Member Andrew Moorhouse writes that for his 50th birthday he decided to treat himself and commissioned an artist friend to do a painting of John Updike.

Scholars and avid readers will recognize the image from a Frank Capri photo that adorned the cover of James O. Yerkes’ critical anthology on John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace (1999). But, of course, the artist took the image into the realm of expressionism.

It’s the third such painting we know of, and seems somehow fitting and full-circle, given how Updike was inspired by art.

Persimmontree Magazine has a regular section called “short takes,” in which writers share small, lyric essays and reminiscences on a topic, and member Jack De Bellis drew our attention to the fact that Volume 16 (Winter 2010-11) features “My Night with John Updike,” by Lynne Davis.

She begins, “It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s not at all what you’re thinking.

“It started with a flyer in the mail room. On cream-colored paper, a man with a teacup. John Updike. He was coming to our rural Midwestern university.

“You could hear the whispers in the hall. ‘John Updike? The JohnUpdike? Why is he coming here?

“I fell in love with him when I was in college, when I read one of his stories in The New Yorker, ‘The Music School.’ His phrasing was lyrical, precise, so delicately balanced—like a Mozart piano concerto.”

To read more, follow this link to Persimmontree Magazine and scroll down for the rest of the story.

Bruce Cordingly, a Seattle resident who attended the First Biennial John Updike Society Conference on October 1-3, 2010, has written an article for The Millions on “John Updike, and the Curious Business of Sustaining Literary Reputations.” Here’s the link.

This poem by Evelyn Lau was published in the The Malahat Review 171 (Summer 2010), which was released in September and reprinted here by permission of both the author and the review:

Updike Redux

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth.

—John Updike, “A Soft Spring Night in Shillington”

~

The sound of rain made you happy almost to tears.

Here, it’s November again. Lightning in the night,

the neighbor’s coughing through the drywall,

the tinny sounds of late night TV.

I try to remember gratitude, the wonder you felt

as a boy crouched under a wicker chair

on a porch in Shillington, storm showers falling

all around you like a benediction.

Is it possible we never met?

Perhaps your sleeve brushed mine, once,

in the desert where you spent the winter—

among the crowds on the baked streets

of Scottsdale, the avid tourists

and fake cowboys, you a tall man with a hawk nose,

skin red from psoriasis and sun.

Or perhaps we drove past your house

in the foothills of Tucson on our way back

from the Biosphere, microwave lines of heat

radiating above the road

as we crossed the dry riverbeds

toward the saguaro forest at sunset—

the talcum kiss of the parched air,

lurid watercolours in the sky. No,

this was April, you were in Beverly Farms,

it was the last spring of your life.

Here the soil sizzles, soaking up the downpour

after the Indian summer that lingered

like it would never end. Blue days of bluster

and blown leaves. The tree in the courtyard

a massed bruise, magenta and mauve,

the maples filtering blood through their spun keys.

If it was hard to be happy then, tell me how

to survive the winter. Tell me how

to get to Plow Cemetery, where soft fistfuls

of your ashes were scattered on stone.

Clouds of ashes, the colour of smoke and dust,

Lifting above the land

You loved so much, seeding with rain.

In a New York Times story posted September 25, Charles McGrath observed the 50th anniversary of Ted William’s last game, “in which, with an impeccable sense of occasion, he hit a home run, a miraculous line drive to deep right center, in his final at-bat.” McGrath, who knew Updike well, noted that among the fans was “28-year-old John Updike, who had actually scheduled an adulterous assignation that day. But when he reached the woman’s apartment, on Beacon Hill, he found that he had been stood up: no one was home. ‘So I went, as promised, to the game,’ he wrote years later, ‘and my virtue was rewarded.'” Here’s the link to the full story, in which McGrath also pays tribute to Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” as “the most celebrated baseball essay ever.”

Rev. John Brown, who recently retired from active ministry with the United Church of Canada and became the Society’s 206th member, writes:

On Feb. 12, 1997 Updike gave a reading at the University of Toronto, promoting In the Beauty of the Lilies. I stayed awake all night thinking of questions I might ask. I was lucky. The moderator allowed me two. “Could you tell us something about the place of God and faith in your work and in your personal life?” and “Of the many sexual encounters of your characters, which one did you have the most fun writing about?” He gave generous answers to both, but provided nothing by way of identification for the second.

While he was signing Collected Poems for me, I volunteered, “I’m the guy who asked the question about sex.” “Oh, you’re the one causing all the trouble,” he said. There was quite a pause before he signed In the Beauty of the Lilies. It wasn’t until I was outside the hall when I read the inscription: “For John, Best wishes and stop thinking about sex! John Updike”

Around that time as well he was interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel on our CBC radio programme, “Writers and Company.” He had asked about Rabbit, noting how in many ways he was such an unsavory character and yet how accepting John was of him. He replied, “Well, I created him; how could I be unkind?” What a divine statement. I have quoted it in sermons many times.

Rev. John Brown

For those who may not have stumbled across it while Web surfing, here’s a link to “Remembering a round with John Updike,” written by Michael Bamberger, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, and published last fall. Thanks to Jack De Bellis for drawing it to our attention.

My own memory is NOT sharing a round. In Key West, John asked me to join him and Chris Keane at the local public course, which has tarpon in the some of the water hazards and one hole with no fairway—just a drive over mangrove swamp to a green on the other side—but I told him he’d lose all respect for me if I played a round with him.

Society member Joan Youngerman recently contributed a remembrance to the Reading Eagle in which she explains that Updike “promised not to use our names while alive, but we pretty much knew who was who in his stories.” Here’s the full story, titled “John Updike: He never forgot where he came from,” which was published on August 8.  Joan will be one of the classmates featured on a panel at the First Biennial John Updike Conference at Alvernia University this October.

This poem, “Another Dan,” comes from Daniel Hunter of Medina, Ohio:

Another Dan

I go to the library again and check out my old friend,

the late John Updike. I actually own most of his books, but

seeing him here on these public shelves gives me some sense

he’s still doing well—not breathing, obviously, but circulating.

The once we met, inscribing my book, he wrote For Dan, Best Wishes

while saying, and I quote, “Another Dan—more Dans than you can

shake a stick at.” His wild eyebrows were, if you can imagine,

even wilder in person. I think of this whenever my wife insists

I sit still for a trimming. That’s me, alright, another Dan,

but one upon whom has been bestowed best wishes.

Poet Evelyn Lau, who gained notoriety for Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989), an autobiographical account of coping in a world of drugs and prostitution in Vancouver, B.C., and also for her much-publicized alleged romantic involvement with creative writing professor and writer W.P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe, 1982), has published a poem online in The Walrus titled “Dear Updike,” which begins with an epigraph from Updike’s “On Being a Self Forever.”

Here’s the link.