Category Archives: John Updike Childhood Home

Award-winning travel writer visits Updike’s childhood home

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“I had a special link to John Updike, the celebrated writer who died in 2009. I once served as his muse,” began William Ecenbarger, who has won 17 writing awards from the Society of American Travel Writers. His latest feature, “John Updike’s Muse,” was published on April 3, 2026 by In The Know Traveler.

“It happened in 1983 when I was a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and sought an interview with Updike, whose publisher informed me never gave interviews. But a chance encounter with Linda Updike, his mother, broke the ice, and I ended up spending a full day with the author; mostly we drove around his boyhood haunts in Pennsylvania that served as settings for so much of his fiction.

“Several months after the interview a short story appeared in the New Yorker titled, ‘One More Interview,’ by John Updike. In it the main character, a famous actor, drives around his hometown with a journalist. Many of the events, even verbatim dialogue, were taken exactly from the real interview between me and Updike.

“Over the next four decades, I would learn as an Updike fan that he consistently used his experiences and surroundings as wellsprings for his fiction. And thus I was not surprised this year when I visited the recently opened John Updike Childhood Museum in Shillington, Pennsylvania.”

His guide this time was James Plath, president of The John Updike Society, who took him through the house that left a lasting impression on Updike and now contains many of his treasures, small and large. Upstairs, for example, Updike’s “tiny bedroom has his toys and books, ranging from Dumbo to the Lone Ranger, and some of the clothing he wore as a toddler.

A bowl of marbles was found under the floor boards here. A childhood friend had no recollection of playing marbles and said he and John would use slingshots to shoot them out the bedroom window.”

Photos:  Loose floorboards in young Updike’s bedroom removed during renovation, and the marbles that had been carefully placed in a “nest” beneath them.

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Berks County remembers John Updike

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WFMZ, which covers the Lehigh Valley and Berks County, published a piece today by historian Frank Whelan on “History’s Headlines: John Updike of Berks County.” Like Adam Begley’s biography, it begins with a story about journalist William Ecenbarger following the Updike trail in order to write a feature. Whelan’s article recounts how Ecenbarger went to the local library to ask for suggestions and ideas, only to encounter “an elderly woman in tortoise shell glasses” who told him, “I know all about him . . . . He’s my son.”

Whelan notes how that meeting led to his driving around Berks County with the author’s mother and getting the kind of tour freelancers can only dream about . . . which in turn led to his actually getting to take the same drive with Updike, whom he let drive his Volkswagen Rabbit.

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John Updike Childhood Home receives NEH grant

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Maria Lester, director of The John Updike Childhood Home that is owned and operated by the 501c3 John Updike Society, received word recently that the museum at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa. was awarded a $25,000 Chairman’s Grant from the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In her grant proposal, Lester outlined programs beyond annual operating expenses (which grants do not cover) that will be funded by the grant. “Though rich in artifacts and objects, the museum currently lacks technological tools to fully engage modern audiences. Our signage is outdated and does not reflect the new materials we amassed over the last decade.  In addition, we face storage challenges supporting a growing student-led Victory Garden initiative. As we expand programming to include a writing camp and continued speaker series, we also recognize the need for better collection management, security upgrades, and volunteer support. This grant will help us modernize, grow, and preserve the museum for future generations.”

This is, of course, wonderful news for The John Updike Childhood Home, which the society hopes will continue to be an important part of the community that helped to shape one of America’s best writers of the 20th century—a museum The Wall Street Journal called “a worthy site of literary pilgrimage.”

Updike Childhood Home adds two paintings from the fiction

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John Updike’s children recently donated more one-of-a-kind objects to The John Updike Childhood Home & Museum, among them two still life paintings that their father and mother had painted side-by-side while Updike was a student at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England. Michael Updike said that as a trailing spouse who majored in art as an undergrad, his mother talked her way into sitting in and participating in John’s classes. Mary sat to his father’s right, Michael pointed out, given the placement of objects on each canvas. The paintings are referenced in Updike’s short story “Still Life” (from Pigeon Feathers, reprinted in The Early Stories):

“At the greengrocer’s on Monday morning they purchased still life ingredients. The Constable School owned a great bin of inanimate objects, from which Leonard had selected an old mortar and pestle. His idea was then to buy, to make a logical picture, some vegetables that could be ground, and to arrange them in a Chardinesque tumble. But what, really, was ground, except nuts? The grocer did have some Jamaican walnuts.

“Don’t be funny, Leonard,” Robin said. “All those horrid little wrinkles, we’d be at it forever.”

“Well, what else could you grind?”

“We’re not going to grind anything; we’re going to paint it. What we want is something smoothe.”

“Oranges, miss?” the lad in charge offered.

“Oh, oranges. Everyone’s doing oranges—looks like a pack of advertisements for vitamin C. What we want…” Frowning, she surveyed the produce, and Leonard’s heart, plunged in the novel intimacy of shopping with a woman, beat excitedly. “Onions,” Robin declared. “Onions are what we want.”

John gave his still life to his mother, who displayed it at the Plowville house, while Mary kept hers. Now the paintings are together again, above the bed that John painted with his mother—John’s on the left, Mary’s on the right . . . just as in Oxford.

Visit and look at the paintings up close and vote: Who did it best? John (left) or Mary (right)?

The John Updike Childhood Home & Museum, 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa., is owned and operated by the 501c3 John Updike Society. It is open most Saturdays from 12-2 p.m. For questions about visiting the museum, contact director Maria Lester, johnupdikeeducation@gmail.com.

Facebook suspends Updike Society accounts for “impersonation”

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If you’ve been accustomed to getting your Updike Society and John Updike Childhood Home news through Facebook, you might want to bookmark our webpages for future use instead. Yesterday Facebook suspended both sites because it was determined that they were guilty of celebrity “impersonation.” This, even after an appeal.

Seriously? A non-profit literary organization largely composed of academics, along with a museum that’s on the National Register of Historic Places and has a Pennsylvania Historic Marker?

Clearly, Facebook “Meta” is more omnipotent than it is omniscient.

John Updike Childhood Home announces summer hours

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If you’re planning on visiting The John Updike Childhood Home this summer, be aware that the museum just announced summer hours, restricted because of volunteer availability. The museum, which formally opened in October 2021, has been favorably reviewed and recommended by The Wall Street Journal. It was where Updike lived from “age zero to thirteen” and where he famously said his “artistic eggs were hatched.” Questions about the house at 117 Philadelphia Avenue in Shillington, Pa. should be directed to John Updike Childhood Home director Maria Lester, johnupdikeeducation@gmail.com. The museum is owned and operated by the 501c3 nonprofit John Updike Society.

Journalist recalls being Updike’s muse, returns to Shillington

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Not everyone who recognizes themselves in a writer’s fiction or poetry is pleased, but William Ecenbarger took delight in recalling his 1983 interview with John Updike that inspired Updike to write “One More Interview.” Then a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Ecenbarger managed to score his interview with Updike through the writer’s mother, Linda. It was no ordinary interview.

For this one, Updike got in a car with Ecenbarger and gave him a personally narrated tour of “Updike country”: Shillington, Plowville, and Reading-area boyhood haunts that factored into his fiction and poetry. That interview was partially quoted in the first chapter of Adam Begley’s biography of Updike and included in complete form in John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews.

Ecenbarger recalled that 1983 interview and a more recent trip he made to The John Updike Childhood Home in “John Updike’s Muse,” published on the InTheKnow Traveler.

Here’s the link.

 

Wall Street Journal recommends Updike house museum

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On Sept. 4, 2023, Philadelphia-based cultural reporter and critic Julia Klein’s review of The John Updike Childhood Home was published in The Wall Street Journal. Klein, an expert on museums, spent three hours walking through the house and taking notes on the 10 rooms of exhibits.

“For such a clear-eyed chronicler of America’s angst-ridden middle class, John Updike was surprisingly sentimental about his Pennsylvania roots. Here, one of his narrators declared, ‘the basic treasure of his life was buried,’” Klein wrote.

“In the short story ‘The Brown Chest,’ Updike’s narrator recalls ‘the house that he inhabited as if he would never live in any other’ and the ‘strange, and ancient, and almost frightening’ wooden chest that served as a repository of family memories.

“Both its hold on the author and the allure of its intimate artifacts, from that chest to Updike’s earliest drawings, make the John Updike Childhood Home a worthy site of literary pilgrimage.

“The house museum, opened in October 2021, recently added seven vitrines, with artifacts including the Remington rifle of Updike’s short story ‘Pigeon Feathers’ and the Olivetti manual typewriter he used for four decades.”

The John Updike Society purchased The John Updike Childhood Home in 2012 with the intent of turning it into a literary site and museum to celebrate one of America’s greatest writers. The purchase was made possible by a grant from The Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, which also supported every year of the meticulous restoration so that the house would look, inside and out, as it did during Updike’s time there. That foundation and others—most notably The PECO Foundation and The John and Gaye Patton Charitable Foundation—enabled the society to complete work and acquire many exhibits, while Elizabeth Updike Cobblah, David Updike, Michael Updike, and Miranda Updike contributed a great many family treasures. But donations also came from society members, Updike’s childhood friends, and members of the community who have embraced the museum as their own.

“Curated by James Plath, an Illinois Wesleyan University professor and president of the Updike Society, the museum celebrates Updike’s career, emphasizing how Shillington formed him as a writer,” Klein wrote, adding that the museum’s thematic approach “pays off particularly well in his mother’s writing room,” where images and artifacts suggest the complicated mother-son relationship with each other and their shared goal of becoming a writer. “The relationship seems to have been at once close and embattled, with the son vaulting to the literary success his mother craved.”

Updike Society members can be proud that the nine-year project has been positively received. It’s been a long journey that began with Habitat for Humanity of Berks County volunteers stripping wallpaper and tile flooring and knocking out walls that had been added after the Updikes moved out. Then restoration expert Bob Doerr and his crew carefully researched the details of the house during Updike’s time and restored it so meticulously that an older couple who had visited the house when the Updikes lived there said it was just as they remembered it.

Society community members donated Updike and Shillington artifacts and books, while Dave Silcox helped to find local treasures for the museum.  John Updike Childhood Home director Maria Lester, and before her Sue Guay, worked with Plath to move the project forward, while property manager John Trimble arranged all of the objects that had been selected for display in cases and took care of printing all the IDs that were provided and hanging all of the wall art and artifacts. And more than a dozen docents, Dave Ruoff the most senior among them, volunteered their time to staff the museum. Many more people were involved, of course—too many to name—because it truly takes a borough to create and sustain a museum like this.

If you would like to become involved in the Updike society, email jplath@iwu.edu; if you live in the area and would like to volunteer as a docent, contact Maria Lester, johnupdikeeducation@gmail.com.

Updike’s coven makes another best witch movie list

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John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick has become one of the author’s most popular books over the past decade, and maybe that’s because the 1987 film version has become a bit of a coven classic. Yesterday another list of top witch movies included the Eastwick bunch.

“The magic of Witch Movies: A Look at the best films about Witches,” by Deepak Kumar, was posted June 3, 2023 on the Fansided website. The George Miller-directed film was the fourth one listed, after The Witch (2015), The Craft (1996), and Hocus Pocus (1993). Of the film, Kumar wrote, “The Witches of Eastwick is a dark fantasy-comedy film released in 1987. Based on the novel by John Updike, the story is set in the fictional town of Eastwick, Rhode Island and centers around three women who unexpectedly discover they possess supernatural powers.” By getting divorced, one might add.

The film had plenty of star power, with Jack Nicholson as Daryl Van Horne, Cher as Alexandra Medford, Susan Sarandon as Jane Spofford, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Sukie Ridgemont. Future Best Actor Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins played Clyde Alden, editor of the local newspaper. Though it didn’t wow critics or audiences, The Witches of Eastwick received Oscar nominations for Best Sound and Best Original Score (John Williams). And it won a BAFTA for Best Special Effects.

If you visit The John Updike Childhood Home in Shillington, Pa., look for The Witches of Eastwick original theater poster. Nearby, in a case that also contains items related to Updike’s appearance on The Simpsons, will be a concert program used as a prop in the film.

Updike typewriter now at the Childhood Home museum

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John Updike’s Olivetti Linea 88—”the only manual typewriter he used regularly from 1969-2009,” according to his son, David Updike—is now on display at The John Updike Childhood Home, 117 Philadelphia Ave., Shillington, Pa.

The Childhood Home museum is owned by The John Updike Society, a 501c3 organization devoted to promoting Updike’s works. With Dr. Maria Lester as director, the museum is staffed by dedicated Updike lovers who live in the area.

The typewriter, acquired from Elizabeth Updike Cobblah and David, Michael and Miranda Updike, instantly became the crown jewel of the museum’s holdings. According to David, his father had bought/brought a white Adler typewriter to London in September 1968, but it “seemed inadequate—not sturdy enough. . . . A typewriter salesman came to the house, sold him on this Olivetti Linea 88, which he then bought and used for the rest of the year there.”

“It was big and heavy,” David said. “At the end of the school year, the green Citroen was being shipped across the ocean to us, and he had the idea to put the typewriter in the car too: thus, it made the voyage back to America, and my father used it for the rest of his life: Ipswich, Georgetown, Beverly Farms, and typed tens of thousands (I would guess) poems, short stories, letters, postcards, notes, many of which will soon be in the collection edited by Jim Schiff.

“At some point, he started to write longer letters on a word processor, but continued to use this one for shorter communications, all the way until January, 2009. It was in fine working order, and as you see it was serviced by a fellow in Beverly, Mass.”

Next to the typewriter is Updike’s dictionary, which he kept near his typewriter—a habit, no doubt, picked up from his mother. Linda Updike’s dictionary is also on display at the house.