Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, got permission to have a sneak peek at the Updike archive now being catalogued at the Houghton. And he talks with Jeffrey Brown about his experience and thoughts about Updike for Art Beat on the PBS NEWS HOUR website.

Here’s the link to “Conversation: Archive Offers Revealing Look at John Updike.”

Updike in Pennsylvania: The First Biennial John Updike Society Conference has been getting a lot of press lately, but members and soon-to-be members wanting to attend this historic event, Oct. 1-3 at Alvernia University, are reminded that July 1 is the deadline to register at the special discount rate of $85. After July 1 the price of basic registration goes up to $120, so take time out to send in your form and save some money. Join us in Updike country, Berks County, Penn., for tours of the Updike homes and sites, panels featuring family members and friends, scenes from the Rabbit tetralogy performed by the Reading Community Players Theatre, presentations by scholars from eight different countries, and keynote speakers Ann Beattie and Lincoln Perry. It will be a memorable experience!

Here’s the PDF for the program details, registration form, and travel/hotel information:  UPDIKE IN PENNSYLVANIA.pdf

Yesterday’s New York Times had an update on the Updike archive that was deposited at the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The story also has some nice information about Updike’s college years, work (and play) habits, and the value of the archival materials at the Houghton—which “crowds an aisle and a half of metal shelving in the basement.” Here’s the link, with thanks going to member Quentin Miller for calling our attention to it. The photo of archivists unpacking and shelving the material is copyrighted by Houghton Library.

Here’s an earlier story about the archive from the Houghton blog.

Although moderator Sally LeVan and panelist Kevin Frazier had to cancel because of personal reasons, the “John Updike and American Pop Culture” panel featuring Peter Bailey, Matthew Shipe, and Ed Allen went well, with yours truly stepping in to moderate, and the papers presented by Sylvie Mathé and Judie Newman were equally impressive in the “Updike Abroad” session moderated by James Schiff.

About 10 members made it to San Francisco for the panels and business meeting, and secretary Peter Bailey will be sending members minutes soon. It was wonderful to see old friends again and to meet new ones—something that will be even more fun at the Society’s first conference this October 1-3 at Alvernia University in Reading, Pa.  Among the things we talked about in San Francisco were ways in which the Society might act to influence such things as anthology entries. We couldn’t help but be appalled that a new Wiley-Blackwell literature series included Updike in one volume on American short fiction but omitted him in several other volumes on contemporary American fiction. And the Updike stories and poems that are featured in anthologies are pretty much the same ones. A quick tour of the book displays at ALA turned up these:

“A&P” is included in Making Literature Better: An Anthology for Readers and Writers, 4th Edition, edited by John Schlib and John Clifford; The Bedford Anthology of American Literature Vol. Two: 1865 to the Present, edited by Belasco and Johnson; 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology, 3rd Edition, edited by Beverly Lawn; The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction Compact 7th Edition, edited by Ann Charters; The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 9th Edition, edited by Michael Meyer; Literature: A Portable Anthology, 2nd Edition, edited by Gardner, Lawn, Ridl, and Schakel;and Approaching Literature, 2nd Edition, edited by Schakel and Ridl.

“Separating” is included in The American Short Story and Its Writer: An Anthology, edited by Ann Charters.

“Outage” is included in The Bedford Introduction Literature, 9th Edition, edited by Michael Meyer.

The poems “Dog’s Death” and “Player Piano” are included in Poetry: An Introduction, 6th Edition, Michael Meyer; The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 9th Edition, edited by Michael Meyer. And “Ex-Basketball Player” appears in The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry, edited by Jay Parini. There are more anthologies out there, of course, but these were the ones displayed, and it gives one pause.

Pictured in the top photo (from left, clockwise) after the first panel are Matthew Shipe, Peter Bailey, Ed Allen, Marshall Boswell, and James Schiff. In the other photo from the second panel (from left) are Sylvie Mathé, James Schiff, and Judie Newman.

Adam Begley, longtime book review editor for the New York Observer, was recently announced as a recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship Award to work on a biography of John Updike. According to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation press release, Begley was one of 180 artists, scientists, and scholars out of some 3,000 applicants to win support. The average amount of Fellowship grants is approximately $43,000.

When The Observer first announced only a month after Updike died that Begley planned to write a biography, ripples went through the Updike world. For one thing, it seemed too soon, especially since everyone close to Updike knew how adamant he was that no biography be written. A “living death,” he called them. For another, there was the hope that if a biography ever were written, it would come from an Updike scholar, just as the first major biography on Hemingway came from Professor Carlos Baker, one of the major Hemingway scholars.

Begley, who lives in Northamptonshire, England, interviewed Updike on two occasions, but his only association beyond that is through his father, Louis, who graduated from Harvard’s English department the same year as Updike.

“HarperCollins came to me,” Begley wrote in an email, “and though I jumped at the opportunity to write this book (having written two profiles of JU, a half-dozen reviews, and an obituary), it wasn’t my idea.”

When I asked Edward Hirsch, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to respond, he wrote back, “Adam Begley is a gifted writer whose work comes with the highest recommendations. We are excited about his book about John Updike. We are aware that it will be an unauthorized biography.”

Martha Updike, who, along with Updike’s editor, Judith Jones, forms The John H. Updike Literary Trust, had no comment.

Program director Jack De Bellis will continue to accept paper proposals until the end of April, so it’s not too late to email him your proposal and become a part of the historic First Biennial John Updike Society Conference, which will be hosted by Alvernia University in Reading, Pa., October 1-3 2010.

The program is shaping up to be a truly international event, with scholars from six different countries scheduled to present their work. We have papers by professors, graduate students, and independent scholars as well—all of which will make a nice complement to location-specific events. Two different three-hour tours of Updike sites in Reading, Shillington, and Plowville are planned. Pictured is the barn that inspired Updike to write “Pigeon Feathers” and the Pagoda/Pinnacle described in Rabbit, Run. The conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rabbit, Run.

The full conference schedule to date will be made public on May 3, so check back. Those wishing to propose a paper should email Jack De Bellis directly: bjd1@lehigh.edu.

The Associated Press and Best Ebook Reviews reported that Random House is adding 7000 additional ebooks to its e-catalog over the next few months. Though ebooks count for fewer than a 1 percent market share of total book sales, Random House ebook sales have experienced a triple-digit percent increase since the Amazon.com Kindle reader was introduced. Typical Kindle editions sell for $9.00, and Random House specifically said that John Updike’s novels will be among those digitalized in this new wave of ebooks. For more information, see “Kindle Reader Impact–Random House ebook sales increase over 100%,” and thanks to Jack De Bellis for drawing it to our attention.

Andrew Wylie, whom Martha Updike hired to act as literary agent for the Updike Estate, told The New York Observer that a collection of Updike’s essays would be given to Knopf this fall. Observer reporter Leon Neyfakh also wrote in his January 5 article that Max Rudin, publisher of the Library of America series, has been in discussions with Wylie about Library of America editions of Updike’s work, “something the author was very eager to do while he was alive but couldn’t because such editions would compete directly with Knopf’s Everyman’s Library series.” As for the essays, we asked Andrew Wylie if he could tell us whether the volume would be a compilation of previously published material, ala More Matter and Due Considerations, or if they were previously unpublished essays that came closer to Self-Consciousness. “It’s premature to say more now,” Wylie responded. “Sometime in the fall there may be more news.”

For another story about Wylie’s acquisition of the Updike account, see the January 6 Daily Finance article by Sarah Weinman.

In the upcoming Person of the Year 2009 issue of Time magazine, John Updike received a “fond farewell” from Charles McGrath, a former deputy editor of The New Yorker and current writer-at-large for The New York Times.  Updike was one of 45 people no longer with us that Time decided to honor.

The John Updike Society now has a Facebook page, and there are two photo galleries so far and a discussion board where members can start topics and engage each other and Updike fans in discussions ranging from teaching Updike and interpreting texts to collecting Updike. The link is on the left column menu. Let us know what we can do to improve the Facebook page and this one. The photo here is from one of the galleries. It’s John at age 7, taken by his mother, Linda. Courtesy of Jack De Bellis.

So visit the John Updike Society Facebook page and become a “fan.” And don’t forget to send me your news to post on the Society’s website!