Shortlist writer lists the ‘funniest novels ever written’

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Marc Chacksfield has recommended “The books that will actually make you laugh: The funniest novels ever written”—a list published on shortlist.com. And one of Updike’s novels tickled his funnybone: The Witches of Eastwick (1984).

Of Witches, Chacksfield wrote, “The big screen adaptation is naturally hilarious, but Updike’s original source material is a wonderful exercise in satire. Three women in the Rhode Island town of Eastwick acquire witch-like powers after being spurned by their husbands. Swearing to wreak vengeance, they run amok until the mysterious appearance of Darryl Van Horne. What follows is high farce and social satire rolled into one. Mischievous doesn’t begin to cover it.”

Of course, there’s no shortage of humor in Updike, whether you tag along with his Jewish alter ego Henry Bech in three novels, savor the satire of American overconsumption in The Coup, or chuckle over Updike’s minister in A Month of Sundays who is sent to a retreat as a curative for his penchant of sexually fleecing his flock.

Read the whole list

Raritan, now deceased, wasn’t a fan of John Updike

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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 coolly disdainful gazes at him in their 1978 proposal for the magazine:

The publication of a new book by John Updike, let us say, is probably not an event of the same magnitude as the publication of a new book by Bellow or Pynchon, by Elizabeth Bishop or Doris Lessing … He seems at the moment to be a writer of comparatively, and predictably, lesser weight, and for whatever reasons he does not call into play the cultural forces and special interests that are at work on behalf (or against) these other writers.

“It was their mutual confusion regarding Updike’s popularity that also solidified matters between Poirier and his successor, Rutgers historian Jackson Lears. One of the questions he had hoped to address when he founded the magazine, Poirier told Lears, was: How does a writer like John Updike get lionized and celebrated as if he’s some genius man of letters? Raritan, in other words, was interested in “cultural power,” as Poirier declared in his prefatory editor’s note: “those intricate movements by which ideas or events, canons or hierarchies of preference, minorities or cultural strata come into existence.” Updike, not considered ‘a sufficiently rewarding clue to something more important than the texts he writes,’ was given no notice in its pages.”

Sounds like Raritan‘s editors may have socialized with famous Updike detractors John Aldridge or David Foster Wallace, since all of the writers they cite as being superior have occasioned relatively the same level of interest from readers, and graduate students working on their theses or dissertations, as Updike.

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Selected Letters editor offers insights on Updike and Pennsylvania

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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 about the Selected Letters of John Updike, which Schiff also edited and the debut of which the Updike Society celebrated in New York City in October 2025.

Here’s the link

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.”

Read the entire article

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.