The New York Times posted an article yesterday in which William Grimes recalls a series of 1963 LPs (that’s “long-playing records,” for the digital generation) from Calliope Records featuring authors reading from their own work. Included was John Updike, who reads his short story, “Lifeguard.”

Now, Grimes reports, the series is being reissued on two CDs and downloadable audio files as “Calliope Author Readings.” According to Amazon.com, Updike is included in “Great American Authors Read from Their Works, Vol. 2,” along with Bernard Malamud, James Jones, and Nelson Algren—the latter reading excerpts from “The Man with the Golden Arm.”

The Times article, “Hearing Genuine Voices of Midcentury Fiction” is more than a new-product notice. Grimes covers the full story behind the initial recordings and weighs in on the impact of hearing authors read their own works.

With so many of the authors now dead, Grimes says, “The readings arrive like errant postcards delivered decades after the fact. The effect can be eerie. Updike, tiptoeing his way through the intricate syntax of ‘Lifeguard’ from his short story collection Pigeon Feathers, sounds impossibly youthful and fey. It takes an effort to recall that the owner of the voice died in 2009.”

Updike aficionados know Chip Kidd as the principal designer of Updike’s books published at Knopf, but the fellow Reading, Pa. native also wrote books of his own and designed covers for numerous other authors, including the now-iconic dust jacket for Jurassic Park.

This past week Penn State’s University Libraries announced that they have acquired the Chip Kidd archives—enough material to fill 250 boxes and 1 terabyte of digital data. According to a story posted on the university website, “University Libraries acquire design ‘rock star,’ alumnus Chip Kidd’s archives,” the librarians plan to exhibit the Kidd archive next January, “with a goal of having the collection processed and open to researchers by then as well. Tim Pyatt is the contact person: tdp11@psu.edu, 1-814-865-1793.

Martin Chilton, Culture Editor for The Telegraph online, today posted an article titled “Benny Goodman 1938 concert revived,” which begins,

“Benny Goodman’s 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall is one of the most famous in the history of jazz, lauded by author (and jazz fan) John Updike as “a marvelous and magical moment in music history.

“Updike heard it as a teenager, when it was first released on record in 1950 (it was the first double album and sold more than a million copies). . . .

“As Updike told Desert Island Discs, when he chose it as one of his record selections in 1995: ‘It’s such an intricate concert and Sing Sing Sing, which is the longest selection of it all, has the riff that the pianist Jess Stacy takes after hearing a number of trumpet and clarinet riffs. The story I later read was that he was listening to Claude Debussy before the concert and when his chance came to shine, the Debussy filtered into this jazz tune. It’s a really marvelous and magical passage, a great minute or two in the history of jazz.”

Updike may have created an Everyman in Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, but it’s a testament to his own status as a Renaissance man that his remarks on jazz are as valued as what he had to say about art, literature, or other aspects of culture.

Listen to the 1995 Desert Island Discs podcast featuring an interview with John Updike.