{"id":6695,"date":"2025-07-11T20:24:40","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T01:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6695"},"modified":"2025-07-13T15:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T20:23:08","slug":"new-yorker-previews-upcoming-john-updike-selected-letters-volume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/07\/11\/new-yorker-previews-upcoming-john-updike-selected-letters-volume\/","title":{"rendered":"New Yorker previews upcoming John Updike Selected Letters volume"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of The John Updike Society are looking forward to the release of the\u00a0Selected Letters of John Updike,\u00a0<\/em>edited by James Schiff and scheduled for October publication by Knopf, Updike’s main publisher since 1959. Members who attend the Roth-Updike Conference will have the chance to get signed copies in New York.\u00a0 As a teaser, The New Yorker\u00a0<\/em>today posted “An Adolescent Crush That Never Let Up: An epistolary history of a fifty-five-year relationship with\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>, by John Updike.”<\/a> The post is dated July 11, 2025, which is sure to confuse people in the future, regardless of whether they know Updike died in 2009.<\/p>\n

The letters begin with a March 1949 query from Updike, still a high school student, asking for “some information on those little filler drawings you publish, and, I presume, buy. What size should they be? Mounted or not? Are there any preferences as to subject matter, weight of cardboard, and technique?”<\/p>\n

\"\"The remaining letters are directed to various editors, his parents (whom he addresses as “Plowvillians”), and others that collectively give some sense of his relationship with The New Yorker<\/em>. The final letter, addressed to fiction editor Deborah Treisman, is a poignant one, given that it was written just 17 days before Updike passed away:<\/p>\n

“. . . I suppose of the many things I have tried to write, short stories have given me most gratification and unqualified pleasure. I am glad that what looks to be my last book, to be published this June, is short stories, called My Father\u2019s Tears<\/em><\/a>, probably the best of the bunch. But I would feel less happy about the collection if you and your editorial colleagues had not allowed me to cap it with two\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0acceptances\u2014the little suburban fling in the power outage, and the rambling reminisce about happiness and sex and water and the little journey of a NE American life. I feel much happier about a collection that begins and ends with\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>, where I began and ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of The John Updike Society are looking forward to the release of the\u00a0Selected Letters of John Updike,\u00a0edited by James Schiff and scheduled for October publication by Knopf, Updike’s main publisher since 1959. Members who attend the Roth-Updike Conference will … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,53,35,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","category-updike-in-context","category-updike-quoted","category-updikes-life-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695","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\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6695"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6706,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695\/revisions\/6706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}