{"id":2732,"date":"2015-01-14T16:59:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T22:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=2732"},"modified":"2015-01-14T16:59:26","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T22:59:26","slug":"the-paris-review-writes-about-updike-and-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/01\/14\/the-paris-review-writes-about-updike-and-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paris Review writes about Updike and cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/01\/Screen-Shot-2015-01-14-at-4.56.52-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2733\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/01\/Screen-Shot-2015-01-14-at-4.56.52-PM-300x228.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 4.56.52 PM\" width=\"300\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/01\/Screen-Shot-2015-01-14-at-4.56.52-PM-300x228.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/01\/Screen-Shot-2015-01-14-at-4.56.52-PM-395x300.png 395w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/01\/Screen-Shot-2015-01-14-at-4.56.52-PM.png 435w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><strong>Updike<\/strong> fans know that he first aspired to be a cartoonist and was enamored with Disney, especially. And he was a fan of <em>Big Little Books<\/em> as a little fellow. But in a post today on <em>The Paris Review<\/em> website, Jeet Heer contemplates why John Updike loved comics and concludes, &#8220;While Updike might have ceased cartooning, the visual language of comics was never far from his mind.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Heer writes, &#8220;A full inventory of the impact of cartooning on Updike\u2019s writing would require a much longer essay. It would include a discussion of a poem that features Al Capp (creator of <em>L\u2019il Abner<\/em>); Harry \u201cRabbit\u201d Angstrom\u2019s resentful affection for the girlie comic strip <em>Apartment 3-G<\/em>; the superhero references in the later Rabbit books; the story \u201cIntermission,\u201d about a young writer of comic strips; the novel <em>Marry Me<\/em>, which features a character who works in advertising animation; and the essays Updike devoted to cartoonists such as Ralph Barton, James Thurber, and Charles Schulz. Such a discussion would also look more deeply at the visual potency of Updike\u2019s prose and also his habit of limning vividly grotesque secondary characters (think for example of the story \u201cThe Madman\u201d), a fictional practice that owes as much to the tradition of caricature as to the model of Dickens.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the complete article: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/14\/updike-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-fan\/\">&#8220;Updike: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fan&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updike fans know that he first aspired to be a cartoonist and was enamored with Disney, especially. And he was a fan of Big Little Books as a little fellow. But in a post today on The Paris Review website, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/01\/14\/the-paris-review-writes-about-updike-and-cartoons\/\">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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship-analysis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732","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=2732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}