Jack De Bellis’ new book, John Updike’s Early Years (Lehigh University Press, cloth, 188pp), will be published in January 2013 and is now available for pre-order through Rowman & Littlefield.
Here’s the link, which includes an extensive description.
Here’s an odd Updike sighting: Larry Randen forwarded this item from The McSweeney’s Store, a San Francisco-based publishing company and boutique retailer. And on their website, under the category of “Limited Edition Goods,” there’s a sketch/portrait of John Updike for sale for $150. No word on how “limited” the edition is, and curiously Updike’s portrait is priced at $50 more than rocker Mick Jagger’s, but $50 less than self-described “liberal foodie intellectual” Michael Pollan.
The artist is Tony Millionaire (born Scott Richardson), a cartoonist and illustrator whose drawings have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. Fans of Adult Swim may also know his work.
An editorial published today (September 3) in the Reading Eagle, “Sale of Updike home a promising development for Berks,” touts the purchase as “a first step toward encouraging literary tourism in our area” and calls for people who knew Updike to consider donating objects to the museum and other institutions to consider ways they can use their ties to Updike to help attract visitors to the area.
Updike Society president James Plath will be a featured speaker at the Alvernia Literary Festival on October 8, and he will use that visit to Reading to meet with various parties to ensure that the Society continues to move forward on this project in ways that are beneficial to the community.
Here’s the full editorial.
Camden House has begun accepting pre-orders for Becoming John Updike: Critical Reception, 1958-2010, by Laurence W. Mazzeno.
The book provides a comprehensive overview of the journalistic and academic response to Updike’s writings.
Mazzeno, President Emeritus of Alvernia University, is a member of the Society. Here’s the link. No cover art is available yet.
News that The John Updike Society had finalized the purchase of the childhood home at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa., was met with a quick and generous response from Habitat Humanity of Berks County. Executive Director Tim Daley said that the project was just the sort of thing that his group could align with. It’s a community museum, it’s significant to Berks County, and Habitat for Humanity has been looking to contribute to the community in additional ways beside their traditional single-family constructions, he said. Daley offered their resource of volunteers and “some expertise” to assist the society in repairing and restoring the house and grounds, and that offer was happily and gratefully accepted.
News of the sale also spread quickly. When anyone asks if John Updike is still “relevant,” just point to the media attention that followed the society’s purchase of the childhood home. In the Reading area it was front-page news and covered on television as well. But it was also picked up elsewhere. Here are some of the links:
“John Updike Society finalizes purchase of home” —WFMZ 69 News
“Updike’s Pa. childhood home bought, museum planned” — The Inquirer
“John Updike’s Pennsylvania Childhood House Bought, Museum Planned” —The Huffington Post
Now the work . . . and the fun . . . begins.
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.
Today was the closing for the sale of the John Updike childhood home at 117 Philadelphia Avenue in Shillington, Pa., and after a long process The John Updike Society now officially owns the building and property. The eventual sale price—reduced because of needed safety-issue repairs and a furnace that the home inspector pronounced “on its last leg”—was $180,000, rather than the $200,000 original price.
The online magazine Obit—whose tagline in “Death is only half the story. Obit is about life . . .”—featured John Updike on January 28, 2009. In “Updike’s Dark Certainty,” Robert Roper visits “Updike country—the region where suburban platting meets knicker-dropping” and offers an lyrical-interpretive summary of Updike’s literary life, along with a bottom-story link to several obits and appraisals of Updike.
The item comes to us belatedly from Dave Lull, via Larry Randen.
Member Larry Randen called our attention to a book written by Nicholas Delbanco, “who was in the class Updike taught at Harvard before he retired from academe in the summer of 1962. It includes a letter dated August 26, 2007 in response to three questions Delbanco asked him (and many others) for his book, “Lastingness: The Art of Old Age” (New York/Boston: Grand Central Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-0-446-19964-3.”
Randen says that Updike’s response to the form letter sent to writers, quoted in its entirety, appears in Chapter 8, “Gratification.” Also included in a mid-section gallery is a photo of Updike and Delbanco in Bennington, Vermont, 1980, taken by Elena Delbanco.
A book-review blogger who goes by the name of “The Feminist Texican” reviewed Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich on audiobook yesterday and came to the conclusion that Updike is “a big ol’ racist, misogynist asshole.” Here’s the link, for those who are curious. Thanks to Ronny Parkerson for calling it to our attention.