{"id":6853,"date":"2026-01-31T21:25:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T03:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6853"},"modified":"2026-01-31T21:25:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T03:25:01","slug":"raritan-now-deceased-wasnt-a-fan-of-john-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/01\/31\/raritan-now-deceased-wasnt-a-fan-of-john-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"Raritan, now deceased, wasn’t a fan of John Updike"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Sheena Meng’s “A requiem for Raritan,” <\/em>published on The Point<\/em>, one thing rings pointedly clear:\u00a0 “The editors were not particularly fond of Updike. Richard Poirier and Thomas R. Edwards, both literary critics and professors of literature at Rutgers, leveled coolly disdainful gazes at him in their 1978 proposal for the magazine:<\/p>\n

The publication of a new book by John Updike, let us say, is probably not an event of the same magnitude as the publication of a new book by Bellow or Pynchon, by Elizabeth Bishop or Doris Lessing \u2026 He seems at the moment to be a writer of comparatively, and predictably, lesser weight, and for whatever reasons he does not call into play the cultural forces and special interests that are at work on behalf (or against) these other writers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>“It was their mutual confusion regarding Updike\u2019s popularity that also solidified matters between Poirier and his successor, Rutgers historian Jackson Lears. One of the questions he had hoped to address when he founded the magazine, Poirier told Lears, was: How does a writer like John Updike get lionized and celebrated as if he\u2019s some genius man of letters? Raritan<\/em>, in other words, was interested in \u201ccultural power,\u201d as Poirier declared in his prefatory editor\u2019s note: \u201cthose intricate movements by which ideas or events, canons or hierarchies of preference, minorities or cultural strata come into existence.\u201d Updike, not considered ‘a sufficiently rewarding clue to something more important than the texts he writes,’ was given no notice in its pages.”<\/p>\n

Sounds like Raritan<\/em>‘s editors may have socialized with famous Updike detractors John Aldridge or David Foster Wallace, since all of the writers they cite as being superior have occasioned relatively the same level of interest from readers, and graduate students working on their theses or dissertations, as Updike.<\/p>\n

Read the whole article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Sheena Meng’s “A requiem for Raritan,” published on The Point, one thing rings pointedly clear:\u00a0 “The editors were not particularly fond of Updike. Richard Poirier and Thomas R. Edwards, both literary critics and professors of literature at Rutgers, leveled … 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":[10,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853","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=6853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6856,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions\/6856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}