By all accounts—and I’ve received a number of emails already and talked with many of the conference attendees—the First Biennial John Updike Society Conference was a big hit. People remarked that the quality of papers was high, the blend of information and recreation was perfect, and the conference was full of fun surprises. Like, some people didn’t realize that we actually got to go inside both the Plowville farmhouse and the house at 117 Philadelphia, and also hear from the son of John Updike’s pastor, who told stories about John in the church and read letters from him. It was a surprise, too, to hear Jackie Hirneisen Kendall read a love poem that a 10-year-old John Updike wrote for her. No wonder Updike’s high-school teachers recognized superior talent, because this poem was far beyond what a typical 10 year old can write.

Read Bruce R. Posten’s account in the Reading Eagle.

There were far too many highlights to list, but the family panel (with Mary Weatherall, Elizabeth Cobblah, Michael Updike, and Miranda Updike) was certainly one of them, as was the classmates panel featuring Kendall, Joan Youngerman, Harlan Boyer, and Jimmy Trexler, who had plenty of Updike stories to share. Keynote speakers Ann Beattie and Lincoln Perry also wowed the audience, and after hearing Don Greiner talk about the early days of Updike scholarship everyone got a full sense of just how far Updike scholarship has come. Both tours of the area were much appreciated, but so was the fellowship among scholars and devoted readers of Updike. It was a wonderful group that gathered here in Reading.

Next stop? Boston! At the business meeting it was announced that Suffolk University will host the Second Biennial John Updike Society Conference, with member Quentin Miller (author of John Updike and the Cold War: Drawing the Iron Curtain and a professor at Suffolk) acting as site director. Miller has experience hosting a conference at Suffolk, and he’ll be assisted by myself and by Bernie Rodgers of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, who’s the editor of the forthcoming Critical Insights: John Updike). Rodgers has agreed to serve as the program director. Possible side trips include an afternoon at Harvard seeing Updike-related sites and some of the Houghton Library treasures; a trip to the Ipswich and Beverly Farms areas, where Updike spent much of his writing life after he left Pennsylvania; and Hawthorne-related trips to Salem and Concord. Since the conference will take place sometime during the summer months and will be longer than three days, attendees will also be able to visit Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, as Updike did.

As everyone wished each other safe trips home, the refrain seemed to be, “See you in Boston in two years.” Pictured is the registration table at Alvernia, a group socializing at the hotel (Elizabeth Cobblah, Don Greiner, Patti and Jack De Bellis, Jim Schiff, Biljana Dojcinovic-Nesic, and Dave Silcox), and the classmates panel. For more photos, check out the Society’s Facebook page. And for those who can’t wait for 2012, look for an announcement soon regarding the American Literature Association Conference which, in 2011, will be held in Boston. The Society sponsors two panels, and member Richard Androne has agreed to coordinate those panels.

The previews are starting to appear. On September 22, Louis M. Shucker wrote an article for the Reading Eagle about the conference, focusing on the teacher’s seminar being offered on the first day. Then, on September 22, Steve Siegel contributed a feature on the upcoming conference to The Morning Call in Allentown. Countdown to the Society’s first conference:  six days.

Penn State University Libraries recently posted a page announcing that they have acquired the manuscripts for Buchanan Dying, and a “web tour” still under construction suggests they may also have manuscripts for Memories of the Ford Administration.

Archivists at Penn State University Libraries have chosen a scene between James Buchanan and Anne Coleman and uploaded PDF scans from the first two drafts through the third set of proofs showing how the scene changed significantly and dramatically.

Here’s the link.

Andrew Wylie, agent for the Estate of John Updike, today informed The John Updike Society that “the Estate of John Updike is in the process of selecting a definitive biographer.”

No further details are known, but we suspect that Mr. Wylie will keep the Society posted.

Amazon.com announced on July 22 that The Wylie Agency is publishing 20 books “from some of literature’s most influential authors through its new Odyssey Editions imprint and making them available for sale exclusively in the Kindle Store.”  As the press release notes, this is the first time that any of the titles have been available electronically, and the books will be exclusive to the Kindle Store for two years. Beginning on July 22, customers could download the books for $9.99 from the Kindle store and read them on their Kindle, Kindle DX, iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC, Mac, iPad, and Android devices.

The four Updike titles chosen are probably no surprise to readers and scholars:  Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest.

The other titles available are London Fields (Martin Amis), The Adventures of Augie March (Saul Bellow),  Junky (William Burroughs), The Stories of John Cheever, Love Medicine (Louise Erdrich), The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer), Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov), The Enigma of Arrival (V.S. Naipaul), The White Castle (Orhan Parmuk), Portnoy’s Complaint (Philip Roth), Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Oliver Sacks), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson), and Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh). The 20 e-books published by Odyssey Editions carry “an elegant and unified new look designed in collaboration with Enhanced Editions.” Features include: Newly designed jackets and interior typography adhering to the best conventions of book design and reading on Kindle, with Colophon, book covers and series design optimized for the Kindle screen.

“Our goal with Kindle is to make every book ever published, in print or out of print, available in less than 60 seconds,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “Having these prominent and important books available through The Wylie Agency’s Odyssey Editions is another great step toward this goal. We’re excited to let our customers read books like Rabbit Run for the first time ever electronically.”

The Wylie Agency operates internationally from offices in New York and London, and they represent a number of literary estates, among them John Updike’s. Odyssey Editions is the first digitally native literary imprint launch of its kind. “As the market for e-books grows, it will be important for readers to have access in e-book format to the best contemporary literature the world has to offer,” said Andrew Wylie, President of Odyssey Editions. “This publishing program is designed to address that need, and to help e-book readers build a digital library of classic contemporary literature.”

Not everyone is tickled about the new development. Four days after the Odyssey Editions went on sale, An American Editor delivered a scathing attack against Wylie and Agency 5 in an opinion piece titled “The Screw You eBook Deal.”

As of Tuesday, July 6, The Witches of Eastwick, the 1987 film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer, is available on Blu-ray. Warner Brothers released it as the “B” movie on a Comedy Double Feature that also includes Practical Magic, a 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters hexed by a centuries-old curse . . . and zombies.

“The Witches of Eastwick comes off best, wittier, funnier, and it alone is worth the price of the disc,” writes John J. Puccio of DVDTown.com. “The Witches of Eastwick is at its best whenever Nicholson or [Veronica] Cartwright are on the screen,” Puccio writes, though Updike went on record as saying that he thought Pfeiffer was the best. “Maybe it’s not as subtle or elegant as Updike’s book, but it should keep most audiences occupied with its exuberant, supernatural battle of the sexes,” Puccio adds.

Tomorrow, July 1, is the last day to get the advance registration discount for The First Biennial John Updike Society Conference at Alvernia University, Reading, Pa. If you haven’t registered yet, or if you’re undecided, please have another look at the Conference registration form/information.pdf. The first week in October is a great week for fall color in Pennsylvania. Give yourself a four-day weekend. You deserve it.

The typewriter recently auctioned by Christie’s that belonged to John Updike will be displayed at the First Biennial John Updike Society Conference at Alvernia University this October 1-3, thanks to the generosity of the winning bidder.

Californian Steve Soboroff, who collects typewriters once owned by famous authors, bid $4,375 to get the Updike Olympia “electric 65c” typewriter with metal typewriter cart in order to add to a growing collection that includes typewriters once used by Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, Jack London, Tennessee Williams, and songwriter John Lennon. Yep, that John Lennon.

So the Updike typewriter is in good company and seems to have found a good home . . . and an owner with a good heart. Soboroff contacted the Society and offered to loan it for the conference, and so it will be exhibited in Reading, Pa. this October for all to see.

An interesting story about Soboroff appears in the Palisadian-Post, which provides details not only about his collection but also about his accomplishments and standing in the community. And like Updike, he has a Harvard connection. He was honored in the past as the Harvard Business School “Business Statesman of the Year” by the Southern California chapter.

John Updike: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials, 1948-2007, by members Jack De Bellis and Michael Broomfield (Oak Knoll Press, 2007) , is among the 52 books being considered for the 15th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography, awarded by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. It’s the kind of competition of which Updike himself would have approved, with jurors coming together to handle and discuss the books before making their final choice. The prize is awarded every four years.

Dale Estey wrote in Red Room: where the writers are that literary agent Andrew Wylie, who represents the John Updike Estate, is threatening to bypass publishers and sell authors’ e-book rights directly to Google, Amazon, or Apple.

Here’s the story.