Blogger Mark Stevens published a Q&A with Updike biographer Adam Begley on May 13 in which Begley talks about the issues central to Updike’s work and life.

Among Begley’s responses:

“I think his misbehavior was very fruitful for him: he made hay out of his peccadillos—or his sins, really, if you want to talk about it that way. The key passage for [me] is in Roger’s Version, when Roger finally allows Verna—his half-niece, his half-sister’s daughter—to seduce him and they are lying on the soiled futon in a rundown housing estate and they have just committed quasi-incest and adultery, because he’s married, and at that moment he, this character Roger, has this great religious epiphany, which is that even in abasement you are subject to God. I think that is a crystallization of his attitude, if you will, of his attitude toward his own transgressions and his religious faith. Both were equally important to him. I don’t think John Updike could have been the artist he was without his philandering and I don’t think he could have been the artist he was without his faith.”

“Q&A with Adam Begley — ‘Updike'”