A.O. Scott writes in his description of new film “The Color of the Chameleon” by Bulgarian director Emil Christov, “As a storyteller and a maker of images, Mr. Christov demonstrates a remarkable, exuberant sense of strangeness. And also a very specific appreciation for the early work of John Updike.”

The occasion for the remarks was an article announcing the 42nd New Directors / New Films annual showcase for new filmmakers at Lincoln Center and MoMA, sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. The event took place this past March.

“The Color of the Chameleon” is described as “a dark comedy that takes place in the world of the secret police in Bulgaria around the fall of Communism,” and the photo is from the film.

Here’s the link to the Critics’ Notebook article from The New York Times.

It was David Foster Wallace who famously wondered if John Updike ever had an unpublished thought, and The American Reader has some fun with that notion and Updike’s reputation for producing a book a year.

In an unsigned “In Conversation” article titled “Excerpt: ‘The Collected Blurbs of John Updike,'” the Staff comes up with a gentle parody, cover and all, along with some legitimate blurbs.

No one from The American Reader responded when asked about the nature and genesis of the playful article, so we can only guess that as with all things parodic it’s part tribute and part criticism.

Here’s the link.

Who says authors don’t read reviews and notices of their work? Salman Rushdie responded to a December 15 letter to The Guardian books section which attacked him and caught John Updike in the crossfire by firing off one of his own the next day.

“Satanic view that equates democracies and dictatorships” notes that the letter-writer “misreads John Updike’s ‘blue mailboxes’ speech at the Pen congress of 1986. Updike was not talking selfishly about sending away his writing and receiving cheques in return. He was using the mailboxes as a metaphor of the easy, free exchange of ideas and information in an open society.”

Rushdie also goes on to talk about how the letter-writer misrepresents him as well. Here’s the link to Rushdie’s letter, which has a link to the original. Thanks to member Larry Randen for calling it to our attention.

Philly journalist Will Bunch thinks that the Reading baseball team would have been better renamed in honor of Updike’s most famous character. But of course not all readers agree. Here’s the opinion piece from Philly.com. Thanks to Jack De Bellis for calling it to our attention.

In an article titled “Times Staffers Recommend ‘School Books,'” by John Williams, Sam Tanenhaus, the Times Book Review Editor, picked The Centaur as his recommendation for “books that are set in or around schools.”

Here’s the link to the story, which was posted on August 24, 2012.

Matthew Spencer of The Guardian has decided to use reader feedback to determine not the Great American novel, but the Great American novelist in a 32-bracket “tournament.”

Spencer seeded Updike fourth, and in his first “match” Updike goes up against Ursula K. Le Guin. Readers have to register with The Guardian to be able to post feedback which will influence the outcome.

To qualify for the tournament, writers had to produce four novels that are four possible “greats.” Spencer chose the Rabbit tetralogy for Updike’s four entries. Personally, I would have left Rabbit Redux off the list and substituted The Centaur. And for Hemingway, who was seeded eighth, I would have swapped To Have and Have Not and The Garden of Eden for The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls. So there are some curious choices here, and some equally curious rankings. For the Top 10 seeds, William Faulkner comes in at Number 1, followed by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Updike, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Cormac McCarthy. It’s worth noting that Spencer seeded Updike behind two Nobel laureates, but ahead of four others.

Here’s the article, with thanks to member Andrew Moorhouse for drawing it to our attention.