotionally powerful, mingling memory, comedy, sadness and his peerless eye for American detail. It’s the best rendering I know of the retrospective character of happiness, our dawning awareness of it after it passes. For most of us, happiness is a momentary state, not perpetual.”

Kurp added, “Of “The Happiest I’ve Been,” Nabokov writes:

“‘The important thing, rather than the subject, was the conversation itself, the quick agreements, the slow nods, the weave of different memories; it was like one of these Panama baskets shaped underwater around a worthless stone.’ I like so many of Updike’s stories that it was difficult to choose one for demonstration and even more difficult to settle upon its most inspired bit.”

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New essay tackles the question of Updike and misogyny

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Teaching American Literature:  A Journal of Theory and Practice has published Sue Norton’s article “Somewhere Between Feminism and Misogyny: Classic Updike on the Modern Syllabus” in its Winter 2025 edition.  It is the product of Norton’s 2024 John Updike Tucson Casitas Fellowship.  The article builds upon several decades of literary criticism in Updike studies and incorporates the work of JUS members Marshall Boswell and Biljana Dojčinović.