Former Granta editor John Freeman interviewed a lot of major writers over the course of 13 years—a number that proved lucky for him, as those encounters inspired a book, How to Read a Novelist (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 334 pages). Included is “U and Me: The Hard Lessons of Idolizing John Updike.”

“He’s a great reader, of novels and novelists (hence this collection’s title),” Chris Vognar of the Dallas Morning News writes. “True to his mission, however, Freeman is quick to get out of the way when the writers have something to say.”

“The only thing an interviewer can do to capture what a novelist does,” [Freeman] writes, “is to make them talk and tell stories, and think aloud. These are not meant to be definitive life profiles but rather glimpses spied through a moving window.”

Book review: ‘How to Read a Novelist,’ by John Freeman

Yesterday The Paris Review Daily published “A Resident of Sipswich, MA,” the final installment in a series of Timothy Leo Taranto illustrated author puns.

The drawing speaks for itself. Other authors targeted: Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

You never know what line from an Updike book is going to be quoted and used in an article. In an ed-op piece titled “Has the urinal had its day?” (posted January 11, 2014), HeraldScotland.com senior features writer Barry Didcock begins,

“I don’t have the paperback to hand so I’m relying on my fading memory of the novel, but there’s a line in John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick in which one of the female protagonists talks about men ‘lording it’ over the toilet bowl.

“She’s referring to their—our—ability to pee standing up.”

Didcock uses that quote as a springboard to a speculative discussion of how the urinal may be nearing the end of its life. But he doesn’t consider sporting events or concerts. Without urinals, the lines at those events would be as interminably long as they are for women.

On January 9, 2014, Adam Gopnik posted a think piece on The New Yorker website titled “Writers and Rum,” in which he writes,

“At the other, soberer end, John Updike once said to an admirer that the reason for the astonishing longevity he shared with Philip Roth—not just achieving the second acts that Fitzgerald said were impossible in American lives but third acts and fourth acts and then both men appearing, so to speak, out in the lobby to shake hands and do card tricks after the show—was, simply, that neither drank. He brought it up because he knew it was unusual.  Growing up, he had absorbed the notion that a good writer wasn’t just possibly a drunk; a good writer had to be a drunk to be any good at all. . . .”

Today, Vermont Public Radio’s Bill Mares posted “Mares: Just Looking,” in which he tells about reading Updike’s book, Just Looking, over the holidays and responds in his own thoughtful way—more reaction than review, really, but interesting nonetheless.

There’s also a “listen” button to click on if your eyes are tired of reading things on the computer, and you’ll hear Mares read the on-air version.

“My favorite essay in the book is called ‘Writers and Artists,'” he says, offering Updike’s own description as proof: “He describes his own excitement, at the ‘glistening quick precision, the possibility of smudging, the tremor and swoop that impart life to the lines'” of the drawings he attempted as a child.

“My only quibble is that Updike doesn’t include any reference to Chinese calligraphy, arguably one of the greatest intellectual endeavors which combines artistic expression and verbal meaning,” Mares says.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blogger Jim Higgins writes, “I’m reading and commenting on a story from the Library of America’s recently published John Updike: The Collected Stories each Wednesday until I finish the collection or give up.”

On January 1, 2014, he posted “Reading the John Updike stories: ‘Intercession,'” but if you scroll down you’ll find links to other Updike story commentaries. On January 8 he promises “a discussion of Updike’s story ‘The Alligators” and gives two stars to a story that “would go in my hypothetical Best of John Updike collection.” So far “His Finest Hour” and “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and So Forth” have made the grade, but not the frequently anthologized “Snowing in Greenwich Village” or “Friends from Philadelphia.”

‘Twas six nights before Christmas and all through the Postmodern Deconstruction Madhouse there were signs from Updike’s “Rabbit” novels.

Blogger Peter Quinones takes note of the “Signs and Signage in Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ Novels” and offers a count and speculation for their frequent inclusion . . . and variation. Some of his conclusions seem like leaps—”Similarly, how do we go from 8 signs in one novel to 19 in the next? I would suggest that Angstrom’s reticular activating system has begun to be lit up to pay attention to signs, signage, and printed messages because he now works as a typesetter—it’s unavoidable”—but it’s fascinating to see what catches people’s attention from the “Rabbit” series.