In a brief piece originally published in The Scotsman and reprinted by WOW24-7, David Robinson writes,

“Apart from Harvard, biographers Adam Begley and Barry Miles agreed, their subjects – John Updike and William Burroughs respectively – had almost nothing in common, though as Begley generously pointed out, ‘even if Burroughs hadn’t written a word, his life would still have made a fascinating biography.’

“In his fiction, Updike’s nostalgia for his small-town childhood home of Shillington, Pennsylvania, was intense. It was, he said, where all his ‘artistic eggs were hatched.’ And while Burroughs headed out for life’s extremes, at least Ulpdike did go home again.”