{"id":3134,"date":"2015-10-10T08:17:30","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T13:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3134"},"modified":"2015-10-10T08:17:30","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T13:17:30","slug":"anne-tyler-cites-john-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/10\/10\/anne-tyler-cites-john-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"Anne Tyler cites John Updike"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>Anne Tyler<\/strong>, whose novel A Spool of Blue Thread<\/a><\/em> made the Man Booker 2015 shortlist, referred to Updike in remarks that appeared in The Guardian<\/em>. She says that “with each new scene I have an uncomfortable sense of making it up, of ordering them about willy-nilly. Oh, what a silly, artificial business novel-writing is, I\u2019ll think. Who am I kidding, here? And I glance at the John Updike poem that I keep above my desk, ‘Marching Through a Novel’ where he likens his characters to meek foot soldiers blindly following his orders. Poor dears. I pity them.<\/p>\n

“But gradually, new layers develop. I did plan for Denny to marry but I didn\u2019t know exactly whom he married, and once I see her, I smile. I\u2019m intrigued by Stem\u2019s wife Nora: she\u2019s as mysterious to me as she is to the rest of the family, and I perk up whenever she enters a scene.<\/p>\n

“Then I find out that the mother of the family used to have one of those bad-boy boyfriends when she was in her teens. Why, I had no idea! I have to go back to an earlier section to drop in a couple of references to him. (Or, as John Updike put it, to ‘develop a motive backwards to suit the deed that\u2019s done.’) This is why I love rewriting: each new draft reflects more of those extra layers that I hadn\u2019t foreseen at the start.<\/p>\n

“Man Booker 2015 shortlist: the stories behind the novels”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne Tyler, whose novel A Spool of Blue Thread made the Man Booker 2015 shortlist, referred to Updike in remarks that appeared in The Guardian. She says that “with each new scene I have an uncomfortable sense of making it … 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":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134","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=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3136,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions\/3136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}