Author Archives: James Plath

University of Rochester exhibit includes Updike-related material

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lasch-thumbMember Jeffrey Ludwig writes that the University of Rochester Department of Rare Books and Special Collections is currently hosting an exhibit called “Nurturing Inquiry,” which will showcase work done by scholars who have used the UR collections for research and/or publication.

“One of the cases, which I helped put together, centers on the Christopher Lasch papers,” Ludwig writes. “In particular I filled it with a good amount of stuff related to Lasch and Updike. It features my JUR article on Lasch and Updike at Harvard, and also some relevant letters, pictures, and a brief retrospective from me.”

Here’s the link. If you click on the letter icon on the lower column, left side, you’ll be able to magnify “a pretty neat image of a letter Lasch wrote about Updike. In addition to providing colorful details about their relationship in 1954 (their senior year, after Updike got married)—the letter includes a sketch Lasch drew of Updike’s head. It’s simple but I think recognizably Updike!”

In the latest Southern Review: John Updike Writes Like a Girl

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Screen Shot 2013-11-11 at 12.55.07 PMCatchy title, isn’t it? Sounds like something you’d hear on the playground, only this one appeared in a literary playground. And the purveyor of said title (or the flinger of insults, if you prefer to think of it that way) is Barb Johnson, a former New Orleans carpenter who has gained quick notice since enrolling in an MFA program at the University of New Orleans. Recently she was named the fifth recipient of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award. Her piece of nonfiction prose, “John Updike Writes Like a Girl,” appears in the latest issue of The Southern Review (Autumn 2013).

The excerpts below suggest why Glimmer Train named her a Best New Voice:

I. In Which I Rehash the Usual Criticisms of John Updike

It’s easy to dog John Updike. Reflexive, even. Anyone who has studied literature—though not necessarily Updike—knows to say that his sentences are either gorgeous and stunning, or, you know, totally overwritten and ostentatious—awash with shimmering phrases, like bubbles that Updike has blown just to watch them catch the light: whee!  Continue reading →

Celebrity-author photographer Jack Mitchell is dead at age 88

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Screen Shot 2013-11-11 at 12.26.25 PMJack Mitchell, whose portraits of famous people included numerous writers—a young John Updike living in Georgetown among them—died last week at the age of 88.

Earlier this year Mitchell (below) spoke at the Deltona Regional Library about his photographs of famous writers, including Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, and Truman Capote.

Here’s the story by Richard Conn, which ran in The Daytona Beach News-Journal online. Above, as a tribute to his genius, is the photo he took of Updike.

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An Updike foot fetish? One blogger thinks so

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Blogger Peter Quinones (Postmodern Deconstruction Madhouse, “a blog about cinema and literature with a concentration on Bellow, DeLillo, Updike and Cavell but frequently branching out into so much more”) just posted “Tracking John Updike’s Foot Fetish – Part 1,” which includes six quotes from six of Updike’s publications as evidence and an admission that “this is only scratching the surface.” Here’s the link.

Brain Pickings compiles quotes “on Writing and Death”

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updike_selfconsciousnessMaria Popova has compiled a number of quotes for an article on “John Updike on Writing and Death,” which was published online at Brain Pickings, much of it drawn from Updike’s memoir, Self-Consciousness. There are some interesting juxtapositions and conclusions here—like for Updike, “work—especially a writer’s work—serves the same purpose as religion (which, as Mark Twain famously grumbled, is chiefly an anchor of human ego.”

LOA Collected Stories reviews and readings

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UpdikeReviews and responses to the Library of America publication of John Updike: The Collected Stories are starting to appear. We’ll add to this list as entries become known to us.

“Tag Archives: John Updike: The Collected Stories.” Andrew Keyser. Portland (Oregon) Book Review. September 10, 2013. “Updike is one of those rare authors that appeals to a diverse group of people. Lovers of American [sic] will fit right into these stories, recognizing the daily joys and struggles of small-town America. Philosophers will find wisdom in over forty years of storytelling, and those that just want a good story will have no trouble finding many in these nearly two thousand pages.”

“My Hitherto Inadequately Superficial World; Reading John Updike’s stories.” Scott Dill. Books & Culture (Christianity Today). October 2013. “For one who comes to Updike looking for an existential defense of Christianity, as I did when I first read him, these stories may surprise in their essential playfulness.”

“John Updike: The Collected Stories.” Trevor. The Mookse and the Gripes. October 3, 2013. “Trevor” begins with a disclaimer—”I simply haven’t read them all or nearly enough to write a proper ‘review'”—but adds, “Still, I heartily recommend this collection. I want interested readers to know about this set, a set filled with notes and other supplemental material to really dive deeply into Updike’s extensive work across more than half a century.”

“Reading the John Updike stories: ‘Dentistry and Doubt.'” Jim Higgins. JSOnline (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). October 16, 2013. In this blog entry Higgins notes that “‘Dentistry and Doubt’ is the first story in this collection to remind us that Updike is not only a chronicler of lust, but one of Christian faith and doubt as well.”

“Teller of Tales; The Definitive Updike, in two volumes.” William H. Pritchard. The Weekly Standard Book Review (Washington, D.C.). Vol. 19:7. October 21, 2013. Pritchard writes, “Since his death, my impression is that his reputation has slipped a bit, as if reading fiction about discontent, sorrow, and fear is not to play for high enough stakes.”

“The Curious Paradox of John Updike.” James Santel. The Millions. October 24, 2013. Santel writes that “almost five years after his death, Updike’s critics often seem to outweigh his admirers” and says, “Having read nearly 200 of Updike’s stories in rapid succession, I’m more sympathetic to the critics’ point of view than I had been. While not willing to go as far as Franzen, who argues that Updike was ‘wasting’ his ‘tremendous, Nabokov-level talent,’ I was surprised by how many of Updike’s stories impressed me while I read them, and how few left an impression. . . . The curious paradox of Updike is that he made art into a craft, but only rarely did he transcend craft to achieve art.”

“John Updike Gives the Mundane Its Beautiful Due.” Jeff Tompkins. PopMatters. November 14, 2013. “Any collection of 186 stories by the same author is bound to have its share of duds. Updike was such a pro that even his minor efforts maintain the same meticulous finish; the misfires usually result from his experimenting with form or subject matter, and offer the inherent interest of a major talent testing its boundaries.”

Member publications delve into new areas

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9781137340221Member Jo Gill, Associate Professor & Director of Education: English at the University of Exeter (UK) has featured Updike prominently in her new book, The Poetics of the American Suburbs (New York: Palgrave, 2013). It includes a discussion of a number of Updike poems, among them “My Children at the Dump,” “The One-Year-Old,” “Scenic,” “Shillington,” “Sleepless in Scarsdale,” and “Suburban Madrigal.”

Here’s the link to the Macmillan website, which calls it “the first book to consider the rich body of poetry that emerged from and helped to shape the post-war American suburbs. Jo Gill discusses the work of forty or more writers—some well-known, such as Anne Sexton and Langston Hughes, others not primarily known through their poetry such as John Updike, and some who were best-sellers in their own time but have since largely been forgotten such as Phyllis McGinley. Combining detailed textual and archival study with insights drawn from other disciplines, the book offers a new perspective on post-war suburbia and on the broader field of twentieth-century American literature.”

Member Scott Dill has an essay in the recent issue of Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (54:4) titled “Affection for the Affected World: Updike on Emotion, Sense, and Style.” The full essay can be viewed here. 

Updike included in A JOURNEY THROUGH LITERARY AMERICA

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Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.18.57 PMJohn Updike is among the writers profiled in A Journey Through Literary America, a coffee-table book that is being sold to benefit the establishment of an American Writers Museum in Chicago. Here’s the release:

The authors of A Journey Through Literary America are embarking on a fundraising campaign to benefit the establishment of the American Writers Museum. Anticipated to open in Chicago, 2015, it will be the first national museum in the United States dedicated to the history of American literature and the American writer. Purchase the book, greeting cards or fine art prints directly from the LiteraryAmerica.net website and 50% of the proceeds will be donated to help establish the American Writers Museum. Better yet, become a Chapter One Patron when you donate $100 directly to the American Writers Museum and receive the book as a complimentary gift.

Join the movement to establish the first national writers museum in the United States.
There are more than 17,500 museums in the United States. Among these are museums that focus on art, history, sports, pop culture, science, technology, race and ethnicity. Although there are many wonderful small museums that commemorate the lives of individual writers, almost unbelievably, there is not a single museum dedicated to the history of American literature and to American writers.

About A Journey Through Literary America
This 304-page coffee table book takes a look at 26 of America’s great authors and the places that inspired them. Unique to this book of literary biography is the element of the photograph. With over 140 photographs throughout, the images add mood and dimension to the writing and they are often shockingly close to what the featured authors described in their own words. Lushly illustrated and beautifully designed, the book is as much of a pleasure to look at as it is to read. It earned a prestigious Eric Hoffer Award as the Best Art Book of 2010 and notable reviews.

The book’s featured authors extol a range of voices: Sherwood Anderson • Raymond Carver • Willa Cather • James Fenimore Cooper • Rita Dove • Ralph Waldo Emerson • William Faulkner • Richard Ford • Robert Frost • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Ernest Hemingway • Langston Hughes • Washington Irving • Robinson Jeffers • Sinclair Lewis • Herman Melville • Henry Miller • Toni Morrison • Flannery O Connor • E. Annie Proulx • Philip Roth • Wallace Stegner • John Steinbeck • Henry David Thoreau • John Updike • Thomas Wolfe

The Literary America Collection of fine art prints have been exhibited at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, CA (2010) and at the Faulkner Gallery in Santa Barbara, CA (2012).

Updike included in list of TOP 50 CONTEMPORARY WRITERS OF FAITH

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He wasn’t included in a list of Top 25 Contemporary Writers of Faith, because the editors of Patheos—”Hosting the Conversation on Faith”—only included living writers. But death apparently is a technicality readers would rather not concern themselves with.

The editors amended their original list based on suggestions of what people of faith are reading NOW, which apparently is contemporary enough. Updike made the list for In the Beauty of the Lilies, Roger’s Version, and My Father’s Tears—though, of course, his entire oeuvre might have been included.

Here’s the link.