Interest in the Reading area is running high for Jack De Bellis’ most recent book, John Updike’s Early Years, which is already headed for a second printing.

Here’s the article by Bruce Posten:

“Updike’s roots focus of latest chronicle”

Details are now available for member Larry Mazzeno’s book, Becoming John Updike: Critical Reception, 1958-2010. Camden House will publish the 270-page book in hardcover on April 1, 2013. SRP is $85 U.S.

Publisher’s description: When John Updike died in 2009, tributes from the literary establishment were immediate and fulsome. However, no one reading reviews of Updike’s work in the late 1960s would have predicted that kind of praise for a man who was known then as a brilliant stylist who had nothing to say. What changed? Why? And what is likely to be his legacy?

These are the questions that Becoming John Updike pursues by examining the journalistic and academic response to his writings.

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Jack De Bellis’s John Updike’s Early Years is now available at Amazon.com.

John Updike’s Early Years first examines his family, then places him in the context of the Depression and World War II. Relying upon interviews with former classmates, the next chapters examine Updike’s early life and leisure activities, his athletic ability, social leadership, intellectual prowess, comical pranks, and his experience with girls. Two chapters explore Updike’s cartooning and drawing, and the last chapter explains how he modeled his characters on his schoolmates. Lists of Updike’s works treating Pennsylvania, and a compilation of contributions to his school paper are included, along with profiles of all students, faculty and administrators during his years at Shillington High School.

A number of Society members have asked about the status of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike, so we asked Begley, who reports that as of today he’s written about 140,000 words and has roughly 25,000 to go.

“My deadline, according to the contract with HarperCollins, is the end of May 2013,” Begley writes. “If the Houghton opens the Updike archive as promised in early January, I should be finished on time.”

If that happens, Begley speculates that there’s a good chance the book will be published in early 2014.

Anyone with information or leads can send their suggestions directly to Begley  (acbegley@gmail.com). Although the biography is not authorized by the Updike Estate, there is still considerable interest.

Bob Batchelor’s “John Updike: A Critical Biography,” which will be published by Praeger on April 30, 2013, is now available for pre-order at Amazon.

Here’s the description of the hardcover (226-page) book:

Widely considered “America’s Man of Letters,” John Updike is a prolific novelist and critic with an unprecedented range of work across more than 50 years. No writer has ever written from the variety of vantages or spanned topics like Updike did. Despite being widely recognized as one of the nation’s literary greats, scholars have largely ignored Updike’s vast catalog of work outside the Rabbit tetralogy. This work provides the first detailed examination of Updike’s body of criticism, poetry, and journalism.

Examining Updike’s criticism and journalism, popular culture scholar Bob Batchelor shows how that work played a central role in transforming his novels. The book disputes the common misperception of Updike as merely a chronicler of suburban, middle-class America by focusing on his novels and stories that explore the wider world, from the groundbreaking The Coup (1978)  to Terrorist (2006). John Updike: A Critical Analysis asks readers to reassess Updike’s career by tracing his transformation over half a century of writing.

Jack De Bellis’ new book, John Updike’s Early Years (Lehigh University Press, cloth, 188pp), will be published in January 2013 and is now available for pre-order through Rowman & Littlefield.

Here’s the link, which includes an extensive description.

Camden House has begun accepting pre-orders for Becoming John Updike: Critical Reception, 1958-2010, by Laurence W. Mazzeno.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the journalistic and academic response to Updike’s writings.

Mazzeno, President Emeritus of Alvernia University, is a member of the Society. Here’s the link. No cover art is available yet.

Member Larry Randen called our attention to a book written by Nicholas Delbanco, “who was in the class Updike taught at Harvard before he retired from academe in the summer of 1962. It includes a letter dated August 26, 2007 in response to three questions Delbanco asked him (and many others) for his book, “Lastingness: The Art of Old Age” (New York/Boston: Grand Central Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-0-446-19964-3.”

Randen says that Updike’s response to the form letter sent to writers, quoted in its entirety, appears in Chapter 8, “Gratification.” Also included in a mid-section gallery is a photo of Updike and Delbanco in Bennington, Vermont, 1980, taken by Elena Delbanco.