Category Archives: News

UT’s Ransom Center acquires McEwan archives

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Screen Shot 2014-05-19 at 11.59.47 AMThe Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin announced days ago that they have acquired the archive of writer Ian McEwan, and an email from an employee at the Center confirmed that they believe “there is some correspondence with Updike in there. We will know more once the collection has been processed and catalogued.”

“Acclaimed Writer Ian McEwan’s Archive Acquired by Harry Ransom Center”

McEwan has written frequently “On John Updike,” as he did for the March 12, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books. After Updike’s death, his remarks were included in a round-up of well-known writers published by The Guardian on January 27, 2009:

“He was a modern master, a colossal figure in American letters, the finest writer working in English. He dazzled us with his interests and intellectual curiosity, and he turned a beautiful sentence. Religion, sex, science, urban decay, small-town life, the life of the heart, the betrayals—who can follow him? Updike gave the impression he had a lot more writing to do. We are all the poorer now.”

Maybe the McEwan archive will shed some light about what other writing Updike had in mind.

The Harry Ransom Center was in the running for the John Updike archives, which eventually went to Harvard.

 

 

Begley bio sparks “Uptick in Updike Interest”

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If you’ve been following The John Updike Society on Facebook or on this website you’ve noticed that the news as of late has been dominated by responses to the Adam Begley biography of John Updike. But what we haven’t considered is that every article and every review needs photos to go with the copy, and as Writer Pictures, a source that provides copyrighted material for the media, observes, the Begley biography has sparked an “Uptick in Updike Interest.”

You’ve no doubt read that the Begley-Updike connection is Begley’s father, Louis, who was a Harvard classmate of Updike’s, and the article also includes a photo of the elder Begley.

New rom-com references Updike

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MV5BNzY2NDQxOTA4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjM4MDA2MTE@._V1_SX214_AL_Words and Pictures, a romantic comedy that opens in theaters abroad on May 22, stars Clive Owen as a popular English teacher at a private high school who gets into an argument with the new art teacher, played by Juliette Binoche: Are words more important, or are pictures?

The two try to involve their students in the debate, and according to Harvey Karten, who saw an advance screening and reviewed the film for CompuServe ShowBiz, Owen tries to make his case by “quoting from the great authors with a special emphasis on John Updike, to paint metaphoric pictures.”

Karten’s full review also appears on Shockya.com.

The screenplay, in case you’re curious, was written by Gerald Di Pego, whose prior credits include Instinct (1999), Message in a Bottle (1999), and Sharky’s Machine (1981).

Blackbird Theater brings “Roger’s Version” to the stage

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Roger'sVersionart

On May 30 Blackbird Theater of Nashville, Tenn., will conclude its 2013-14 season with the world premiere of Roger’s Version, a play adapted from the Updike novel of the same name.

“Having received special permission from the Updike estate, Blackbird Artistic Director Wes Driver has written and will direct this original adaptation. . . ,” ArtsNash reports.

“There are plenty of stories that entertain you. Fewer that genuinely move you,” the director writes. “And then there are those very rare ones that, for some reason or other, cut you to the core—or seemingly raid your psyche—expressing your most deeply felt passions and perspectives. The characters are so vivid, you feel like you know them. Intimately. Because, truth be told, they seem to be reflections and extensions of yourself. That’s what Roger’s Version is to me.”

Here’s the full story, with photos.

Begley on Updike and Roth

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Begley’s in the news again, and so are John Updike and Philip Roth. Begley’s remarks about “Updike’s friendship with and estrangement from another great American writer, Philip Roth,” appear in the Wednesday, April 23 edition of EverydayeBook.com, posted by David Burr Gerrard:

“Philip Roth With—and Versus—John Updike, by Adam Begley” 

“The story of Updike’s relationship with Philip Roth is a sad one,” Gerrard writes. “In some ways they were perfect for each other . . . . All the way through the 1970s and 1980s, they corresponded. When they saw each other, they were like the smartest kids in the class, getting together and making barbed comments and gossiping madly and talking about literature.

“Their letters are hysterical: Roth warning Updike that it was fine for him to mine his territory in Pennsylvania, but he better be damned sure not to do anything about New Jersey; Updike sending Roth his long and very ambitious autobiographical poem called ‘Midpoint,’ crossing out the title and writing instead, ‘Poor Goy’s Complaint.’

“Then came some darker stuff,” Gerrard writes, then summarizes what caused the rift between them, concluding, “These are two of the most important writers of the second half of the century, and in cahoots they could have been brilliant. For many years, they weren’t.”

Philip Roth takes NT Times to task over Begley review

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A day after The New York Times published a review of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike, the Times followed with a letter they received from Philip Roth, who took exception with one of the claims made in the review:

To the Editor:
 
In his review of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike (Arts pages, April 9), your reviewer allows that “Mr. Roth has denied” a claim made about him that would have seemed to me unlikely enough on its surface not to bear gratuitous repeating in The Times.
Your reviewer writes, “Claire Bloom, after her divorce from Philip Roth, said Updike’s negative review of Mr. Roth’s ‘Operation Shylock’ (1993) so distressed Mr. Roth that he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital.”
For the record, in the weeks and months immediately after Updike’s March 15, 1993, review of “Operation Shylock” in The New Yorker, I was teaching two classes in literature at Hunter College, giving readings from my book “Patrimony” in Lansing, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Cambridge, South Orange and at the New York “Y,” and completing work on the first chapters of “Sabbath’s Theater.”
On March 19 I enjoyed my 60th-birthday celebration at the home of friends in Connecticut and in early June drove to Massachusetts to receive an honorary degree from Amherst College.
PHILIP ROTH
New York, April 9, 2014