John Updike has been labeled a “protestant writer,” so it’s always interesting to hear what people of other faiths—especially articulate writers and inveterate readers—have to say about him as a religious writer. In “New Harmony: Another Brush with John Updike,” former Deseret News staffer and current Mormon Times and Faith page freelancer Jerry Earl Johnston shares his take on Roger’s Version . . . and a story involving the book he sent Updike for signing.

“After his death, one critic called him ‘The Mozart of American Letters.’ There was not only genius in his work, but also generosity and a buoyant spirit,” Johnston writes, adding, “I suspect those qualities came from his faith.”  Continue reading →

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, blogger William Thornton posted a reconsideration of Updike’s novel Terrorist: “will the events of last week and the coming weeks’ vindicate one of John Updike’s last, and least regarded, novels?”

“The Ghost of John Updike and the Boston Bombing” was posted on Brilliant Disguises: A Christian Look at Contemporary and Classic Literary Fiction and Culture on Sunday, April 21, 2013.

Among other things, Thornton concludes, “Updike’s depiction of the War on Terror has a disquieting moral equivalency between Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and America’s reaction about it, and that reads less charitably after an event like the Boston Marathon attack and the city’s response.”

Michael Updike writes that “to my delight and mild horror my son, Sawyer (17), came home with this sculpture that he commissioned from his friend, Ben Wickey. Ben is an aspiring claymation artist and just a high school sophomore. The sculpture is five inches tall and features miniature copies of Rabbit Is Rich and Picked-Up Pieces. Sawyer explained in youthful honesty, ‘I knew Ben was good at sculpting old people with all their wrinkles and white hair, so I thought he should do Grandpa, then I suggested we make him a rabbit.’

“I do think ‘Grandpa’ would be very amused,” Michael adds.

You would think so, given Updike’s own love of cartooning, his remarks on comics (“John Updike on Comics: a dream anthology”), and his approval of the late caricaturist David Levine, who drew him many times—at least once, with rabbit ears. When Levine died, the Boston Globe related Updike’s praise: “In a shoddy time, he does good work.”

Seeing the detail (and the humor) in this sculpture, one supposes he would say the same of Ben Wickey. Perhaps in the future this young artist might give the world its first claymation short film featuring Mr. Updike—with, or without the rabbit ears.    Continue reading →