Updike Society honors Shillington realtor

Posted on by
1

On Monday, June 10, Shillington realtor Conrad Vanino received The John Updike Society’s second Distinguished Service Award—an 8×10” plaque thanking him “for his invaluable help acquiring and converting The John Updike Childhood Home into a museum.”

Vanino (pictured below with society co-founder Dave Silcox and curator Maria Mogford) helped the society go through proper channels and worked pro bono. He continues to serve the society behind the scenes, maintaining a lock box on the property so work crews can enter and checking on the house several times per day. Vanino is also in the process of looking for a suitable tenant for the annex added by Dr. Hunter, who lived in the house after the Updikes. The society has divided the annex so that three rooms of the building used for patient exams can be rented as office space to help cover the expenses of maintaining the house. The doctor’s office will be used as a gift shop, and the waiting room will be the educational room, for watching videos or for class presentations.

Vanino is a lifelong resident of the Shillington area who has served on Borough Council for over 30 years and is also on the board of the Shillington Lions Club and the board of Crime Alert Berks. He is a member of the Shillington Business Association and a graduate of Governor Mifflin High School. Like many Shillington youngsters, he learned to swim in the pond that provided the water supply for the poorhouse Updike wrote about, just blocks away from the house at 117 Philadelphia Avenue.

Vanino

Continue reading →

Updike turns up in a review of the movie Copperhead

Posted on by
Reply

may-june-issuethumbIn a May 31 column/review published in The American Conservative, Bill Kauffman uses Updike’s Buchanan Dying—“Updike’s imaginatively empathetic play about the despised 15th president”—in lengthy comparison to make a point about the movie Copperhead, a Civil War drama that opens in theaters on June 28, 2013.

Citing a disparaging quote from Henry James about the historical novel, Kauffman concludes that both the new movie and Updike’s old, only play refute James’ assertion that “the real thing is almost impossible to do.”

Metroland reviews Always Looking

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2013-05-31 at 8.34.39 AMB.A. Nilsson wrote a review of Updike’s Always Looking that was published on May 29, 2013. In it, he concludes, “The heightened language . . . reminds us that paintings, like novels, best reward those inclined to linger with them the longest.

“Updike’s success as a critic and social observer, which he pursued as ardently as he did his fiction, came from his ability to convey intelligent insight with a compellingly accessible voice,” Nilsson writes.

Blackbird Theater to perform play based on Roger’s Version in June 2014

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2013-05-27 at 9.56.34 PMThe Tennessean reported on May 24 that with the blessing of the Updike Estate, Blackbird Theater, of Nashville, Tennessee, will perform a staged adaptation of Roger’s Version in June 2014.

The play will be presented in collaboration with the Lipscomb University Department of Theatre and performed in Shamblin Theater (below) in Bennett Campus Center on the Lipscomb campus. That’s fitting, given the theological content of Updike’s 1986 novel, since Lipscomb is a small private university affiliated with the Churches of Christ . . . with graduate students, as well as undergrads.

In Roger’s Version, theology professor Roger Lambert is challenged by an evangelical grad student who thinks he can prove the existence of God using computer science.

Blackbird artistic director Wes Driver (pictured) will write and direct the play.

Continue reading →

Updike grandson to make “different perspective” anti-bullying film

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2013-05-21 at 8.39.23 AMMore proof that fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, even when that tree is second generation.

John Updike’s fifth grandchild, Kai Daniels Freyleue (Miranda Updike’s son), is making a film this summer aimed at putting “a different perspective on the anti-bullying movement,” the 19 year old writes. “It’s less about the horrible effects bullying has on the psychology of teens and more about self-defense and building strength, despite bullying.”

The film, Night Shadow, is “about a vigilante named Night Shadow who, much like other masked vigilantes, enacts justice upon people who do wrong. In this case, the target is bullies. Night Shadow defends his weaker peers and is feared by all who pick on others, but do his tactics go too far? Or is he truly a hero?

“The film features Christina Kirkman, a young actress who was voted the Funniest Kid in America back in 2003 and starred in the cast of Nickelodeon’s All That for two years afterwards.” Kai’s band, Out of Focus, will be featured on the soundtrack.

For the curious, you can read more about the project at Indiegogo, a site where indie filmmakers try to raise cash for projects . . . and contributors get something in return, like a signed script ($49+) or their name in the credits ($199+).

New Republic spotlights Updike’s 1960 defense of Kim Novak

Posted on by
Reply

Screen Shot 2013-05-21 at 7.59.27 AMThe May 27, 2013 issue of The NewRepublic spotlights “John Updike: On Knocking Miss Novak” in “From the Stacks.”

The feature details a verbal scuffle Updike had with New Republic film critic Stanley Kauffmann and includes a letter from Updike that was published in the July 25, 1960 issue, following Kauffmann’s review of Strangers when We Meet.

“I am so sick and tired of Stanley Kauffmann knocking Kim Novak. She is a terrific-looking woman,” Updike writes.

“Motion pictures are not, as Mr. Kauffmann seems to believe, transmogrified novels or adjusted plays; these two art-forms have as little to do with motion pictures as they do with each other.”

Updike ends his letter with a pretty good slap at Kauffmann: “He is not a bad critic, he is an inverted one; the opposite of everything he says is true.”

The New Republic on John Updike:
“Updike Remembered” (January 30, 2009)
“The READ: Ephemera, Run” (June 30, 2010)

 

Mormon journalist considers Roger’s Version, shares his Updike encounter

Posted on by
Reply

22933John Updike has been labeled a “protestant writer,” so it’s always interesting to hear what people of other faiths—especially articulate writers and inveterate readers—have to say about him as a religious writer. In “New Harmony: Another Brush with John Updike,” former Deseret News staffer and current Mormon Times and Faith page freelancer Jerry Earl Johnston shares his take on Roger’s Version . . . and a story involving the book he sent Updike for signing.

“After his death, one critic called him ‘The Mozart of American Letters.’ There was not only genius in his work, but also generosity and a buoyant spirit,” Johnston writes, adding, “I suspect those qualities came from his faith.”  Continue reading →

Blogger: “The Ghost of John Updike and the Boston Bombing”

Posted on by
Reply

51rqwnocIdL._SY300_In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, blogger William Thornton posted a reconsideration of Updike’s novel Terrorist: “will the events of last week and the coming weeks’ vindicate one of John Updike’s last, and least regarded, novels?”

“The Ghost of John Updike and the Boston Bombing” was posted on Brilliant Disguises: A Christian Look at Contemporary and Classic Literary Fiction and Culture on Sunday, April 21, 2013.

Among other things, Thornton concludes, “Updike’s depiction of the War on Terror has a disquieting moral equivalency between Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and America’s reaction about it, and that reads less charitably after an event like the Boston Marathon attack and the city’s response.”