{"id":6898,"date":"2026-02-09T21:09:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6898"},"modified":"2026-02-09T21:09:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:09:06","slug":"ink-spill-spotlights-more-updike-on-thurber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/02\/09\/ink-spill-spotlights-more-updike-on-thurber\/","title":{"rendered":"Ink Spill spotlights more Updike on Thurber"},"content":{"rendered":"

On one of their “Thurber Thursdays,” Ink Spill: New Yorker Cartoonists News, History, and Events<\/em> was inspired by the recent publication of the Selected Letters of John Updike<\/em> to do a little sleuthing and post the results.<\/p>\n

A footnote on page 333 of Letters<\/em> mentions Updike’s piece “On Meeting Writers” as being retitled “Writers I Have Met” and published in The New York Times Book Review<\/em> on August 11, 1968. It “included drawings of Updike and the various writers he discusses: Joyce Cary, James Thurber, and E.B. White.”<\/p>\n

“Thinking that Updike had drawn a self portrait along with sketches of Cary, Thurber, and White (drawings I did not recall ever seeing!) I scurried over to the Updike books here and pulled\u00a0Picked-up Pieces<\/em> off the shelf. ‘On Meeting Writers’ is the very first picked up piece in the book \u2014 it appears on page 3. But alas\u2026no drawings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“I then went to The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0archive and found the piece as it appeared in the paper (what an incredibly wonderful resource that is). I can\u2019t reproduce the page here, but I can tell you I was thrilled, initially, to see drawings (I thought by Updike) accompanying it.<\/p>\n

“They didn\u2019t really look at all like Updike drawings, but I\u2019ve become used to seeing how he had explored a variety of styles throughout his life \u2014 I supposed this was another exploration. But when I zoomed in on the credit for the drawings, I found the drawings were not by Updike, but by (and I mean no disrespect here by expressing disappointment)\u00a0Jim Spanfeller\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>. . . . So no Updike Thurber and E.B. White drawing, but \u2013bonus \u2014 I learned about Mr. Spanfeller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On one of their “Thurber Thursdays,” Ink Spill: New Yorker Cartoonists News, History, and Events was inspired by the recent publication of the Selected Letters of John Updike to do a little sleuthing and post the results. A footnote on … 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":[34,21,53,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-lost-and-found","category-updike-in-context","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898","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=6898"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6901,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions\/6901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}