John Updike is represented in a new mural on the wall behind a music stage at the Berks County YR Club in Wyomissing, but it took a little prodding from YR Club manager Virginia Griffith for him to be included. She had commissioned three sisters who operate an arts business called Turquoise—Melissa, Ashley and Courtney Reed—but the sisters weren’t familiar enough with Updike to have painted him initially in their mural.

As Reading Eagle correspondent Carole Duran reports, “Courtney was asked to include John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who was born in Shillington. She wasn’t born yet when Updike was publishing his ‘Rabbit’ series, and was not familiar with the writer. After her research, she painted the book jacket of Rabbit, Run.” Courtney, 27, the youngest of the sisters, was born before the last of the high-profile Rabbit novels, Rabbit at Rest, was published in 1990, but it only goes to prove that The John Updike Childhood Home might be needed to keep Updike alive for future generations of Berks Countians.

Don’t squint too hard to locate the original hardcover dust jacket. Courtney used a later paperback edition, and you can see it just to the left of the clock post.