Category Archives: Publications

Journal features an article on Updike and second-wave feminism

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Screen Shot 2014-05-25 at 10.23.49 AMFeatured in Volume 5, Issue No. 4 [2014] of the International Research Journal of Management Sociology & Humanity, is an article by Anshu Chaudhary titled “Analysis of the Select Novels of John Updike from the Perspective of the Second Wave Feminism,” which appears on pages 84-91.

In it, Chaudhary writes, “It can’t be ignored that Updike was reflecting the point of view of male characters of a particular age and class, and in that context they demonstrated psychological insight. But if we analyze Couples and Marry Me the two most interesting and sympathetic novels in which the women characters are most keenly drawn we see that he has presented the mystery of man’s sexuality from the perspective of the female characters. In both these novels he entered the mystery of woman’s sexuality as well.

“Updike’s views and depiction of female characters may be prejudiced but are not misogynistic. His works don’t show him to be against the growth and liberalization of domestic women. He just reflects the ‘other’ side of things.”

She concludes her essay, “Thus, female characters exist and develop and survive in his fiction. They also help the male characters to find their own identity and ‘Search for the Self.’ Although he fails to give them their own identity but as he himself says,

“‘American fiction is notoriously thin on women, and I have attempted a number of portraits of women, and we may have reached that point of civilization, or decadence, where we can look at women. I’m not sure Mark Twain was able to.'”

 

New York Observer writer considers the case for Updike as a major artist

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Even before it falls into the hands of average readers on April 8,  Adam Begley’s biography, Updike, is doing what scholars and society members expected: reawakening the debate over Updike’s status as an American writer.

There has always been a small segment who think he “writes like an angel but has nothing to say,” and reports of his demotion in the canon have been greatly exaggerated, given his continued presence in major anthologies. Michael H. Miller of the New York Observer weighs in, but only concludes “Updike, like George Caldwell in The Centaur, a character modeled after his own father, did the best he could with what was given to him—a massive flawed talent. Here’s the whole article:

“Literary Genius or Horny Diletantte? Adam Begley’s Bio Makes the Case for John Updike as a Major Artist”

In case you missed it: Adam Gopnik’s essay “On Updike’s Long Game”

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Adam Gopnik wrote a feature titled “A Fan’s Notes on Updike’s Long Game” for Humanties magazine, Vol. 29 No. 3 (May/June 2008) that finds him concluding that “if the persistent journalist in him is one of the things that has kept his novels alive, it is the satirist and humorist in him that have kept his sentences aloft,” further speculating, “Updike’s affinity for painting and poetry—the still felt desire to have been a painter or poet—is perhaps the secret fuel that keeps the prose shining and still in motion.”

 

Updike celebrated on The Writer’s Almanac

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Today, John Updike’s birthday, Garrison Keillor published a written and audio version of “Frankie Laine,” a poem by Updike that begins, “The Stephens’ Sweet Shop, 1949.” In it, Updike recalls the atmosphere of the popular hangout for Shillington H.S. students and pays poetic tribute to its owner.

“The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, Tuesday, March 18, 2014”

Newly published Iranian five-story collection features Updike

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n00189765-bFrom the Iran Book News Agency comes the announcement that “‘Blue House’ House to Stories of Noted Writers” was recently published in Persian, a five-story collection featuring authors Alice Munro, John Updike, Alistair Morgan, and Kate Walbert.

Titles of the stories included in the 164-page collection are not mentioned.

Those with bibliographical information on this item, please contact Jack De Bellis, who is working on a supplement to the 2008 bibliography: bjd1@lehigh.edu.

In the latest Southern Review: John Updike Writes Like a Girl

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Screen Shot 2013-11-11 at 12.55.07 PMCatchy title, isn’t it? Sounds like something you’d hear on the playground, only this one appeared in a literary playground. And the purveyor of said title (or the flinger of insults, if you prefer to think of it that way) is Barb Johnson, a former New Orleans carpenter who has gained quick notice since enrolling in an MFA program at the University of New Orleans. Recently she was named the fifth recipient of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award. Her piece of nonfiction prose, “John Updike Writes Like a Girl,” appears in the latest issue of The Southern Review (Autumn 2013).

The excerpts below suggest why Glimmer Train named her a Best New Voice:

I. In Which I Rehash the Usual Criticisms of John Updike

It’s easy to dog John Updike. Reflexive, even. Anyone who has studied literature—though not necessarily Updike—knows to say that his sentences are either gorgeous and stunning, or, you know, totally overwritten and ostentatious—awash with shimmering phrases, like bubbles that Updike has blown just to watch them catch the light: whee!  Continue reading →

Member publications delve into new areas

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9781137340221Member Jo Gill, Associate Professor & Director of Education: English at the University of Exeter (UK) has featured Updike prominently in her new book, The Poetics of the American Suburbs (New York: Palgrave, 2013). It includes a discussion of a number of Updike poems, among them “My Children at the Dump,” “The One-Year-Old,” “Scenic,” “Shillington,” “Sleepless in Scarsdale,” and “Suburban Madrigal.”

Here’s the link to the Macmillan website, which calls it “the first book to consider the rich body of poetry that emerged from and helped to shape the post-war American suburbs. Jo Gill discusses the work of forty or more writers—some well-known, such as Anne Sexton and Langston Hughes, others not primarily known through their poetry such as John Updike, and some who were best-sellers in their own time but have since largely been forgotten such as Phyllis McGinley. Combining detailed textual and archival study with insights drawn from other disciplines, the book offers a new perspective on post-war suburbia and on the broader field of twentieth-century American literature.”

Member Scott Dill has an essay in the recent issue of Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (54:4) titled “Affection for the Affected World: Updike on Emotion, Sense, and Style.” The full essay can be viewed here. 

Updike and Carver essay appears in Critical Insights: Raymond Carver

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Screen Shot 2013-08-01 at 8.24.14 PMMatthew Shipe’s essay, “Middle-Age Crazy: Men Behaving Badly in the Fiction of Raymond Carver and John Updike,” appears in the recently published Critical Insights: Raymond Carver, edited by James Plath. Shipe compares the fiction of two writers whose creative and personal lives couldn’t be more different. Yet, Carver and Updike, whose New Yorker background and stories reflect a life that’s more privileged, find a point of intersection in that their male characters tend to behave badly—especially in relation to the women in their lives and in matters of responsibility. Characters often give in to their impulses, putting themselves first no matter how much they seem to care about the others in their lives.

The book is available from Amazon.com.