Professor Joseph McDade, of Houston Community College, is the most recent person to join the Society—our 153rd member—and like so many he’s planning on attending the Society’s first conference in October. Also like so many, he has a fond memory of meeting John Updike. His moment came on Monday, Feb. 28, 2008, when Updike spoke at Houston’s famed Alley Theater as part of the Inprint Brown Reading Series. But his relationship to John Updike began before that. He writes,

“I am guessing my own life regarding the man is fairly common.  All through college and grad school my mother would, every Christmas, treat me to each new handsome Knopf hardback, wrapped and under the tree.  Lately my wife has continued the tradition, and this past December treated me to a copy each of Rabbit at Rest and Roger’s Version (I had mentioned these were my two favorite of his novels) from the Signed First Edition series.

“I count as one of the great moments of my life the 20 or so seconds I spent with him after his Houston reading two years ago, when I stood in a line that snaked up the stairs of the Alley Theatre to a desk on a second-floor landing.  As he signed my evening’s purchase (the Everyman’s Library edition of Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels), I told him how happy I was that he had chosen, as part of the evening’s program, to read ‘The Family Meadow,’ a story I had often heard him read on audiotape and very nearly committed to memory.  ‘It’s one of my two favorite of your stories,’ I said.  Then, wanting to note it for the record, I continued,  ‘The other is ‘The Witnesses.”

“‘The WITnesses’?” he asked, seeming slightly startled.  I could only say, ‘Oh, sure,’ and move on.”

(Photo: The Alley Theater)

Joseph McDade