{"id":2637,"date":"2014-11-24T06:51:18","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T12:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2014-11-24T06:51:18","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T12:51:18","slug":"more-on-moran-and-updikes-trash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2014\/11\/24\/more-on-moran-and-updikes-trash\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Moran and Updike’s trash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liam O’Brien, of Melville House, posted a think-piece on his blog about Paul Moran and his epic scrounging of Updike’s trash, responding to a recently published essay on “Finding John Updike”<\/a> that appeared in Texas Monthly<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“The natural question that Moran’s trash collection begs is of ethics, not legality. The trash was not legally Updike’s after being discarded. But is it right to?” he asks.<\/p>\n

“Moran’s essay certainly does him no favors in that regard, as far as I’m concerned. It’s grandiose and unsettling, and contains several straight-up disturbing anecdotes. (It’s also fairly overwritten, though Ian McEwan seems to disagree.) In one story, Moran claims to have found early evidence, in the form of printed emails, that Updike was suffering from the cancer that ultimately killed him.”<\/p>\n

O’Brien is not a fan. “The privacy of public figures is a debate that’s flowered in the information age, and Updike’s trash is certainly a part of that debate. But when reading Moran’s essay, it’s hard to escape the idea that while this garbage collection may be interesting, and perhaps culturally significant, it would not exist without a collector whose motivations were colored by obsession, narcissism, and absolute moral certainty<\/em>” (italics added).<\/p>\n

In this last description of motivations, ironically, he describes any number of American writers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liam O’Brien, of Melville House, posted a think-piece on his blog about Paul Moran and his epic scrounging of Updike’s trash, responding to a recently published essay on “Finding John Updike” that appeared in Texas Monthly. “The natural question that … 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-2637","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\/2637","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=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2638,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions\/2638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}