{"id":2320,"date":"2014-07-19T07:50:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T12:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=2320"},"modified":"2014-07-19T07:50:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-19T12:50:50","slug":"blogger-explains-his-ambivalence-toward-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2014\/07\/19\/blogger-explains-his-ambivalence-toward-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger explains his ambivalence toward Updike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert M. Detman, who maintains a blog on The Literary<\/em>, recently explored what could only be termed his ambivalence toward John Updike and his writing in a post titled “The Li(n)e Between Truth and Invention in Fiction.”<\/a><\/p>\n

“In the recent biography Updike by Adam Begley, we learn that the celebrated writer ransacked his entire life for story material. He did it religiously, assiduously. In fact, he didn’t invent anything, he merely mined his own life,” he writes. “I found this both a surprise and a letdown. To read Updike’s stories however, the remarkable observation and acuity with detail perhaps make up for a deficiency in inventiveness.<\/p>\n

“What I’ve learned from reading Updike is that a fiction writer needs to have a painter’s eye for detail, and this can (or used to) be enough to carry a short story. Maybe my disappointment with Updike is that he hadn’t done more than this\u2014he made fiction look so easy just using the basic tools of life experience\u2014admittedly not a very exciting life, at that.”<\/p>\n

Of course, Updike\u00a0isn’t the first major author to write highly autobiographical fiction. Ernest Hemingway quickly comes to mind, as does F. Scott Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert M. Detman, who maintains a blog on The Literary, recently explored what could only be termed his ambivalence toward John Updike and his writing in a post titled “The Li(n)e Between Truth and Invention in Fiction.” “In the recent … Continue reading →<\/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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","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=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2321,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions\/2321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}