{"id":1445,"date":"2013-03-18T18:49:21","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T23:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=1445"},"modified":"2013-03-18T18:49:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T23:49:21","slug":"bellow-letter-reveals-the-novelist-was-no-fan-of-updikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2013\/03\/18\/bellow-letter-reveals-the-novelist-was-no-fan-of-updikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Bellow letter reveals the novelist was no fan of Updike&#8217;s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Saul-Bellow-Letters\/dp\/B004Y6MUM2\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1363650723&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=saul+bellow+letters\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1446\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 6.50.31 PM\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2013\/03\/Screen-Shot-2013-03-18-at-6.50.31-PM.png\" width=\"264\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2013\/03\/Screen-Shot-2013-03-18-at-6.50.31-PM.png 264w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2013\/03\/Screen-Shot-2013-03-18-at-6.50.31-PM-197x300.png 197w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 264px) 100vw, 264px\" \/><\/a>In his review of the newly published correspondence of Saul Bellow&#8217;s\u2014<em>Saul Bellow: Letters<\/em>, ed. Benjamin Taylor\u2014Leo Robson of the New Statesman writes,<\/p>\n<p>There is also a generous helping of contempt, the\u00a0<em>sine qua non<\/em>\u00a0of literary letters. To Cynthia Ozick, one of the few younger writers he admired, he wrote: &#8220;It gives me something less than pleasure to be listed with the Styrons, Vonneguts, Mailers.&#8221; He acquiesces in a friend&#8217;s description of John Updike as &#8220;an anti-Semitic pornographer&#8221; and doesn&#8217;t much like Updike&#8217;s chief outlet, the\u00a0<em>New Yorker<\/em>. Or, for that matter, the journal he calls the New York Review of Each Other&#8217;s Books. Or the Jewish magazine\u00a0<em>Commentary<\/em>: &#8220;the language of the contributors is something like the kapok that life jackets used to be stuffed with.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/books\/2010\/11\/saul-bellow-life-steiner\">complete review<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his review of the newly published correspondence of Saul Bellow&#8217;s\u2014Saul Bellow: Letters, ed. Benjamin Taylor\u2014Leo Robson of the New Statesman writes, There is also a generous helping of contempt, the\u00a0sine qua non\u00a0of literary letters. To Cynthia Ozick, one of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2013\/03\/18\/bellow-letter-reveals-the-novelist-was-no-fan-of-updikes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-first-person-singular"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1447,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1445\/revisions\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}