We are saddened to report that Joe McDade, a longtime member of The John Updike Society, has died. His obituary reads, simply, “Joseph Skelton McDade was born on May 29, 1965, in Needham, Massachusetts. He passed away on January 16, … Continue reading
Sometimes the most interesting takes on an author come from great thinkers outside the field of literature. Such is the case with an article by Kali DuBois that was published in Medium: “What If Gore Vidal and John Updike Had … Continue reading
In “The Definitive Ranking of Every Single Wes Anderson Character,” superfans Mark Asch, Charles Bramesco and Jesse Hassenberger took on the gargantuan job of considering how “Anderson collects things and people” and trying to assess the “many traits that make … Continue reading
With another Father’s Day in the rear-view mirror, if anyone contemplated what makes a good dad, chances are Harry Angstrom didn’t come up in conversation as an exemplar. He certainly didn’t in Oliver Munday’s personal essay on “The Book That … Continue reading
EatReadSleep blogger Cheryl Teal, a collection development librarian, yesterday posted an entry on “A Child’s Calendar, by John Updike and Trina Schart Hyman,” in which she shares her rediscovery of the book and her affirmation that it’s worthy of being … Continue reading
As a fellow lampooner, John Updike would no doubt appreciate his inclusion in The Onion‘s tongue-in-cheek story of the “Top Prom Trends For 2015.” “Here are this year’s most popular prom trends: Live streaming feed for students who couldn’t get date … Continue reading
In a Daily Beast think-piece titled “Did Updike Sell the Resurrection Short?” writer Matthew Sitman considers Updike’s poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter.” “The poem gains new life of its own every year around this time. It inevitably flits across social … Continue reading
In “Controlled Rapture” (September 15, 2014), which is not available through open-access online yet, William Deresiewicz reviews Begley’s Updike for The New Republic. Though he has some very nice things to say about Updike, he begins, curiously, with the (some might think flawed) assumption … Continue reading
Yesterday a blogger responded to Heather Havrilesky’s New York Times Magazine piece on “794 Ways in Which BuzzFeed Reminds us of Impending Death” on PottedReads, “a blog about reading and writing.” He begins, “Having rediscovered John Updike, never having deeply read … Continue reading
In an essay titled “794 Ways in Which BuzzFeed Reminds Us of Impending Death” (NY Times Magazine, July 3, 2014), Heather Havrilesky invoked John Updike: “The next summer, after a long year spent adjusting to life without my dad in … Continue reading