Tanenhaus on Bill Buckley . . . and John Updike

96iiRXJ1_400x400The Daily Beast today published an interview Scott Porch did with biographer Sam Tanenhaus, “Bill Buckley Gets Bigger Over Time.” In it, Tanenhaus talks about his work-in-progress but also shares a few thoughts about Updike:

“For me, Updike and Bellow and Roth are giants now; they were writing when I was young. My copy of Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich is the copy I got when I was 15 or 16 through the Book of the Month Club. It’s the only book I ever had signed by an author in all of my years at the book review. We did a long video interview with him for the website. Those figures to me are very large and important. I think of them almost like family, and some of them are still working. Bob Caro is still working. Gay Talese is still working. I saw Garry Wills at the Aspen Ideas Festival a couple of weeks ago, brilliant as ever. Those figures are really important to me.”

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