Category Archives: Collector’s Corner

Bookseller offers Updike association copies for sale

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screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-10-38-34-pmCloud Hill Books of New York City is selling a collection of inscribed and signed Updike first editions from the library of Theodore Vrettos and his wife, Vassile. Darren of Cloud Hill Books writes, “The Vrettos were residents of Peabody, Mass. In addition to being social acquaintances of John and Martha Updike, Vrettos was Updike’s regular golfing partner [until his death in 2004] and also a consultant for Greek characters and text in Updike’s stories and novels. After attending Tufts College and Harvard University, Vrettos taught creative writing at Salem State College and was director of the Writers’ Conference at Simmons College for 13 years. He was also the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction works, including Hammer on the Sea (1965), A Shadow of Magnitude: The Acquisition of the Elgin Marbles (1974), Origen: A Historical Novel (1978), Birds of Winter (1980), Lord Elgin’s Lady (1982), The Elgin Affair: The Abduction of Antiquity’s Greatest Treasures and the Passions It Aroused (1997), and Alexandria: City of the Western Mind (2001).

Here is the list of first editions for sale:  john-updike-first-editions-from-the-library-of-theodore-vrettos

The John Updike Society won’t be bidding because our funds are tied up with the house restoration, but if an Updike fan or Secret Santa would like to purchase one or two to donate for rotating display in The John Updike Childhood Home, items #15 and #49, with interesting content inscriptions, certainly would be nice additions to our museum-in-progress!

 

Michael Updike: Moran’s haul wasn’t trash

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We received the following note and accompanying materials from Michael Updike, who notes that the bags that Paul Moran famously hauled away from his father’s Beverly Farms curbside contained much more than trash, and offers an important donation if Moran will donate his part to The John Updike Childhood House:

Dear John Updike Society,
As you know my father, as a young aspiring cartoonist, sent off fan letters asking established cartoonist for original artwork. I have enclosed a letter to Harold Gray of The Blondie strip that has miraculously survived.
The most famous successes to these letters were original works by Saul Stienberg and James Thurber. These were in the exhibit of JHU items at the Boston conference and mentioned in Due Consideration P.612 . Another bit of booty was this original Mickey Finn strip by Lank Leonard. It is signed in cartoon capitals “-TO JOHN UPDIKE-WITH ALL THE BEST FROM Lank Leonard”. It has been kicking around our house ever since I remember. At some point (circa mid seventies) the last three panels went missing. The tape had long given way. I assumed they were lost for good to the far corners of the house or thrown out. Recently, to my great surprise, the lost panels showed up on The Other John Updike Archive. I can only assume that my father took them during the divorce and they went to the trash shortly before or after his demise. My siblings and I would love to see the two parts of this comic reunited after forty years of separation. We would happily donate our half of the work to the John Updike House if the other owner would donate as well.
Thanks very Much
Michael

Unknown

Unknown-1

January 2, 1948

Mr. Harold Gray
c/o New York News Syndicate
220 East 42nd Street
New York 17, New York

Dear Mr. Gray:

I don’t suppose that I am being original when I admit that ORPHAN ANNIE is, and has been for a long time, my favorite comic strip. There are many millions like me. The appeal of your comic strip is an American phenomenon that has affected the public for many years, and will, I hope, continue to do so for many more.

I admire the magnificent plotting of Annie’s adventures. They are just as adventure strips should be–fast moving, slightly macabre (witness Mr. Am), occasionally humorous, and above all, they show a great deal of the viciousness of human nature. I am very fond of the gossip-in-the-street scenes you frequently use. Contrary to comic-strip tradition, the people are not pleasantly benign, but gossiping, sadistic, and stupid, which is just as it really is.

Your villains are completely black and Annie and crew are practically perfect, which is as it should be. To me there is nothing more annoying in a strip than to be in the dark as to who is the hero and who the villain. I like the methods in which you polish off your evil-doers. One of my happiest moments was spent in gloating over some hideous child (I forget his name) who had been annoying Annie toppled into the wet cement of a dam being constructed. I hate your villains to the point where I could rip them from the paper. No other strip arouses me so. For instance, I thought Mumbles was cute.

Your draughtsmanship is beyond reproach. The drawing is simple and clear, but extremely effective. You could tell just by looking at the faces who is the trouble maker and who isn’t, without any dialogue. The facial features, the big, blunt fingered hands, the way you handle light and shadows are all excellently done. Even the talk balloons are good, the lettering small and clean, the margins wide, and the connection between the speaker and his remark wiggles a little, all of which, to my eye, is as artistic as you can get.

All this well-deserved praise is leading up to something, of course, and the catch is a rather big favor I want you to do for me. I need a picture to alleviate the blankness of one of my bedroom walls, and there is nothing that I would like better than a little momento of the comic strip I have followed closely for over a decade. So–could you possibly send me a little autographed sketch of Annie that you have done yourself? I realize that you probably have some printed cards you send to people like me, but could you maybe do just a quick sketch by yourself? Nothing funny, just what you have done yourself. I you cannot do this (and I really wouldn’t blame you) will you send me anything you like, perhaps an original comic strip? Whatever I get will be appreciated, framed, and hung.

Sincerely,

(Signed, ‘John Updike’)

John Updike
Elverson P. D. #2

Moran did the Updike world a huge favor when he saved all those bags from the dumpster, and the Society would have loved to bid on them. They would have made for terrific exhibits for The John Updike Childhood Home at 117 Philadelphia Avenue in Shillington, Pa., where Updike said his “artistic eggs were hatched.” Hopefully they’ll end up in a public, not private, collection.

The John Updike Society is committed to building a world-class author home museum, and anyone with materials to donate or offer for sale should contact Society president James Plath, jplath@iwu.edu. We are a 501c3 non-profit organization so all donations are tax deductible, and all donors will be acknowledged at the point of exhibit. We are also planning a donor wall where all who donate $500 or more, cash or in-kind, will be honored.

Paul Moran decides to sell The Other John Updike Archive

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Screen Shot 2015-02-22 at 2.28.47 PMAt one time Paul Moran said he wasn’t interested in the money, but just wanted to find a good home for the Updike materials he famously scrounged from the author’s curbside in Beverly Farms.

That time has apparently passed. Now he’s wanting $250,000 for the contents of all the trash bags he hauled away, with the blog he used to showcase the items—The Other John Updike Archive—thrown in. Moran says that bids will be accepted until 5 p.m. on March 31, 2015.

It would have been nice to have those materials for The John Updike Childhood Home at 117 Philadelphia Avenue, but $250,000 is an insane amount of money . . . more than the Society paid for the house itself.

Still, if there’s an extremely wealthy person out there who has enough disposable income to spend it on disposed-of Updike items, the Society, a 501 c 3 non-profit, would be happy to be the beneficiary!

Here’s a link to the post announcing the sale, with detailed visuals of what we may never see again.

 

Artist makes handmade author dolls, including Updike

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Screen Shot 2015-01-27 at 6.52.17 PMLike Updike’s main witch in The Witches of Eastwick, artist Debbie Ritter makes small figurines—not women, like Alex’s “bubbies,” but authors and characters from literature.

Her company is UneekDollDesigns, and you can buy dolls of authors like Lewis Caroll, Virginia Woolf, Gwendolyn Brooks, Flannery O’Connor, Dashiell Hammett, Cormac McCarthy, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and, of course, John Updike.

“This creative author doll is crafted out of wood, wire, clay, and paint. He wears a costume of black pants, plum colored, ribbed turtleneck, and holds a copy of one of his famed works. His hair is real fiber and his face is hand painted. A perfect addition to the fan of Updike’s literary works!”

Updike holds a miniature version of the 2003 Ballantine Books paperback edition of the first two Rabbit novels.

Ritter, who is from Huntsville, Ala., has gotten some notice for her dolls, including The Today Show, At Home in Illinois magazine, Vanity Fair online, Showtime, a PBS documentary on Rachel Carson, and Doll Collector Magazine.

Guardian writer weighs in on Updike’s rubbish

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The Guardian Books Blog recently posted an item on “Raiding John Updike’s Rubbish—a trashy pursuit.”  As the headline implies, the writer thinks that “a reread of the Rabbit books might be a better way of sneaking a peak into the mind of their author, rather than rummaging around in what he threw out.”

“As for me, I didn’t spend long on Moran’s blog—it felt sleazy, to be looking through such intimate pieces of a man’s life—and Updike was a man who shared much with the world, through his fiction.

“There is one picture, though, which Moran found and which the Atlantic published, which gives me reason to pause, briefly, in this decision. It’s of Updike, on a basketball court, involved and lean, and it’s so completely reminiscent of the start of Rabbit, Run that I can’t stop gazing at it.”

Boston Globe thanks Moran for rescuing Updike items

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Boston Globe writer Alex Beam today posted an article-column titled “John Updike’s trash is everyone’s treasure,” in which he recounted the story of The Other John Updike activist-archivist Paul Moran’s habit of hauling off bags of trash from Updike’s curb and rescuing all manner of ephemera.

“Moran rescued a lot more than ephemera,” Beam adds. “He has posted at least one explicit letter from a lover, and now owns an Updike address book, a trove of floppy disks (Wang!), and notes for a contemplated novel about Saint Paul, which may someday see the light of day.”

Beam, who says he disagrees with Moran’s assertion that Updike’s “tossed-out family and travel snapshots are copyright-protected”—actually, intellectual property law seems to be pretty clear that the person who took the photo is the author/artist and that his/her property is protected—appropriately closes with a line from Updike’s poem “My Children at the Dump” and says, “Thank you, Paul Moran . . . . To quote Updike, you are ‘giving the mundane its beautiful due.'”

 

The Atlantic on The Other John Updike Archive

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Ever since Paul Moran began sharing Updike ephemera on a blog called The Other John Updike Archive (the link to which you can find on our home page), Updike scholars have been wondering where he got the materials—with many speculating that he may have rescued them from a dumpster after Updike died.

Now in a story titled “The Man Who Made Off With John Updike’s Trash” by Adrienne LaFrance, posted on The Atlantic website on August 28, 2014, the mystery is explained . . . sort of.

Moran, a bicyclist, cycled past the Updike house and grabbed bags of trash, some of which Updike himself had just carried out. He did this regularly, and the family didn’t seem to mind, Moran says. Martha Updike is not quoted—only Estate literary agent Andrew Wylie, who says that Moran would “steal the Updike’s trash bags every Wednesday” and that the family tried to get him to stop.

The article is subtitled “Who really owns a great writer’s legacy?” but the law is pretty clear here. It’s not illegal to take someone’s trash from the curb. People do it in every town everywhere in America, so Moran did nothing against the law. And if he had taken the items after what amounted to an Estate housecleaning, thrown away after Updike’s death, he could be considered heroic for saving things that future scholars might find useful. I would have done it myself.

Even if he got the items while Updike was still alive, if there was no objection, where’s the foul? The problem, for some people, comes if the Updikes truly did want him to stop. That adds a moral dimension to it, and as someone who’s put the brakes on an idea the minute that Updike objected, my own inclination on such things has always been to abide by Updike’s wishes. Still, there are other collectors and scholars who would argue that preservation of the materials is more important than personal feelings, just as Updike, as we read in Begley’s recent biography, put fiction ahead of people. And it’s not clear from the Atlantic article whether the family truly objected, or to what degree. One quote from a literary agent doesn’t make the case.

The law is pretty clear regarding the items themselves. The physical items are owned by whoever bought or in this case salvaged them. And it’s terrific that Moran has chosen to share them with the world. He can get away with “publishing” items like the Hotel Algonquin bill, or ticket stubs, or invitations, or a call to jury duty, because they’re artifacts not subject to intellectual property law. Any drawings that Updike did, any doodles, any notes, anything that expressed a thought or opinion of his are covered by that law and Moran cannot make those items public because the content is owned by the Updike Estate, even though he owns the physical objects.

Puzzles remain, though: Updike was a pack-rat. He saved everything. So why throw away these things after holding onto them so long, especially all of those old slides and photographs? Why not give the latter to his children? I know from talking with him that he cared very little about the honorary degrees, but I find it hard to believe that he didn’t include them with the Harvard materials, or that “Mrs. Updike said it was fine and she was glad [the honorary degrees Moran found and sold] were going to support a local bookstore.”

So there are aspects about this that we may never know. Moran is quoted as saying that “he’s looked for permanent homes for the archive” but “says everyone he’s approached has turned him down.” Maybe he wants something in return, and the price is too high. But I do know that if the items were displayable and not a violation of intellectual property laws, if the items were Pennsylvania-related, and if the board of The John Updike Childhood Home approved, some of those items would find quite a welcome home.

 

Children’s book blogger posts Updike-Wilde item

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Wilde - The Young King - 001Yesterday blogger Ariel S. Winter (We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie) posted an item titled “John Updike on Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Stories,” with illustrations of The Young King and Other Fairy Tales by Oscar Wilde, which was introduced by John Updike.

Winter offers a summary and assessment of Updike’s remarks.

“In the modern age, fairy stories become necessary, Updike says, ‘For if men do not keep on speaking terms with children they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money. This danger was not so clear until machines entered the world in force and began to make men resemble them.'”

Here’s the link.

Updike letter offered for $4,206.73

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Screen Shot 2014-06-23 at 6.41.25 AMUpdike aficionados were no doubt wondering what effect, if any, the Adam Begley biography would have on Updike studies and all things Updike, and one apparent result of the upsurge in Updike publicity is an inflated price of Updike collectibles.

Case in point: A typed and signed letter from Updike has a price tag of $4,206.73 at Sports Memorabilia.com, where they had better stick to assessing the value of materials signed by overpaid sports stars. Updike would have been amused by the hugely inflated price (and giggled at the 73 cents, wondering if that might be for his trademark cross-outs), even for a so-called “content” letter in which he shares information:

“I can’t claim to be a great Jamesian unlike xxx Leon Edel and the x late James Thurber. I read Portrait of a Lady in New York, on the subway, 85th street down to Times Square on the Broadway line, twenty minutes back and forth, and find I don’t remember much about it. I read Wings of the Dove somewhat later, and the Golden Bowl recently, with great difficulty, xxxxxxxxx straining as I was against his insufferable late style. . . . Where I do admire James without reservation is as a critic—I have the Library of America volume and dip into this whenever I want to clarify my own impressions.”

The market will correct, but with so many letters out there a fairer price would be $400-600—though letters like this do whet the appetite for a second Updike biography, there’s so much more information out there to be gathered!

Updike’s rawly titled Cunts fails to draw auction interest

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Screen Shot 2014-06-22 at 11.59.32 AMThis past April, Heritage Auctions of New York City featured one of only 26 signed and lettered copies of Updike’s ribald poem “Cunts,” which is subtitled “(Upon Receiving The Swingers Life Club Membership Solicitation).”

There were no bids, and the item did not sell. Here is the description:

John Updike. Cunts (Upon Receiving The Swingers Life Club Membership Solicitation). New York: Frank Hallmann, printed by Andrew Hoyem, [1974]. One of twenty-six lettered copies, out of a total edition of 276, signed by Updike (this is copy “J”). Oblong octavo. [4, blank], [17], [3, blank] pages. Publisher’s burgundy paper over boards, printed paper labels on front board and spine. Spine a bit sunned, minor rubbing to binding, text block a bit loose. A very good copy. [Together With]: [John Updike, contributor]. Cunts… New York: New York Quarterly, 1973. Summer 1973 issue, Number 15. One of 457 copies signed by Updike on page 65 of this issue (Cunts appears on pages 63-65). Octavo. 220 pages. Original wrappers. Minor rubbing, else fine. Both versions of this poem housed together in custom-built burgundy cloth clamshell case, with hidden drawer housing the New York Quarterly issue. From the collection of Alexander J. Jemal, Jr.