Author Archives: James Plath

The Writer’s Almanac remembers Updike’s birthday

Posted on by
Reply

Updikecropped150Garrison Keillor, who will be the keynote speaker at this fall’s Fourth Biennial John Updike Society Conference at the University of South Carolina, today paid tribute to John Updike on what would have been the author’s 84th birthday.

In “Mar. 18, 2016: birthday: John Updike,” Keillor recalls Updike’s early ambitions to be a cartoonist, his love affair with Pennsylvania, and the novel that brought him national attention.

When Updike died, he was hailed as America’s last great man of letters, but did he write any books that will be considered “a classic” years from now?

In “The Disappearance of Literature,” Mark Twain lamented, “A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Echoing that, in Rite of Passage Alexei Panshin wrote, “Classics aren’t books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of ‘levels of significance’ and other blatt, books that are dead.” That implies it’s the “academy” that confers the title of “classic,” and if such is the case, it’s worth considering how Updike fares among overlapping contemporaries when it comes to number of articles written by academics and indexed in the International MLA Bibliography. The list below isn’t all-inclusive, but it features writers who have inspired at least 500 articles:

  • Jorge Luís Borges—4,524
  • Vladimir Nabokov—3,364
  • Toni Morrison—2,397
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez—2,019
  • Saul Bellow—1,460
  • Mario Vargas Llosa—1,245
  • Richard Wright—1,202
  • Italo Calvino—1,110
  • Günter Grass—1,078
  • Graham Greene—1,038
  • Philip Roth—971
  • Zora Neale Hurston—937
  • Don DeLillo—876
  • James Baldwin—817
  • Juan Rulfo—791
  • John Updike—776
  • V.S. Naipaul—775
  • Umberto Eco—762
  • Cormac McCarthy—755
  • Norman Mailer—735
  • Alice Walker—682
  • Bernard Malamud—585

It’s still too early to tell how Updike will be remembered well into the future, but if one considers F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of a classic he certainly stands a good chance:  “A classic is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it’s safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It’s acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion….” (The Beautiful and the Damned). More than any of his contemporaries, Updike was a writer who was both a popular and critical success. And as Cliff Fadiman, former head of the Book-of-the-Month Club, once explained, “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.” Updike’s fiction, poetry, and non-fiction continue to touch people on a very human level. Would that he were still writing among us.

Happy 84th!

Great Writers at the End book includes Updike

Posted on by
Reply

VioletHourNew from The Dial Press is The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End, by Katie Roiphe, who, as a New Republic review-article notes, “explores the final days of Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, and other writers at the end.”

Of the book, William Giraldi writes, “Here is a critic in supreme control of her gifts, whose gift to us is the observant rigor that refuses to flinch before the Reaper.

“Each chapter, skillfully eliding overlap, constitutes a ‘biography backward, a whole life unfurling from a death.’ In the slow fade of her five writers—cancer came for Sontag, Freud, and Updike; a stroke felled Sendak; Thomas decimated himself exuberantly with drink—Roiphe finds ‘glimpses of bravery, of beauty . . . of truly terrible behavior, of creative bursts, of superb devotion, of glitteringly accurate self-knowledge, and of magnificent delusion.'”

“Roiphe flashes her richness of mind most intently on Updike,” Giraldi writes. “In Updike’s work, ‘one is struck not by the glittering seductions of the sharp, ambitious, sexually enthralling mistresses but by the deep, agonized love the husbands feel for the first wives.’ She commands a supercharged insight into Updike’s religio-sexual realm that many critics, female and male both, are too ideological or outright painterly to muster. . . .

“Whole swaths of Updike’s work are ‘about not submitting gratefully to that eternal sleep, cheating, tricking, denouncing it, protesting it, fixating on it; so much involves the hope for more than our animal walk, an afterlife, or, better yet, more life.’ His unkillable buoyancy of language, his style that pursued every contour and lineation of living: No other major American novelist has been so downright delighted by the tensile strength of English, no one else so wedded to the notion of writing as deliverance. . . .”

Here’s the full review-article. The book is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

Cancer Today spotlights Updike

Posted on by
Reply

Cancer Today, the publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, featured “A Storied Life” by writer Sue Rochman in the Winter 2015-16 issue, which is also available online. In it, Rochman details how “literary realist John Updike used the scaffold of his own life, including his lung cancer diagnosis, to explore the shared experiences of our time.”

Screen Shot 2016-03-02 at 9.43.10 PMShe writes, “Not only did he write in many forms, Updike wrote all the time, producing on average a book a year. That didn’t change after he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008. He spent the months before he died writing poems on facing mortality, many of which were published in his collection Endpoint and Other Poems.”

Lung cancer, Rochman reports, “is divided into two main types: small cell, which makes up about 15 percent of all diagnoses and non-small cell, which accounts for about 85 percent.

“It’s not widely known what type of lung cancer Updike had. It is known that he began to have some breathing problems in the summer of 2008. The initial diagnosis was bronchitis. When the cough didn’t clear, he was told it was pneumonia, a diagnosis he described as ‘oblong ghosts, one paler than the other on the doctor’s viewing screen’ in a poem dated Nov. 6. Two weeks later, as Thanksgiving approached, Updike spent five days at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, undergoing the tests that led to his lung cancer diagnosis.

“A misdiagnosis of pneumonia is ‘unfortunately, a common scenario,’ says medical oncologist Joan Schiller, deputy director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. ‘Pneumonia is a heck of a lot more common than lung cancer, so it’s understandable that someone with a cough would be treated for pneumonia and then later find out it is lung cancer.’

“When people die so quickly from cancer, it is often assumed the disease spread quickly. That can and does happen, but another common reason for a late lung cancer diagnosis is that it can be hard to know it’s there. ‘One reason is that the lungs don’t have a lot of nerves, so it doesn’t cause pain—and you can’t see it,’ says Schiller. Still, she says, even for lung cancer, Updike’s two-month span from diagnosis to death was unusually quick.

“Updike’s cancer was treated with chemotherapy. Were he diagnosed today, says Gregory A. Masters, a medical oncologist specializing in lung cancer at Christiana Care’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center in Newark, Delaware, he might have had more options.

“‘Instead of having everyone with stage IV lung cancer get the same chemotherapy,’ says Masters, ‘we now see if the patient has one or more of the specific gene alterations that allow us to use a targeted therapy. If they do, we can give them a treatment that is more effective, less toxic and that will control the tumor for more time.'”

Here’s the complete article, which also offers a career summary of Updike and his literary importance.

Updike Society receives huge collection of Updike publications

Posted on by
Reply

Kevin SchehrKevin Schehr, a charter member of The John Updike Society, has arranged for his extensive Updike collection to be donated to the society. The collection, last appraised at $80,000, includes first editions of all of Updike’s books (many signed, including Franklin Library editions), uncorrected proof copies, broadsides, limited editions, books about Updike, books containing contributions by Updike, and over 1600 periodicals featuring first appearances of writings by Updike or about Updike.

“This is a huge gift to the society,” president James Plath said. “It ensures that visitors to The John Updike Childhood Home at any given time in the future will see a number of first editions, which we’ll rotate in order to minimize their exposure to light. The first appearances in magazines will be especially interesting for Updike fans, because few of us have seen them when they first appeared in print.”

Schehr is currently in his fourth elected term as the Associate Circuit Judge for Morgan County, Missouri. He handles all cases filed in Morgan County, including civil actions, dissolutions of marriage, probate, and all criminal misdemeanor cases, as well as all felonies until the preliminary hearing has been held. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, he got his first exposure to Updike at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., when part of his senior year comprehensive exam required him to “explicate the short story ‘A & P.’ I thought I had found the next J.D. Salinger from reading that story,” he said. Then, “When I went to graduate school as a teaching assistant at the University of Missouri I was assigned Updike’s Rabbit, Run in one of my classes for my Master’s Degree. Later, upon joining The Book of the Month Club I used three of my four free selections to obtain the Rabbit books (there were only three then). That led to wanting to get true first editions of the books and my collecting bug took off from there. It started around 1982 and lasted until Updike’s death in 2009.”

Schehr said he initially donated the collection to his alma mater, Wabash College, but when he inquired about it recently he discovered that the materials were not considered a priority. As a result, he asked the college if they would consider re-donating the collection to The John Updike Society, and they were willing. Plath will pick up the exhaustive collection and drive it to Shillington sometime in mid-May 2016.

“I did get to meet Updike once when he was a dinner guest and gave a reading at the University of Missouri,” Schehr said. “I had dinner a few tables away from him, but did not approach him at that time. Later, after the reading, he was signing autographs and I waited my turn. When I got my chance I handed him my first edition copy of his first book to sign. He gave it a puzzled look, as if he were surprised that anyone would have a copy, and then, after asking for my name inscribed it ‘to Kevin, this very old book, cheers, John Updike.’ I left with a big smile on my face.”

The John Updike Society is grateful to Judge Schehr for assembling the collection and to Wabash College for re-gifting it.

 

John Updike Review Vol. 4 No. 1 is published

Posted on by
Reply

Levine-witchesVolume 4, Number 1 (Fall 2015) of The John Updike Review was recently published. The journal, edited by James Schiff and Nicola Mason and published by the University of Cincinnati and The John Updike Society, features a striking (and strikingly playful) David Levine drawing of Updike as one of his alter ego witches.

It’s an appropriate graphic, since Schiff’s innovative “Three Writers on . . .” section this issue features three different takes on The Widows of Eastwick, Updike’s 2008 sequel to The Witches of Eastwick (1984).

In addition to essays on Widows from Judie Newman (“Updike’s Black Widows: The Widows of Eastwick“), James Plath (“The Widows of Eastwick: Updike’s Book of the Dead . . . or Rather, Dying”) and Schiff (“A Second Look at The Widows of Eastwick: Aging Women, Assuaging Guilt, and Updike’s Sequels”), the issue features an Updike bibliography from Schiff and four essays:

“Male Sexuality in John Updike’s Villages,” by Brian Duffy

“Betrayal by Sandstone Farmhouse: Forgiveness in Updike’s ‘Pigeon Feathers’ and ‘The Cats,'” by Peter J. Bailey

“John Updike in Dialogue with J.D. Salinger,” by David Penn, and

“Updike in Love,” by Donald J. Greiner.

If you are a member and you haven’t received your copy yet, either you live abroad and it’s on its way, or you moved and forgot to tell the society. The John Updike Society is free to members. To join or to send an address update, contact James Plath, jplath@iwu.edu. For information on institutional subscriptions only, contact James Schiff, james.schiff@uc.edu.

Widows of Eastwick makes Amazing Sequels list

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2016-02-08 at 5.56.33 PMRomper.com today posted a list article by Lindsay Mack, “11 Books With Amazing Sequels, So You Can Keep On Reading,” and one of the 11 she selected was John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick and The Widows of Eastwick. In fact, they’re the first books on her list.

“John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick follows the adventures of three women who find themselves beset with amazing powers, as well as the interest of an intriguing newcomer to the town. And this bitingly humorous story continues with The Widows of Eastwick, in which the trio reconvenes 30 years later to come to terms with their pasts.”

And, one might add, aging . . . a frequent theme of Updike’s.

Also making her list: Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan; The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory; Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God; Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease; The Shining and Dr. Sleep by Stephen King; Amitav Gosh’s Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke; Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You and After You; Gregory Maguire’s Wicked and Son of a Witch; War Horse and Farm Boy by Michael Morpurgo; and Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and Eventide.

Writer Sebastian Faulks’ picks six, including Updike

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2016-02-06 at 5.14.05 PMWriter Sebastian Faulks shared his six favorite books with The Week, and one of them is by John Updike.

In “Sebastian Faulks’ 6 favorite books,” posted 6 Feb. 2016, he names, in no apparent order, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, The Rack by A.E. Ellis, The House on Moon Lake by Francesca Duranti, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, and Endpoint, by Updike.

In choosing the latter Faulks writes, “John Updike kept writing even as he lay dying in the hospital: the man as pen. In his last poems he gives thanks for his life and his ability to write in verses that are unsentimental and at times deeply moving. An Updike character once said that in death what he would most miss was not being alive, but being American. A wonderful farewell to his readers.”

Faulks recent novel is Where My Heart Used to Beat, a work of historical fiction about a psychiatrist who comes to terms with memories of World War II and his father’s past.

In Memoriam: Richard K. Hiester

Posted on by
Reply

HiesterRichardCLR_20160205Richard K. Hiester died on Jan. 31, 2016 at the age of 86. Though he was employed for 35 years by Dana Corp. and though he was a U.S. Navy veteran who served during the Korean Conflict, he was perhaps best known in Berks County for his basketball prowess and for his nickname: “Rabbit.” John Updike, three years his junior at Shillington H.S., famously appropriated the nickname in creating his most famous fictional character, Harry Angstrom, the protagonist of four novels and a novella—two of which would win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Memorials can be made to Heartland Hospice, 4 Park Plaza, Wyomissing, PA 19610, or Home Instead Senior Care, 881 Marcon Blvd., Suite 3700, Allentown, PA  18109. Other condolences can be offered on the website of Edward J. Kuhn Funeral Home, www.kuhnfuneralhome.com. The society offers its sincere condolences to his children, Brian D., husband of Kathleen Hiester, Wernersville, and Todd K. Hiester, Sinking Spring, and his grandchildren.

Updike quoted in review of Murdoch journal

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2016-02-06 at 8.03.01 AMIn reviewing Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934-1995 (Princeton Univ. Press) for the National Post, Robert Fulford cited John Updike prominently. His review begins,

“Dame Iris Murdoch, a much-admired novelist for several decades, was also a bold sexual adventuress. Perhaps she was a love addict before that term was popularized in the 1970s (and with it the 12-step program, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous). She had many lovers and a close attention to sex was crucial in her life and art.

“According to John Updike, love was for Murdoch what the sea was for Joseph Conrad and war was for Ernest Hemingway. Updike considered her the leading English novelist of her time and believed she learned the human condition through her relationships. Her tumultuous love life, he wrote, was ‘a long tutorial in suffering, power, treachery, and bliss.’ Updike believed that in reading her novels he could feel the ideas, images and personalities of her life pouring through her.”

“The intimate biography of Iris Murdoch,” by Robert Fulford

David Updike to talk at Belmont Public Library

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2015-04-12 at 6.03.56 PMIn case you missed the talk on “Family Archaeology: Pictures, Objects, Words” that David Updike gave at the Third Biennial John Updike Society Conference at Alvernia University, you can see him deliver that same presentation at the Belmont Public Library, 336 Concord Ave., Belmont, Mass., at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 25.

David, the oldest son of John Updike, is also an accomplished author, and books will be available for sale and signing after the presentation, which is succinctly described on the Library’s Web site: “David Updike combines family photographs with prose from John Updike’s stories and memoirs, in addition to excerpts from short stories written by John’s mother, to reveal important aspects of John Updike’s early life.”

For additional details, call the library at (617) 489-2000.