Author Archives: James Plath

Updike places high on EW’s Top 100 Books list

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Screen Shot 2013-07-07 at 7.40.20 PMIf you open up the July 5/12 2013 Special Double Issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine and go to page 96, you’ll see that Updike’s Rabbit quartet was named the  #8 novel of all time.

“‘Rabbit’ Angstrom runs from marriage and responsibility and runs smack into them again in Updike’s masterful chronicle of a man’s four-decade race against the American zeitgeist,” the editors write.

Only F. Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather placed higher among American writers, with The Great Gatsby earning 2nd place and My Antonia 6th.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved came in at Number 9, right behind Updike, followed by E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (#10—children’s books, popular books, genre books, and international authors were all considered), William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (#12), Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (#13), E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime (#15), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (#17), Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (#18), Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (#19), Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (#20), Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (#21), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (#26), Richard Wright’s Native Son (#30), J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (#32), John Irving’s The World According to Garp (#34), Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (#36), and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (#37).

Screen Shot 2013-07-07 at 7.27.59 PMMorrison was the only American writer to place twice, with Song of Solomon coming in at #52. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple made the list at #45, as did Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (#62), Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (#63), David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (#64), Saul Bellow’s Herzog (#65), and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (#85). Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club barely made the list at 100.

The article, which runs from pages 94-103, generated so many reader complaints that the editors felt compelled to defend their selection process (click here). Topping the list? Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. That Updike is so well thought of by the staff of an entertainment magazine speaks to both the literary merit of the Rabbit novels and their popular appeal.

Belated: 2009 tributes are worth reading, rereading

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Sometimes it takes a while for things to rise to the top in that massive cache of Internet offerings, as happened with two 2009 tributes to John Updike—one written by Michael Dirda for The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the other posted by “an Indian fan.”

“John Updike, 1932-2009”
Dirda’s tribute, posted on February 13, 2009, includes some interesting observations. “Updike recognized that American literature and American art often occupy a realm between fantasy and reality, that they rely on mystery and symbolism as much as on apt observation, that our greatest novelists and painters are constantly edging into the magical and dreamlike,” Dirda writes, concluding, “Updike’s own fiction feels grounded in archetypes, touched with romance and myth.” Here’s the link to the full essay.

“An Indian fan of American writer John Updike”
Journalist Shevlin Sebastian, who has worked for magazines and newspapers in Kolkata, Kochi, and Mumbai and now writes for the New Indian Express in Kochi, posted his Updike tribute on February 4, 2009. “At the American Centre library in Kolkata, where I was a regular visitor, there would always be a row of Updike books,” Sebastian writes. He expresses one “enduring regret”—that Updike’s death removed him from consideration for the Nobel Prize. Here is a link to the full post.

Blogger notes “A Child’s Calendar” revisions

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updikechildscalendar1Scholars haven’t done much with Updike’s children’s books, but blogger Maria Popova (“Brain Pickings”) notes that Updike’s A Child’s Calendar, originally published in 1965, was updated for a 1999 re-release to be more racially inclusive.

Trina Schart Hyman’s illustrations feature mixed ethnicities that were absent from the original book. Popova observes that Updike even made slight changes to the text in order to “celebrate diversity,” and cites examples.

Here’s the article—“A Child’s Calendar: John Updike’s Vintage Children’s Book, Updated to Celebrate Diversity”—with poems and illustrations.

 

 

Updike referenced in assessment of rising female literary star

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Screen Shot 2013-06-17 at 10.44.19 PMIf you haven’t heard of Rachel Kushner, then you probably haven’t heard that, according to Salon‘s Laura Miller, she’s written the Great American Novel. So says Miller in her June 5, 2013 review-article, “Rachel Kushner’s ambitious new novel scares male critics.” 

John Updike is mentioned several times as one of the old guard writers expected to have produced such a work . . . but maybe he already has. Published as a collection by Everyman’s Library, Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy tells the sweeping saga of an ordinary, middle-class man in 20th Century America. That in itself would seem a marvelous enough achievement to qualify for the title, but then to have it validated with two out of four books receiving the Pulitzer Prize?

Updike Society honors Shillington realtor

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On Monday, June 10, Shillington realtor Conrad Vanino received The John Updike Society’s second Distinguished Service Award—an 8×10” plaque thanking him “for his invaluable help acquiring and converting The John Updike Childhood Home into a museum.”

Vanino (pictured below with society co-founder Dave Silcox and curator Maria Mogford) helped the society go through proper channels and worked pro bono. He continues to serve the society behind the scenes, maintaining a lock box on the property so work crews can enter and checking on the house several times per day. Vanino is also in the process of looking for a suitable tenant for the annex added by Dr. Hunter, who lived in the house after the Updikes. The society has divided the annex so that three rooms of the building used for patient exams can be rented as office space to help cover the expenses of maintaining the house. The doctor’s office will be used as a gift shop, and the waiting room will be the educational room, for watching videos or for class presentations.

Vanino is a lifelong resident of the Shillington area who has served on Borough Council for over 30 years and is also on the board of the Shillington Lions Club and the board of Crime Alert Berks. He is a member of the Shillington Business Association and a graduate of Governor Mifflin High School. Like many Shillington youngsters, he learned to swim in the pond that provided the water supply for the poorhouse Updike wrote about, just blocks away from the house at 117 Philadelphia Avenue.

Vanino

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Updike turns up in a review of the movie Copperhead

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may-june-issuethumbIn a May 31 column/review published in The American Conservative, Bill Kauffman uses Updike’s Buchanan Dying—“Updike’s imaginatively empathetic play about the despised 15th president”—in lengthy comparison to make a point about the movie Copperhead, a Civil War drama that opens in theaters on June 28, 2013.

Citing a disparaging quote from Henry James about the historical novel, Kauffman concludes that both the new movie and Updike’s old, only play refute James’ assertion that “the real thing is almost impossible to do.”

Metroland reviews Always Looking

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Screen Shot 2013-05-31 at 8.34.39 AMB.A. Nilsson wrote a review of Updike’s Always Looking that was published on May 29, 2013. In it, he concludes, “The heightened language . . . reminds us that paintings, like novels, best reward those inclined to linger with them the longest.

“Updike’s success as a critic and social observer, which he pursued as ardently as he did his fiction, came from his ability to convey intelligent insight with a compellingly accessible voice,” Nilsson writes.

Blackbird Theater to perform play based on Roger’s Version in June 2014

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Screen Shot 2013-05-27 at 9.56.34 PMThe Tennessean reported on May 24 that with the blessing of the Updike Estate, Blackbird Theater, of Nashville, Tennessee, will perform a staged adaptation of Roger’s Version in June 2014.

The play will be presented in collaboration with the Lipscomb University Department of Theatre and performed in Shamblin Theater (below) in Bennett Campus Center on the Lipscomb campus. That’s fitting, given the theological content of Updike’s 1986 novel, since Lipscomb is a small private university affiliated with the Churches of Christ . . . with graduate students, as well as undergrads.

In Roger’s Version, theology professor Roger Lambert is challenged by an evangelical grad student who thinks he can prove the existence of God using computer science.

Blackbird artistic director Wes Driver (pictured) will write and direct the play.

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Updike grandson to make “different perspective” anti-bullying film

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Screen Shot 2013-05-21 at 8.39.23 AMMore proof that fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, even when that tree is second generation.

John Updike’s fifth grandchild, Kai Daniels Freyleue (Miranda Updike’s son), is making a film this summer aimed at putting “a different perspective on the anti-bullying movement,” the 19 year old writes. “It’s less about the horrible effects bullying has on the psychology of teens and more about self-defense and building strength, despite bullying.”

The film, Night Shadow, is “about a vigilante named Night Shadow who, much like other masked vigilantes, enacts justice upon people who do wrong. In this case, the target is bullies. Night Shadow defends his weaker peers and is feared by all who pick on others, but do his tactics go too far? Or is he truly a hero?

“The film features Christina Kirkman, a young actress who was voted the Funniest Kid in America back in 2003 and starred in the cast of Nickelodeon’s All That for two years afterwards.” Kai’s band, Out of Focus, will be featured on the soundtrack.

For the curious, you can read more about the project at Indiegogo, a site where indie filmmakers try to raise cash for projects . . . and contributors get something in return, like a signed script ($49+) or their name in the credits ($199+).