{"id":7030,"date":"2026-07-01T09:02:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T14:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=7030"},"modified":"2026-07-03T06:22:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:22:47","slug":"author-talks-about-ipswich-updike-and-her-couples-inspired-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/07\/01\/author-talks-about-ipswich-updike-and-her-couples-inspired-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Author talks about Ipswich, Updike, and her ‘Couples’-inspired novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Jenny Jackson is vice president and editorial director of fiction at Alfred A. Knopf, but that’s not her only connection to John Updike. As she wrote in a June 30, 2026 piece in Book Riot<\/em>, “I grew up in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a seaside town north of Boston famous for three things: beer, clams, and John Updike.<\/p>\n

“The celebrated author wrote his biggest books, including the\u00a0Rabbit\u00a0<\/em>novels, while living on East Street, a few blocks from my house. Ipswich is a small town, and Updike was very much a celebrity in the midst, winning every major literary prize, appearing on the cover of\u00a0Life\u00a0<\/em>magazine, and regularly contributing to the\u00a0New Yorker.<\/em><\/p>\n

“But he wasn’t a reclusive star; instead, he was enmeshed in the social fabric of the town, playing volleyball with a big gang of friends, parenting his small children alongside a dozen other couples, and conducting messy extramarital affairs with a few of them.”<\/p>\n

Jackson said\u00a0The Shampoo Effect<\/a> <\/em>was inspired by Couples <\/em>and, in fact, asks the question, What would Updike’s steamy 1968 novel be like if it were published today, gossip in an era of cell phones and social media? Read the entire article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jackson also wrote a piece for\u00a0Literary Hub\u00a0<\/em>(“Jenny Jackson on the Literary Potential of Gossip”<\/a>) in which she identified a second , “The second inspiration for\u00a0The Shampoo Effect\u00a0<\/em>came from a less literary (but equally Massachusetts) fixation. In 2007, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady famously had a baby with the actress Bridget Moynahan while dating the supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Brady and Bridget Moynahan were no longer together, and he was with Gisele by the time Bridget realized she was pregnant. It was a tabloid sensation, a love triangle that paid salaries across\u00a0Us Weekly<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Page Six. <\/em>So, these two gossipy scandals tangled together in my mind to become a novel.” Read the entire article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny Jackson is vice president and editorial director of fiction at Alfred A. Knopf, but that’s not her only connection to John Updike. As she wrote in a June 30, 2026 piece in Book Riot, “I grew up in Ipswich, … 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":[3,6,95,10,53,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-first-person-singular","category-ipswich-news","category-publications","category-updike-in-context","category-updikes-life-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030","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=7030"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7037,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions\/7037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}