Random House to release digitalized Updike audio books

On Tuesday, October 24, Penguin Random House Audio Publishing will release downloadable three-hour audio books of John Updike’s short story collection Trust Me and his writings on golf, Golf Dreams—both volumes digitalized versions of analog cassette packages first issued by Random House Audiobooks in 1987 and 1996, respectively.

Both Trust Me and Golf Dreams are abridged, adapted, and narrated by John Updike.

Trust Me track list

  1. Trust Me
  2. Deaths of Distant Friends
  3. Pygmalion
  4. The Lovely Troubled Daughters
  5. Still of Some Use
  6. Poker Night
  7. The City
  8. Getting into the Set
  9. Learn a Trade

Golf Dreams track list

  1. Preface
  2. Golf Dreams
  3. Tips on a Trip
  4. The Pro (short story)
  5. Swing Thoughts
  6. Intercession (short story)
  7. Golf as a Game of the People
  8. Golfers (poem)
  9. Upon Winning One’s Flight in the Senior Four-Ball (poem)
  10. The Trouble with a Caddie
  11. The Big Bad Boom
  12. The Camaraderie of Golf (I)
  13. The Camaraderie of Golf (II)
  14. The Bliss of Golf
  15. Moral Exercise
  16. Television Golf
  17. Is Life Too Short for Golf?
  18. December Golf

Here is the link.

Other audiobooks currently available from Penguin Random House Audio Publishing are The Afterlife and Other Stories and Selected Stories—both of them also abridged, adapted, and narrated by John Updike.

 

 

Clouds Hill Books lists new Updike items for sale

With their website under construction, Clouds Hill Books of Village Station, N.Y. has emailed their John Updike – Fall 2017 List to people on their mailing list. We post it here as a courtesy to those who collect Updike.

Since we notice that many of the items come from the collection of one of The John Updike Society members, we wanted to remind everyone that the Society has been actively seeking DONATIONS of archival and Updike-related materials. Selling your collection puts items in the hands of individual collectors and deprives the public; donating your collection (or even just some of the more significant or appropriate items) to The John Updike Society for The John Updike Childhood Home makes those items available to researchers and also rotational display at the house, so that future generations can appreciate and benefit from the items you’ve collected. An additional option is to donate items to the archive at Alvernia University that the society began and subsequently donated to Alvernia before the childhood home was purchased and turned into a museum and literary center.

To make arrangements to donate to The John Updike Society, contact James Plath, jplath@iwu.edu.

To make arrangements to donate to The John Updike Collections of the Alvernia University Archives and Special Collections, contact Sharon Neal, sharon.neal@alvernia.edu.

Both organizations are 501 c 3 tax-exempt non-profits, and your donations to either of them are 100 percent tax deductible.

You spent your life collecting Updike; keep your life entwined with Updike by donating your collection so that your name can be forever linked to Updike and the items you donated.

Updike 1978 Serbian interview translated

The John Updike Society will hold its 5th biennial conference in Belgrade, Serbia the first week of June 2018, and all are welcome to attend (registration information). The conference celebrates Updike abroad, Updike in translation, and the 50th anniversary of the publication of Couples. This interview on “Where the Couples Are Today” covers all three of those bases:  it was conducted in Belgrade, it’s newly translated, and it focuses on Couples.

Updike gave the interview to the daily Politika while he was in Belgrade in October 1978, and it was published on the 19th. The interview was translated recently by Jasna Todorovic, a doctoral student of John Updike Society board member Biljana Dojcinovic. Below are the pages as they were published. Here is the translation: WHERE THE COUPLES ARE TODAY