{"id":3591,"date":"2016-12-11T17:39:35","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T23:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3591"},"modified":"2016-12-11T17:39:35","modified_gmt":"2016-12-11T23:39:35","slug":"golf-dreamers-and-writers-a-north-shore-man-remembers-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2016\/12\/11\/golf-dreamers-and-writers-a-north-shore-man-remembers-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf dreamers (and writers): a North Shore man remembers Updike"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"updike-shem\"<\/a>“I met John Updike in 1980, at a PEN\/New England gathering,” recalled Dr. Steve Bergman<\/strong>, Professor of Medical Humanities at NYU Medical School. “I was shocked to see him\u2013I\u2019d never met a writer before. I overheard him telling Tim O\u2019Brien the writer that he wanted to play golf that week and would Tim be interested? Tim said yes. They needed another for a foursome,and I introduced myself, and was accepted,” Bergman wrote on his blog, Samuel Shem: Conversation, Events & Book Talk<\/em><\/a>. Shem is his pen name.<\/p>\n

“Over the years, I would say we became best friends. Not that John would show much feeling, really, but I would often ask him to read something I was working on, and he\u2019d talk about his work\u2013and he used a character named Toby Bergman, editor of the local paper in Witches of Eastwick<\/em>, who ‘breaks his leg’ (Bergman my real name) and in my next novel, The Spirit of the Place<\/em>, there was, in return, one \u201cToby Updike, editor of the local paper, who breaks his leg.\u201d Marvelous man.<\/p>\n

Bergman concluded, “In a rough time, when he hadn\u2019t heard from me in a while, he would always call\u2013to talk about golf, or when we could next lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club (I was a member and they had a great buffet). He scheduled the next drop-off of a few cartons of his memorabilia at the Houghton Library just across the street, so it was convenient. I have this photo on my desk, of him and me in golf gear. I miss him to this day.”<\/p>\n

You can “read up” on Bergman-Shem at Goodreads<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I met John Updike in 1980, at a PEN\/New England gathering,” recalled Dr. Steve Bergman, Professor of Medical Humanities at NYU Medical School. “I was shocked to see him\u2013I\u2019d never met a writer before. I overheard him telling Tim O\u2019Brien … 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":[6,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-updikes-life-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","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=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3593,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions\/3593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}