Updike Item0

WHAT'S NEW IN UPDIKIANA

Information and Resources

The materials on this webpage and its section links are copyrighted for literary non-commercial uses. No other uses of its contents are permitted.

Last Update

29 April 2008

The Centaurian Website 12th Anniversary was 15 November 2007.

We are now more than 542,237 "hits" later. Daily visits during the academic year now average 150+ "hits". A new one day record was set 15 December 2000 with 987 "hits." Second best is 14 December 2000 with 505. A new two-day record was set 14-15 December 2000 with 1492 "hits."

Currently the site is registering more than 100 "hits" per day.

[Image]

Photo: The New York Times

Send your information, questions, and comments about this webpage by clicking the following link:

centaurian@prexar.com

Guidelines and Instructions

When information is submitted, please indicate your first and/or last name, city and state/country, and email address at the end of the text. We do not publish anonymous submissions, primarily because of the need frequently to confirm or clarify data. Requests for anonymity on the web page will be considered and granted at our discretion. We reserve the right to edit all submissions.

This section will only be as successful as users of this page supply us with fresh information. No one can be aware of all the materials published about and by Updike all across the country and overseas. Certainly this is true about reviews of his work, especially when new books appear. We are also interested in newspaper articles and reviews nationwide, as well as scholarly and trade publications, especially major works of literary criticism which reference his work. Bibliographers would love to have this information and we hope to use this forum to supply it. As far as we know now, no one knows Updike's appearance schedule around the country or overseas.

Again, notice of awards, honors, and prizes are often first announced locally or regionally, with appropriate news accounts. We need those who use this page to help us know when such events are reported.

In order to reduce the transcription work we request that you edit your submissions carefully for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and spacing. Normally, submissions will be transferred with the "copy and paste" technique common to most word processors. Email-ers, myself included, are notoriously careless typists, so your attention to neatness will help us to handle the submissions to this section expeditiously--and to the pleasure of us all. And thanks in advance for helping generate the information of this page!

To enter your information and comments, click this link: centaurian@prexar.com

Updike's Latest New Yorker Review, "Relative Strangers"

Updike's latest review appears in the May 6 New Yorker . His title is "Relative Strangers," subtitled "a novel about the shadows in a marriage. The book is Sean Greer’s new novel, The Story of a Marriage (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $22). Updike's review is presently available online at http://www.newyorker.com:80/arts/critics/books/2008/05/05/080505crbo_books_updike . More comment when my print copy arrives in the mail--with pagination!

{J. Yerkes, 4-29-08}

A New John Updike Poem: "Birthday Shopping"

David Lull sent this to me two weeks ago and I am just now getting this site updated. I apologize to him and to you since we all want to be current on what Updike is writing and publishing. This extended and narrative poem appears on the literary publication website Per Contra, subtitled The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas, published in Philadelphia, PA, dated Spring 2008. As far as I could quickly determine, it is only an online publication. For the online link to the poem go to http://www.percontra.net/10updike.htm . For the stunning and surprising issue cover with a beautiful photograph "Tulips" by Peter Groesbeck go to http://www.percontra.net/.

In this poem Updike mentions he is 75 years old, so if he shopped on his birthday then it had to be last year on 18 March 2007 since on 18 March 2008 he turned 76--unless of course the age 75 is a rounded generalization. But I would judge it was on his 75th birthday last year. It is my recollection he was in Tucson that year, but I am not sure. And should I mention in passing that this September I will turn 75? Something akin surfaces in his poem for my own thoughts and bathroom mirror sights.

At any rate here is his lovely poem.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Birthday Shopping

Just think - three quarters of a century!

Born under Hoover, the year my father

lost his job and Grandpa took us in;

and then a stripling, willingly to school

with Roosevelt at the helm, term after term;

and next, in Truman's time, a college boy,

in loden coat, rep tie, and tennis shoes,

my lean head stuffed with memorized word-gems.

4-F and married and a father, I

cast a Manhattan vote for Stevenson

but prospered under Ike, and left New York,

the seat of all my editorial hopes,

for Massachusetts where John Kennedy

was senator, and bourgeois life obtained.

Today, in Tucson, Mrs. U. and I

drove through the downtown grid, where cowboys in

white pickup trucks turn left against the light,

to Best Buy's big box, to buy a backup laptop.

Strange world! The geeks in matching shirts

talked gigabytes to girls with blue tattoos

and nostril-studs, and guys with ropey arms

packed pixel-rich-home-entertainment screens.

Hi-def is here. Attempting to prepare

our obsolescing heads for crashing waves

of new technology, we cruised an aisle

of duplicated, twitching imagery

and came upon, as if upon an elf

asleep on forest moss, a Chinese child.

It was a girl, aged two or three, in bangs

and plastic bow and tiny shiny dress

and round-toed Velcroed shoes, supine

upon a cardboard carton, inches from

a coruscating hi-def plasma screen,

her face as close and rapt as at an udder,

motionlessly drinking something in,

an underwater scene of garish fish.

An older sister gazed her fill nearby.

At last we spotted their adoptive ma

haggling fine points several clerks away.

Exquisite in her peace, the alien child

had found a parent, bright and slightly warm,

while I, a birthday boy, was feeling lost.

In Pomeroy's Department store, I lost

my mother's hand three score and more than ten

long years ago. So panicky I wet

my pants a drop or two, I felt space widen;

when someone not my mother, took my hand,

I burbled, unable to cough up who

I was unforeseeably alone

amid these aisles of goods, so unlike home.

Not so this transfixed little pixie here

among the pixels, stiller than if asleep.

Electromagnetism held her fast,

secure within the infotainment web,

that sticky and spontaneous conflux

of self-advertisement and spam and porn.

Well. even Roosevelt's sunk Depression world -

Atlantis at the bottom of a life,

descried through sliding thicknesses of time -

had radio and cinema to love,

and love we did, on fire to make the new

our own, to wield against our elders, dull

with all the useless stuff they'd had to learn

when they had been susceptible and young.

Signals beyond their ken conveyed our sparks -

Jack Benny's stately pauses, Errol Flynn's

half-smile, the songs we learned to smoke to, ads

in magazines called slicks, the comic strips,

realer than real, a Paradise that if

we held our breaths, we could ascend to, free.

Culture beguiles us in the beginning,

but Nature gets us in the end. My skin,

I notice now that I am seventy-five,

hangs loose in ripples like those dunes on Mars

that tell us life may have existed there -

monocelluar slime in stagnant pools.

After a Tucson move, some man in

the men's room mirror lunged towards me

with wild small eyes, white hair - and wattled neck -

who could he be, so hostile and so weird,

so due for disposal, like a popcorn bag

vile with its inner film of stale used grease?

Where was the freckled boy who use to peek

into the front-hall mirror, off to school?

Its cracked brown frame and coat of mercury

going thin behind the glass embodied time,

as did the fraying rugs, the kitchen chairs,

the four adults that shared the house with me.

In Pennsylvania, then, the past settled in

to be the present. Nothing greatly changed:

milk came to the door, and mail through the slot,

coal down the loud chute, and ice in crazed cakes

on the iceman's leathern back. My grandparents

moved through the rooms in a fog of dailiness,

younger then than I am now, and my parents,

not forty - can it be? -- expressed their youth

by quarrelling. Our old clock ticked, and dust,

God's pixels, danced in the windowlight forever.

--John Updike

[J. Yerkes, 4-24-08]

Annie Leibovitz, John Updike in Seattle Arts & Lectures Lineup

By Mary Ann Gwinn

Seattle Times book editor

Seattle Arts & Lectures has announced a partial lineup for its 2008-09 season. The schedule includes poet W.S. Merwin on Nov. 7, author and critic John Updike on Nov. 12 and photographer Annie Leibovitz on Nov. 19.

The organization will announce the rest of its 2008-09 lineup at its April 29 event featuring author Pico Iyer. Subscriptions go on sale in early May. For more information, go to SAL's Web site at www.lectures.org.

To check this website and for further information go to http://seattletimes.nwsource.com:80/html/books/2004369848_lectures24.html?syndication=rss

[J. Yerkes, 4-24-08]

A New Updike Collectible: The Borough of Shillington 100th Anniversary Volume

David Silcox, my long-time friend and a resident of Shillington, reminds us again of the availability of this anniversary volume titled The Shillington Story: One Hundred Years in the Making. Two special features of the book will be of interest to Updike collectors--Updike writes the "Foreword" and his long poem, "In the Cemetery High Above Shillington," is included at the conclusion of the book. The poem is reprinted from an earlier special limited edition of the poem by William B. Ewert (Concord, MA: 1995; with engravings by Barry Moser) which was then later included in Updike's Americana and Other Poems (Knopf, 2001; pages 29-34). The inclusion here in the Shillington anniversary volume is by Updike's personal permission and by the copyright generosity of Knopf.

The poem reprises Updike's visit to the cemetery and his wandering through it reading the tombstone names of both townspeople individuals and families. He has noted in other contexts that he will not be returned to Shillington for burial, but he reprises his feelings that poem's day in measured but solemn tones:

"Never shall I lie here, in trimmed green silence,

among the earners of this resting-place,

who underneath the patterned ground extend

the Shillingtonian ethos, the mild

belief that Earth's safe center has been found . . . .

I am your son; your mile-square grid of brick--

the little terraces, the long back yards--

contains my dream of order, here transposed

to an eternal scale. . . ."

And there is much more to that extended poem. There will be a wonderful town celebration this August, of course, but for those who avidly collect Updike-related items of significance, a copy of "The Shillington Story" will be a requirement. Be assured, Updike will turn up in the town narrative there early-on. You may order a copy of this celebration book with the Updike "Foreword" and poem from The Borough of Shillington, P. O. Box 247, Shillington, PA, 19607-0247. The cost of the volume is $25.00, plus $5.00 domestic and $9.00 Canadian shipping. Everyone reading this should be apprised that only 750 copies of the book will be printed and so to be assured of a copy orders should be sent promptly. The book is in press as I write this note. You may also visit the Borough of Shillington website at http://www.co.berks.pa.us/shillington/site/default.asp .

******

By way of further interest, some readers may remember an early poem by Updike simply titled, "Shillington." Although written in 1958, quite early in his career and first included in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (Knopf, 1963; page 60), it contains one of the more memorable lines in all his poetry--at least for me and some others I have read over the years:

"We have one home, the first, and leave that one./ The having and leaving go on together." (Collected Poems 1953-1993 [Knopf, 1993; page 15])

It is the reprise of a similar sentiment reiterated by someone else whom I cannot remember, "You can never go home again, if for no other reason than that you can never leave." Shillington remains core Updike and Updike remains core Shillington in both of these poems. When the town celebrates its centennial anniversary this year it, of course, uses the reflections of Updike as the symbolic core of its identity in the minds of most American readers. The Centaur is Shillington in Updike's growing up years, properly fictionalized, of course, but unmistakably and unerringly the Shillington of Updike's high school years--after which he "left" to attend Harvard and then to pursue his present awesome literary fame. But at core when you are reading Updike you sense the attending image of a Shillington soul emergent as shadow to sunlight in all his sensibilities. At least I do.

Voila! And I just delivered to myself a surprise as I went to my bookcase and opened my carefully special-boxed first edition copy of Telephone Poles to page 60 where the poem appears. There at the bottom of the page is Updike's notation, "Written for the semicentennial celebration of this borough's incorporation in 1908." Fascinating. Now fifty years later, he writes a second Shillington poem appearing in town's centennial volume. I've been wondering why there was no notation about this poem's celebratory origin in his Collected Poems 1953-1993 since the ascription does appear in the Andre Deutsch edition of Telephone Poles (1963) and in the later combined copy of both The Carpentered Hen (Harper, 1958) and Telephone Poles in the single Fawcett-Crest paperback volume titled Verse (1965; page 154). Well, that's very interesting--to me at least. I doubt most present Shillingtonites remember that poem's raison d'ètre, though, of course, the "old timers" who are Updike friends certainly will.

[J. Yerkes, 4-10-08]

A New Updike Poem Published: "Baseball"

Veteran Updike watcher/reader Ken Krawchuk sent us this information about the new Updike poem with a topic dear to all our hearts as Spring arrives. Here is Ken's helpful note and a copy of the poem:

"The Oxford American on stands through March 2008 (issue 59) has a very timely and wonderful poem by John Updike. I know we're all celebrating Easter this week, but next week the other rite of spring, baseball, begins anew. On page 82 is a wonderful portrait "Babe Ruth"(2003) by David Levinthal. And on page 83 by John Updike his poem simply titled Baseball.

Baseball

It looks easy from a distance,

easy and lazy even,

until you stand up to the plate

and see the fastball sailing inside,

an inch from your chin,

or circle in the outfield

straining to get a bead

on a small black dot

a city block or more high,

a dark star that could fall

on your head like a leaden meteor.

------

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops

between your feet and overeager glove:

football can be learned,

and basketball finessed, but

there is no hiding from baseball

the fact that some are chosen

and some are not--those whose mitts

feel too left-handed,

who are scared at third base

of the pulled line drive

and at first base are scared

of the shortstop's wild throw

that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

------

There is nowhere to hide when the ball's

spotlight swivels your way,

and the chatter around you falls still,

and the mothers on the sidelines,

(your own among them) hold their breaths,

and you whiff on a terrible pitch

or in the infield do

something with the ball so

ridiculous you blush for years.

It's easy to do. Baseball was

invented in America, where beneath

the good cheer and sly jazz the chance

of failure is everybody's right,

beginning with baseball.

----John Updike

I'm never sure if in the email the format will change, so I'm attaching the poem in a word document. I don't know if you're a baseball fan, but I think John hit another home run with this one. Like all good poems, this one is loaded with more meaning than what's on the surface. There is a reason this game is 'America's Pastime' and John does a wonderful job exploring our reasons for this deeply felt, emotional attachment.

I hope you have a blessed Easter and enjoy this poem. And next week, here in the heart of Pennsylvania I'm hoping to hear those cherished words, "Play Ball!" Best, Ken."

[J. Yerkes, 3-30-08]

Note also the full announcement from The National Endowment for the Humanities included below the Washington Post Announcement.

John Updike Selected For Jefferson Lecture

Another singular honor was bestowed on John Updike this week on the occasion of his birthday. We could not be happier for him or, frankly, for all of us. This will provide his with an exceptional opportunity to continue to leave his distinguished mark on American humanities, with a focus, happily, on the distinctive nature American art. Thanks to many of you who sent information.

Here is the text of the article in The Washington Post, along with the excellent and realistic photograph provided there.

John Updike Selected For Jefferson Lecture

Updike, an interpreter of American relationships and mores, is the recipient of several of just a handful of honors in the humanities bestowed by federal government.

By Jacqueline Trescott [Image]

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 19, 2008; C02

[Photograph by The Washington Post]

On his 76th birthday, the U.S. government sent celebrated writer John Updike another official honor. The National Endowment for the Humanities announced yesterday that Updike will deliver the 2008 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.

Giving the annual lecture is one of a handful of honors in the humanities bestowed by the federal government. Updike, an interpreter of American relationships and mores, is only the third American to have received both the National Humanities Medal (2003) and the National Medal of Arts (1989). Those honors are awarded by the president in consultation with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. The other recipients of both honors are Paul Mellon and Eudora Welty.

"John Updike's discerning eye has made him an acute observer of American culture and art," said Bruce Cole, chairman of the humanities endowment. "His fiction, prose, essays and poetry over the years have provided invaluable insights into the human condition and into the humanities."

Updike's output spans more than 50 books. His novels "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest" won Pulitzer Prizes, and his work has won every other prestigious literary award. The Jefferson Lecture carries a $10,000 honorarium.

At the 37th annual lecture, which will be delivered May 22 at the Warner Theatre, Updike will consider the question: "What is American about American art?"

----------

Admission to the 2008 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Warner Theatre is free of charge but tickets are required. Requests for tickets will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis through May 12 via an online form at www.neh.gov or by calling 202-606-8446.

----------

You may go directly to The Washington Post site at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/18/AR2008031802881.html

[J. Yerkes, 3-20-08]

Here is the full online announcement from The National Endowment for the Humanities webiste: http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20080318.html

John Updike to Deliver 2008 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and noted critic will discuss American art

WASHINGTON (March 18, 2008)—John Updike, Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, poet, internationally-known author and critic, will deliver the 2008 Jefferson Lecture, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today. The annual NEH-sponsored Jefferson Lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Updike will present the 37th annual Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Thursday, May 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. In "The Clarity of Things," Updike will examine the connection between America's art and its ideas by posing the question, "What is American about American art?" Updike's lecture will complement the Endowment's new Picturing America initiative (PicturingAmerica.neh.gov), which brings great American art to schools and public libraries to help citizens learn about the people, events, and ideas that have shaped our nation's history.

"John Updike's discerning eye has made him an acute observer of American culture and art," said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "His fiction, prose, essays, and poetry over the years have provided invaluable insights into the human condition and into the humanities. The Endowment is proud to have one of the nation's most distinguished authors as our 37th Jefferson Lecturer."

John Updike is the author of more than fifty books—including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism—and is one of our nation's leading literary critics. He has published several books of art history and criticism including Just Looking: Essays on Art (1989) and Still Looking: Essays on American Art (2005). Recently, Updike has extended his views on art into his fictional work, chronicling the rise of American Expressionism after World War II in Seek My Face (2002). His new novel, The Widows of Eastwick, will be published this fall.

Updike's well-known series of novels about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom have brought him international acclaim and national recognition. Rabbit is Rich (1981) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and Rabbit at Rest (1990) received that same honor in 1991. His novels also have won the National Book Award (1964, 1982), the American Book Award (1995), the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction (1981, 1990), the Rosenthal Award (1960), the Howells Medal (1995), and the Campion Medal (1997). Updike received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2004 for The Early Stories 1953-1975 and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2006 for significant contribution to the short story form.

From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker and has since served as a regular contributor. His reviews have appeared in The New York Review of Books and his poems in the Oxford American. Time magazine featured Updike on its cover in 1968 and 1982.

In recognition for his literary and critical work, John Updike was presented the National Humanities Medal by President Bush in 2003. Updike is one of the few Americans to receive both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts, which he received in 1989.

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pa. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. In 1957 he moved to Massachusetts, where he currently lives with his wife, Martha. He is the father of four children.

The Jefferson Lecture is the Endowment's most widely attended annual event. Past Jefferson Lecturers include Harvey Mansfield, Tom Wolfe, Helen Vendler, and David McCullough.

Tickets to the lecture are free of charge and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Ticket requests must be submitted by May 12th via the online form at www.neh.gov. All other inquiries, as well as ticket requests for persons lacking online access, may be directed to (202) 606-8446. The National Endowment for the Humanities gratefully acknowledges Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Smith for major support for this year's Jefferson Lecture.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Media Contacts: Lindsey Mikal at 202-606-8317 or Elizabeth Fisher at 202-208-7098

[J. Yerkes, 3-20-08]

It's Here!

[Image]

The Long--and Longingly--Awaited

John Updike: A Bibliography of Primary & Secondary Materials, 1948-2007

by Jack De Bellis and Michael Broomfield

Well, it's hard to express the joy I felt when the package from Oak Knoll Publishers was UPS delivered yesterday. At first I was puzzled about what it was and then it dawned on me when I saw the publisher's name--"It's Jack's book!." Now, it 's obviously not only Jack De Bellis' book because it is a collaboration between Jack and Michael Broomfield. It's just that I have known Jack De Bellis for about twenty years and have collaborated on many Updike matters during that time. We both lived near to each other in Bethlehem/Allentown PA for about twelve years and spent many happy hours together visiting and traveling around the area, including Shillington, Updike's boyhood home town, which was about an hour's drive from us. Patty De Bellis and Ruth Yerkes, spouses, were usually along on trips and were thus also friends. Jack taught at Lehigh University and I taught across the Lehigh River at Moravian College. So Jack and I go back a long way.

Michael Broomfield I have met I think maybe once years ago, but he lives in NYC and so our paths have never crossed in the way my and Jack's have. The special expertise that Michael brings is not only bibliographical, but also the first-hand enormous collection of Updike books which he has amassed over the years. The color-image section of the CD which comes with the book has an all but complete collection of images of all Updike US and UK books. In other words, we have two extremely capable experts as editors for this magnificent book.

Many of us remember that Oak Knoll sent out notices that the book was "scheduled for release in time to mark [Updike's] 75th birthday on March 18, 2007." In fact it is now released in time for his 76th birthday--he was born in 1932. As a result of the delay we now have a full additional year of bibliographical materials--2007 also.

I did a rush-through scan of both the book and the wonderful CD which comes with the book. The CD constitutes, as it were, Volume II of the work, with contents of "Works bout Updike, Appendices III-IV, & Color Images." The color images are lovely in themselves, but also for enabling current and future buyers to check the item for which they search.

I will have much more to say about the book and CD after I have had time to review in more careful detail all the components. At this point I can say that the book is thorough, authoritative, and indispensable for any and all Updike readers, students, and researchers. Obviously every public and private American and foreign country library must secure a copy of this book. It is the resource for Updike primary and secondary materials. The regular edition cost is $195 and, as noted below, the special limited edition of 125, signed by Updike, is $550.

For more publishing details and data, go to Oak Knoll website at http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=92254. The description below, issued over a year ago, remains essentially identical on the website.

Heartiest congratulations to Jack De Bellis and Michael Broomfield on this historic publication event.

[J. Yerkes, 2-15-08]

Oak Knoll Website Description

Limited Edition, Signed by Updike

JOHN UPDIKE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MATERIALS, 1948-2007

De Bellis, Jack & Michael Broomfield

With "Foreword to my own Bibliography" by John Updike and a CD Supplement

Edition limited to 125 numbered copies, each signed by John Updike. This definitive bibliography of best-selling American writer John Updike is scheduled for release in time to mark his 75th birthday on March 18, 2007. Mr. Updike has written a "Foreword to My Own Bibliography" especially for this work. Updike, the recipient of numerous awards including two Pulitzer Prizes, is known internationally for his novels, short stories, poems and literary criticism. The reference guide to materials by and about this prolific author is divided into two parts: 1) a large, printed volume details works by Updike, including articles and essays, reviews, letters, speeches and tributes, dramatic works, manuscripts, interviews and blurbs, and contains over 500 grayscale illustrations of book dust jackets or covers; and, 2) a CD held in a sleeve at the back, a first for Oak Knoll Press, includes descriptions of material about Updike (reviews, commentary and theses), several appendices (media appearances, work read by others, translations, exhibits and catalogs), and full-color versions of illustrations appearing in the printed volume. The A and B sections of the book are superb examples of descriptive bibliography.

Jack De Bellis, professor emeritus of the English department at Lehigh University, is the author of several essays and reviews concerning Updike's work, as well as The John Updike Encyclopedia (2000) and a 1994 Updike bibliography. He also edited John Updike: Critical Responses to the "Rabbit" Saga (2004). Michael Broomfield, a lawyer by profession, has assembled what is probably the most extensive private collection of Updike materials. Seeking to collect Updike's work in every form, Mr. Broomfield displays remarkable attention to detail and an acute understanding of the complexities of Updike editions.

This bibliography provides collectors, scholars, dealers, librarians and general readers with an indispensable guide to Updike's work and commentary about him.

This special limited edition is bound in quarter leather, includes a slipcase, and features a colophon signed by Mr. Updike.

- New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press 2006

- 8.5 x 11 inches

- quarter leather with slipcase

- 540 pages (plus nearly 400 pages of text on CD)

- ISBN 9781584562030 ; 158456203X / Order Nr. 92855

- Price: $ 550.00

For further information about this limited edition go to http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=92855&d_currency

[J. Yerkes, 12-12-06]

Updike Reviews The Novels of Flann O'Brien in the 11 February 2008

New Yorker

In the 11 February 2008 issue of The New Yorker Updike reviews the O'Brien novels under the title "Back-chat, Funny Cracks"(pp. 148-152). The review may be read online currently at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/02/11/080211crbo_books_updike .

[J. Yerkes, 2-4-08]

A Helpful British Updike Website Featuring Cover Photos of All His Books and Other Incidentals

Too many weeks ago David Lull sent me information about this British website and I promptly buried it in a swarm of email that day. So finally here is the information. The most helpful thing is that all Updike books are shown with full-color dust jacket covers--and often, understandably enough, with the British editions which sometimes have alternative covers. And it is a quite attractively presented and colorful format. It is not as extensive in detail and some of our data pages here in The Centaurian, but it is still in format far more beautiful. Maybe Dwight Garner has seen that page and would like to push me ASAP to something similar! And best of all, it is a site, sponsored by Border's it seems, it also provides linked access for the same information to scores of other authors. It is very much worth a look. It is billed as "A bibliography of John Updike's books, with the latest releases, covers, descriptions and availability. "

David Lull, a librarian by vocation, is the one who provides the heartbeat of regular information delivered on this website. Thanks is too cheap a word for what we all owe him.

The address for the http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/u/john-updike/

[J. Yerkes, 1-15-08]

Reviews of Due Considerations

Last Update: 2 March 2008

(Listed alphabetically by reviewer name or source, with online links where available)

[Image]

"American arts and letters have been blessed with few great generalist critics over the years, and fewer still have written novels. The most obvious example, Edmund Wilson, wasn't much of a novelist. The other fellow who comes to mind, Henry James, wasn't much of an American.

In this regard, John Updike stands as America's great man of letters of the past century."

Book Reviews, Due Considerations, 21 January 2008 at http://bookreviews101.com/article.asp?articleid=25321

___________

Due Considerations BOOK EXCERPT

From Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism' by John Updike. Chapter 1: Everything Considered. Go to http://www.latimes.com:80/features/printedition/books/la-bkw-updikeexcerpt28oct28,0,5436503.story?coll=la-headlines-bookreview

Adams, Tim. "The man who likes to say yes," Guardian Observer (UK), 16 December 2007. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2228108,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10

Allen, Brooke. Barnes&Noble Review, 24 October 2007. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/review.asp?PID=20027&z=y&cds2Pid=17619&linkid=1039618

Amidon, Stephen. "When Less Is More," The New Statesman, 8 November 2007. http://www.newstatesman.com:80/200711080046

Bancroft, Colette. "Updike: The energizer critic," St. Petersburg Times, 11-11-07. http://www.sptimes.com/2007/11/11/Books/Updike__The_energizer.shtml

Barron, John. "Prolific Updike shows no signs of stopping," Chicago Sun Times, 10-28-07. http://www.suntimes.com:80/entertainment/books/623336,CST-BOOKS-updike28.article

Birkerts, Sven. "Love It or Leave It!,"Internet Review of Books (Vol. 1, No. 1). http://www.internetreviewofbooks.com/due_considerations.html

Brownworth, Victoria A. "John Updike on almost everything: Brilliant, but passion isn't there," The Baltimore Sun,28 October 2007. http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/booksmags/bal-id.bk.updike28oct28,0,5262864,print.story

Carrigan, Jr., Henry. "Updike nonfiction collection has wisdom, and teeth," Charlotte Observer, 11 November 2007. http://www.charlotte.com:80/arts/story/357353.html

Chadwick, Alan. Metrolife, 31 October 2007. http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/books/article.html?in_article_id=73764&in_page_id=28.

Childers, Douglas. "Updike's essays are nice snacks but an overwhelming banquet," Richmond Times-Dispatch, 28 October 2007. http://www.inrich.com:80/cva/ric/entertainment/books.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-10-28-0004.html

Craven, Peter. The Age (AU), 7 January 2008. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/01/07/1199554551926.html

Coale, Sam. "Updike's criticism is never mean-spirited," Providence (RI) Journal, 25 November 2007. http://www.projo.com/books/content/BOOK-UPDIKE_11-25-07_I27LKT2_v10.4cc921b.html

Davis, Duane. "America's 'Ideal Critic,'" 2 November 2007. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/books/article/0,2792,DRMN_63_5737177,00.html

Dervin, Dan. "Author Reviews His Peers," Fredericksburg (VA) News, 12-9-07 http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/122007/12092007/338586?rss=local

Eberhart, John Mark. "Give Updike His Due," Kansas City Star, 12-8-07. http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/393023.html

Fischer, Tibor. "Left behind by Eco and Updike," The Telegraph (UK), 22 November 2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/11/22/boupd118.xml

Freeman, John. "Great review for a great reviewer," UK Guardian, 24 October 2007. For some reason this is a different review text than the DMNws text below. http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/good_review_for_a_good_reviewe.html

Freeman, John. "Q&A: John Updike on Reviewing," Critical Mass, 25 October 2007. http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com:80/2007/10/q-john-updike.html

Freeman, John. "John Updike's 'Due Considerations,'" Dallas Morning News, 28 October 2007. http://books.beloblog.com/archives/2007/10/john_updikes_due_consideration_1.html#more

Goddard, Steve. HistoryWire, 30 January 2008. http://www.historywire.com/2008/01/book-alert-due.html

Harvey, Giles. 5 September 2007. http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0736,harvey,77716,10.html

Hitchens, Christopher. "Mr. Geniality," New York Times Sunday Book Review, 4 November 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/books/review/Hitchens-t.html?_r=1&em&ex=1194148800&en=a46d9669545b06e3&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

Holmes, Catherine. "Man in the Middle," Charleston Post and Courier (SC), 16 December 2007. http://www.charleston.net:80/news/2007/dec/16/man_middle25017/

Hooper, Brad. Booklist, vol. 103, no. 22, August 2007: 5.

Kemp, Peter. "A round-up of nonfictional prose that John Updike has published every eight or nine years since 1965," Sunday Times UK, 11-18-07. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2871418.ece

King, Richard. "Mr Congeniality," Sydney (AUS) Morning Herald, 13 January 2008. http://richardjking.blogspot.com/2008/01/mr-congeniality-sydney-morning-herald.html

Kirkus Reviews. 1 September 2007: 916-917.

Lythgoe, Dennis. "Erudite Updike offers observations," Deseret News (UT), 23 December 2007. http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695238038,00.html

Marcus, James. "The author proves insatiably curious, dogma free -- and generous in critiques," 28 October 2007. http://www.calendarlive.com/books/la-bk-marcus28oct28,0,1692532,print.story?coll=cl-books-features

Margolin, Elaine. "Updike: The Man Inside the Prose, The Denver Post, 12-8-07. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7655327?source=rss

Moriarty, Judith Ann. "Considerable Memories: John Updike and the World," Nilwaukee Express, 6 February 2008. http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-777-considerable-memories.html

Munson, Sam. "Head of the Class," New York Sun, Commentary, 31 October 2007. http://www.nysun.com/article/65564

Murray, Noel. "Due Considerations," A.V. Club, 13 December 2007. The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. It appears in the print editions of The Onion and online at www.avclub.com. http://www.avclub.com/content/words/due_considerations

Naugle, Scott. "The Lambskin Glove," (Gulfport/Biloxi MS) Sun Hearld, 6 November 2008. http://www.sunherald.com/160/v-print/story/280391.html

O'Neil, James. BlogCritics, 11-19-07. Untitled. http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/11/19/012610.php

Parks, Tim. "Fear in the Margins," FT.com (Financial Times UK). http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/56eb8632-9c76-11dc-bcd8-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 Also, "The insider's view: The Best Books of 2007." http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/the-insiders-view-the-best-books-of-2007-1252676.html

Pritchard, William. "Easy Erudition," Boston Globe, 12 December 2007. http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/12/09/easy_erudition/

Publishers Weekly. 23 July 2007: 51.

Taglienti, Paolina. Library Journal, 1 September 2007. The review can be read online for subscribers at http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/BookDetail.aspx?isbn=0307266400.

Team X. Book Reviews 101, 21 January 2008. http://bookreviews101.com/article.asp?articleid=25321

Teodoro, José. "Wordy Updike may wear out reader," Edmonton Journal, Sunday, 24 February 2008. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/sunreader_books/story.html?id=4e5b199b-e8ca-412e-8b77-e2e7e2a1f2e2

Yanofsky, Joel. "John Updike has a lot more to say," Montreal Gazette (CA), 22 December 2007. http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/books/story.html?id=1ac36530-152b-409c-9bb2-4cbd735c0413

Weiland, Matt. "A Welcoming Dinner-Party Host, Updike Re-Serves His Life," New York Observer, 29 October 2007. http://www.observer.com/print/59254/full

[J. Yerkes, 1-10-08]

Jack De Bellis and Michael Broomfield's Forthcoming Ground-Breaking Special Editions--CD's Included

John Updike: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials, 1948-2007

This is an indispensable major publication for all those interested in Updike's lifetime work to date. In fact, it will be a monumental breakthrough in the bibliographic collection of Updike data, superseding all other bibliographic works which have preceded it. I have yet to see a published copy, of course, but I knew the resource has been in the works for years. Jack De Bellis and Michael Broomfield are presenting us with a major resource which will be definitive for Updike readers and scholars for years to come. The book comes both in a standard and limited Updike signed edition and the two CD's promise to be wonderful new materials--including descriptions of material about Updike (reviews, commentary and theses), several appendices (media appearances, work read by others, translations, exhibits and catalogs), and full-color versions of illustrations appearing in the printed volume.

Our website readers here, as well as Updike literary scholars, will be invited, as always, to give impressions of both the format and data presented in it and on the CD's. In a nice touch, it is my understanding that the book will be released on March 18 next year, 2007, which will be Updike's 75th birthday. It is a very exciting prospect and De Bellis and Broomfield are to be highly commended for the dedication to the scholarly precision and scope which the book aims to provide. I can hardly wait.

Here is the publication's description and data taken from Oak Knoll Publisher's web sites for both editions.

JOHN UPDIKE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MATERIALS, 1948-2006

With "Foreword to my own Bibliography" by John Updike and a CD Supplement

De Bellis, Jack & Michael Broomfield

First Edition. This definitive bibliography of best-selling American writer John Updike is scheduled for release in time to mark his 75th birthday on March 18, 2007. Mr. Updike has written a "Foreword to My Own Bibliography" especially for this work. Updike, the recipient of numerous awards including two Pulitzer Prizes, is known internationally for his novels, short stories, poems and literary criticism. The reference guide to materials by and about this prolific author is divided into two parts: 1) a large, printed volume details works by Updike, including articles and essays, reviews, letters, speeches and tributes, dramatic works, manuscripts, interviews and blurbs, and contains over 500 grayscale illustrations of book dust jackets or covers; and, 2) a CD held in a sleeve at the back, a first for Oak Knoll Press, includes descriptions of material about Updike (reviews, commentary and theses), several appendices (media appearances, work read by others, translations, exhibits and catalogs), and full-color versions of illustrations appearing in the printed volume. The A and B sections of the book are superb examples of descriptive bibliography.

This bibliography provides collectors, scholars, dealers, librarians and general readers with an indispensable guide to Updike's work and commentary about him.

- New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press 2006

- 8.5 x 11 inches

- hardcover

- 540 pages (plus nearly 400 pages of text on CD)

- ISBN 9781584561958 ; 1584561955 / Order Nr. 92254

- Price: $ 195.00

For more information go to http://www.oakknoll.com/detail.php?d_booknr=92254&d_currency

[Image]

[Photo copyright permission from Physics Today requested]

Website "An Updike Geography" Features Pictures of the Residences and Significant Sites of John Updike's Life

Though I say it fairly often, it still bears repeating that it is the voluntary contributions of information to The Centaurian site that makes it really valuable as a literary resource. It has been from the beginning a joint effort of readers in large measure. Being the webmaster coordinator is really a pleasure, even if sometimes pretty time-consuming.

So, I just received a note from Dr. Peter Windhorst indicating he put together a website with pictures of John Updike's residences and significant sites over the years, starting at the Shillington residence and extending to the house in Georgetown. Since Updike's home on Beverly Farms shore property is private, no picture was available to him--a picture of St. John's Episcopal Church there substituting, but some interesting sites appear that will interest Updike readers. Here is the list of pictures available:

117 Philadelphia Avenue, Shillington, PA (1932-1945); A Sandstone Farmhouse, Plowville, Pennsylvania (1945-1950); 26 East Street, Ipswich, Massachusetts (1958 - 1970); Updike rents a one-room office, above a restaurant and overlooking the Ipswich River, in the Caldwell Building, South Main Street, Ipswich (1961); Labor-in-Vain Road, Ipswich (1970 - 1974); Updike's apartment 151 Beacon Street, Boston (1974 - 1976); 58 West Main Street, Georgetown, Massachusetts (1976 -1982); Updike moves in 1982 to a house in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts and attends St. John's Episcopal Church (shown).

When I asked Dr. Windhorst how he came to create the picture gallery, he kindly sent this reply:

"For non-Updikean reasons, I found myself in both Berks County and eastern Massachusetts this summer, with a new digital camera in my pocket. The houses obviously play a big role in the fiction, so I was curious about the physical environs. And there was also the appeal of a scavenger hunt." --Peter Windhorst

You are encouraged to visit the site at this net address: http://www.windhorst.org/updike/

[J. Yerkes, 7-12-01]

The Newest Critical Evaluation of Updike's Literary Work

The Cambridge Companion to John Updike

Edited by STACEY OLSTER

Professor of English at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

The hardback cost is $75 and the soft cover online is listed at $26. The bibliographical data is listed as follows:

ISBN-13: 9780521845328 | ISBN-10: 0521845327; $75.00 (C) Also available in Paperback

Published May 2006 | 214 pages | 228 x 152 mm

Another New Updike Critical Study By Brian Keener

John Updike's Human Comedy: Comic Morality in The Centaur and the Rabbit Novels

Keener's book, published by Peter Lang in May 2005 is part of their Modern American Literature series edited by [Image] Yoshinobu Hakutani (ISBN 0 8204 7090 2).

How fortunate we are to have both Keener's and Bailey's new critical studies in the Updike resources. Keener wrote about his book, "In my study I focus on The Centaur and the five Rabbit novels to show that the ample comedy within them defines a comic world and its morality."

Although critics have failed to recognize the extent and the importance of Updike's comedy, the book jacket back cover notes that "the comedy in John Updike's most important works--The Centaur; Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest; and "Rabbit Remembered"--defines a comic world and its morality. Although critics have failed to recognize the extent and the importance of Updike's comedy, his serious fiction does contain a good deal of farce, burlesque, and irony that, far from being peripheral or mere comic relief, depicts the absurd and contradictory nature of life. Within such a world, set in everyday Pennsylvania of the second half of the twentieth century, human beings mature, or gain Kierkegaard's ethical sphere, by fulfilling their societal and generational responsibilities. George Caldwell of The Centaur is Updike's paragon, while Rabbit Angstrom embodies the comic hero who, through trial and error, finally matures. Overall, through an analysis of Updike's comedy, this study reveals a dimension of his fiction that is essential to understanding his work."

Upon reviewing Keener's book, Updike wrote Keener a gracious letter telling him, alluding to his survey of the criticism reviewed, "I haven't read as many books about myself as you have, but I've read enough to know that yours is one of the best. You manage to combine a close reading of my texts with a lot of humor-theory, and it all worked very well for me, though of course my method of writing the fiction itself was rather more intuitive and willful than your analysis could be." Updike went so far as to say that his analysis "seems flawless." High praise indeed.

Brian Keener is Chair of the English Department at New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. in American literature at the Graduate School and University Center of the City of New York. The book is currently available online, costly at $58.95, but obviously valuable to all Updike critical scholars and a must for college and university libraries.

[J. Yerkes, 2-10-06]

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Releases Rabbit (Un)Redeemed: The Drama of Belief in John Updike's Fiction by Peter J. Bailey

Synopsis

This book approaches Updike's oeuvre by illuminating its ongoing, pervasive conflict between faith and doubt. Concentrating on a trio of Olinger stories, the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, "In the Beauty of the Lilies", and "Rabbit Remembered" and dramatizing most emphatically Updike's career-spanning dialogue with his complexly fragile religious beliefs, Bailey interprets the Rabbit saga as fictionalized spiritual autobiography in which, through imposing Harry Angstrom's perceptual limitations upon his own stylistic gifts, Updike set himself the toughest trial of his ethical and aesthetic creed of the spirit-affirming capacities of human perception and expression. Between his aspirations to creating a fiction emulative of patterns of transcendent meaning and his apprehension that Howellsian realism is all that he can achieve in prose, Updike has created, and Bailey has documented, one of the preeminent dramas of contemporary American culture and fiction - a literary engagement of the post-Christian with the postmodern. Peter J. Bailey is Professor of English at St. Lawrence University.

FDU FULL DESCRIPTION

Rabbit (Un)Redeemed: The Drama of Belief in John Updike’s Fiction offers a selective reading of this prolific authors oeuvre, concentrating on Updike’s career-spanning reoccupation with issues of faith and doubt. In Bailey’s reading, at the heart o Updike’s work is the tension between affirming the continuance of the “heady wine of religious consolation” and the deepening anxiety that the best that humanity can hope for is “the bleak fare of more endurance.” Focusing on a trio of Olinger stories, the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, In the beauty of the Lilies, and “Rabbit Remembered,” Bailey locates the dialectical situation at the center of Updike’s literary career in his conflicted sense of himself as a Christian novelist and Howellsian realist.

Bailey’s thematically centered study reveals a substantial stylistic component in Updike’s dilemma of belief; therefore, a significant objective of this study involves illuminating the author’s conflict between creating an eschatologically inspired mimesis reflective of a “knowing eye” behind appearances of reality, or settling for a historically based realism that, in Howellsian fashion, can do nothing more spiritually meaningful than to record (and thus literally preserve) that which is an will one day be no more.

Rabbit Angstrom is Updike’s most significant fictional creation, Bailey contends, because his impulses toward religious skepticism are so inadequately possessed of the intellectual and literary buffers that provide Updike and som of his other protagonists with temporary forms of solace or compensation. Rabbit’s deepening skepticism that “goodness lies inside, there is nothing outside” finds it corollary in the evolution delineated in Updike’s work, transforming it from the “song of joy” in affirmation of creation the “The Blessed Man of Boston” narrator David Kern invokes, to the chronological reconstruction of history as attempted compensation for a relinquished belief in time’s spiritual significance in In the Beauty of the Lilies, and the world largely gutted of a transcendent presence in which Harry’s survivors live on, in “Rabbit Remembered.”

Although Rabbit is the centerpiece of Bailey’s critical argument, in making his case for the critical argument, in making his case for the centrality of issues of faith to Updike’s literary production, Bailey generously cites from Midpoint; Roger’s Version; Memories of the Ford Administration; Self-Consciousness: Memoirs; Towards the End of Time; and Updike essays, reviews, and interviews, in his attempt to delineate the drama of belief and doubt he believes to be enacted so compellingly by Updike’s literary career. Without seeking to reduce Updike’s massive oeuvre to a single idea, Bailey shows how the contention between faith and doubt permeates the work, using the Rabbit tetralogy as the site where Updike hazards most in juxtaposing Rabbit’s deepening agnosticism against his own increasingly “faint faith.”

The FDU website with further information maybe accessed by clicking http://inside.fdu.edu/fdupress/06013007.html

[J. Yerkes, 1-21-06]

William H. Pritchard Has Published Updike: America's Man of Letters

William Pritchard, who has taught literature and criticism since 1958 at Amherst College and is currently Henry Clay Folger Professor of English there, has published what he calls "a portrait," not a biography, of Updike and his literary work. The news release quotes Joyce Carol Oates, "William Pritchard has written an intelligent, eloquently argued and highly persuasive study of John Updike's monumental oeuvre. Mr. Pritchard is both sympathetic and critical; his reading of Updike is intimate, knowing and judicious." Here is the Steerforth description of the book:

Updike:America's Man of Letters is the first comprehensive critical look at the work, career and literary reputation of America's most influential man of letters since Edmund Wilson. By the age of twenty-eight, John Updike had been published in three major forms--novel, poem and short story--he would continue to explore with steadily expanding brilliance and authority. Over the next four decades his literary career would realize itself primarily in these three forms, but also in essays, reviews and memoirs, and in resourceful commentary on his work--the stuff of many interviews and prefaces. Pritchard's book is not a biography, but a portrait of the writer and his work. The New York Times Book Review said of William H. Pritchard's, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered, "this deft, concise, readable literary life moves between two genres--biography and criticism--with confidence and poise . . . [It is] a compact, sympathetic account of Frost's life as a poet, one that puts the biographical emphasis where it belongs, on Frost's powerful and tenacious art." The same can be said of Updike, a book in which author and subject are uncommonly well suited. Updike may well come to be regarded as William H. Pritchard's finest achievement in criticism.

Pritchard is author of many books, including Talking Back to Emily Dickinson: and Other Essays, English Papers: A Teaching Life, Randall Jarrell: A Literary Life and Lives of Modern Poets.

The book is distributed by Publishers Group West. Price is $27.00 ($41.95 Canada), with 326 pages. ISBN: I-58642-002-x. [J. Yerkes, 6-2-00]

John Updike and the Cold War: Drawing the Iron Curtain Now Published

A friend of this website, D. Quentin Miller, Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston, has now published this book with University of Missouri Press--which also published Marshall Boswell's John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion. It is a pleasure to see the University of Missouri Press picking up Updike scholarly publishing where Southern Illinois University Press left off some years ago. Here is the press release from U of M Press:

One of the most enduring and prolific American authors of the latter half of the twentieth century, John Updike has long been recognized by critics for his importance as a social commentator. Yet, John Updike and the Cold War is the first work to examine how Updike's views grew out of the defining element of American society in his time--the Cold War. D. Quentin Miller argues that because Updike's career began as the Cold War was taking shape in the mid-1950's, the world he creates in his entire literary oeuvre--fiction, poetry, and nonfiction prose--reflects the optimism and the anxiety of that decade.

Millers asserts that Updike's frequent use of Cold War tension as a metaphor for domestic life and as a cultural reality that affects the psychological security of his characters reveals the inherent conflict of his own world. Consequently, this conflict helps explain some of the problematic relationships and aimless behavior of Updike's characters, as well as their struggles to attain spiritual meaning.

By examining Updike's entire career in light of the historical events that coincide with it, Miller shows how important the early Cold War mind-set was to Updike's thinking and to the development of his fiction. The changes in Updike's writing after the 1950's confirm the early Cold War era's influence on his ideology and his celebrated style. By the Cold War's end in the late 1980's, Updike's characters look back fondly to the Eisenhower years, when their national identity seemed so easy to define in contrast to the Soviet Union. This nostalgia began as early as his writings in the 1960's, when the breakdown of an American consensus disillusions Updike's characters and leaves them yearning for the less divisive 1950's.

While underscoring how essential history is to the study of literature, Miller demonstrates that Updike's writing relies considerably on the growth of the global conflict that defined his time. Cogent and highly readable, John Updike and the Cold War makes an important contribution to Updike scholarship.

D. Quentin Miller is Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk University in Boston and editor of Re-Viewing James Baldwin: Things Not Seen. John Updike and the Cold War (0-8262-1328-6, $29.95 cloth; 216 pages, 6 x 9, bibliography, index) is available at local bookstores or directly from the University of Missouri Press. Individuals placing orders should include $4.00 shipping and handling for the first book and $.50 for each.

[J. Yerkes, 5-9-01]

John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion by Marshall Boswell Just Published: Some Initial Comments This is an exciting new book on Updike, Kierkegaard, and the employment of "mastered irony" in the Rabbit Tetralogy (University of Missouri Press; 253 pp; 6 1/8 x 9 1/4. Biblio. Index. ISBN 0-8262-1310-3. $34.95). Marshall Boswell teaches English at Rhodes College. My judgment is that this book is the finest literary exposition of the tetralogy currently available. It is an excellent piece of criticism. This is not to say everyone will agree with Boswell on all matters of his analysis, but for students and general readers who want careful exposition of each book and their cumulative thematic connections, Boswell's book will be, I think, the preeminent place to start. The thematic analysis is especially cogent. One is constantly astonished at the insights and connections which Boswell produces. We will use this book for our discussion topic in late Fall 2001 or early Winter 2002, so I hope many page readers will soon acquire and copy and read it.

Since Kierkegaard's concept of mastered irony is the key to Boswell's analysis, let me entice your interest by quoting a key passage about that concept from his Introduction:

In many ways Kierkegaard's thinking recalls that of Hegel; certainly Kierkegaard was deeply influenced by the great German metaphysician. Yet although both thinkers foreground the dialectic as the path to truth, they differ on several key points, and these points of difference make, to coin a phrase, all the difference in the world. Hegel insisted that every positive concept (thesis) implies implicitly its own negation (antithesis); in his dialectical system, however, these two concepts, the thesis and its antithesis, do not cancel one another out but are rather resolved by a synthesis of the two concepts, a synthesis that both preserves and supersedes the antecedent categories while in turn producing new concepts for contemplation, since that synthesis will unavoidably suggest its own negation and so on. Kierkegaard countered that authentic dialectical truth is that which does not synthesize, does not resolve. Truth does not consist, as Hegel would argue, in an abstract synthesis of opposites, of a both/and; rather, it lies in the private contemplation of irreducible contradiction, in individual confrontation with an unresolved either/ or. In this way, Kierkegaard argued for a living, existential notion of truth founded on fluctuating tension, for since life is unfinished as long as it lasts, so must truth remain unfinished, unresolved, insofar as it is deemed to be a living truth.

In Rabbit Angstrom, Updike employs a similar strategy of "mastered irony" whose inspiration can be traced directly to Kierkegaard. Indeed, so interested is he in Kierkegaardian dialectics that, in his long poem, Midpoint, he launches an encomium to his "heroes" with this concise couplet: "Praise Kierkegaard, who splintered Hegel's creed / Upon the rock of existential need" (p. 7).

I hope this will convince readers that there is great deal to be learned from Boswell's analysis. Having written a book on Hegel's philosophy myself, I think Kierkegaard's analysis of Hegel was a little skewed philosophically, but still, Kierkegaard's concept of truth is indeed different from the approach Hegel took and Boswell's recognition of Kierkegaard's influence on Updike is skillfully set out.

I attach here the publisher's description of the book.

Early in his career, John Updike announced his affinity with the Christian existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, and others. Because of this, many of Updike's critics have interpreted his work from within a Christian existentialist context. Yet Kierkegaard and Barth provide Updike with much more than a mere context, for their dialectical thinking serves as the springboard for Updike's own unique dialectical vision, a complex matrix of ethical precepts, theological beliefs, and aesthetic principles that governs nearly all of his literary output. Nowhere else in his immense corpus is this vision more clearly and thoroughly expressed than in his four Rabbit novels, which were gathered into the single volume Rabbit Angstrom in 1995. However, because Updike's critics have chosen to read the Rabbit novels as discrete, freestanding texts, they have by and large failed to extract the precepts of this private vision.

In John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy, Marshall Boswell redresses this imbalance by treating the Rabbit tetralogy as a single, unified "mega-novel." He demonstrates that, taken together as a single work, the four discrete sections of the tetralogy not only provide a coherent and complete articulation of Updike's unique existential vision but also compose a unified work of remarkable formal complexity. Boswell brings to Updike's work the concept of "mastered irony," a term coined by Kierkegaard to describe the presentation of two legitimate but contradictory sides of an issue. In the Rabbit novels, these issues range from adultery to drug addiction, from race to redemption, with each issue examined through the refracting lens of Updike's own ironic method. Boswell shows that although each of the four individual Rabbit novels confirms this dialectical strategy in a unique way, the completed tetralogy comprises an additional series of dialectical pairs that sustain, rather than resolve, thematic and formal tension. Ultimately, the structure of the finished "mega-novel" echoes the work's thematic rationale.

To help readers who are interested in a particular Rabbit novel, Boswell devotes a chapter to each individual section of the tetralogy. At the same time, he treats each novel as an integral part of the more comprehensive whole. Honoring the full complexity of Updike's provocative thinking without losing sight of the tetralogy's popular appeal, John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy makes a valuable addition to the study of Updike's work.

About the Author:

Marshall Boswell is Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

[J. Yerkes, 2-1-01]

Jack De Bellis' Splendid John Updike Encyclopedia Is a Major Literary Milestone--An Initial Report

Owing to a mailing mixup I just yesterday (11-30-00) received my copy of Jack De Bellis' new book. I have only had time so far to read the introduction and scan a few of the entries--which range alphabetically from Abortion to Zimmerman. It is true that Updike is still enormously productive--this past two years has been nothing short of phenomenal in his output, but for the time being any serious scholar, student, or interested reader of Updike will find this book simply indispensable. It is a treasure-trove of detailed information about Updike's individual books, stories, reviews, characters, citations, locations, and so much more. The chronology of Updike's life is splendidly done and detailed, and the information on Updike literary studies over the years to date is complete and accurate. How fortunate we are to have this rich vein of authorial information.

Two of our finest Updike scholars, James Schiff and Donald Greiner, have given it a four-thumbs-up recommendation: "To say his comprehensive bibliography has been enormously useful is an understatement. This new volume, which exhaustively chronicles Updike's plots, characters, influences, ideas, references and more is a valuable resource. . . . This is an important volume in Updike studies and belongs on the shelf of the general reader as well as the academic scholar," says James Schiff. Adds Donald Greiner, "There is no comparable guide to the complexities of Updike's great achievements."

No one has been more helpful to me personally in developing this website and doing my own Updike research than Jack De Bellis. He is one of the most charitable and gracious colleagues I am privileged to call friends. This endorsement is not based on our friendship, however. It is a serious assessment of a major literary milestone in American criticism. I compliment him highly on his fine work and look forward to many hours of informative and inspiring reading in this wonderful tome. Anyone who reads and appreciates Updike the writer would be delighted to see this book with their name on it under the Christmas tree. The book is readily available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and Borders websites, as well as other new sites offering important new publications.

Thanks to Jack for all his enormous labor in putting together this text. We owe him a great debt of gratitude.

[J. Yerkes, 12-1-00]

The Book Cover Jacket for John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace. If you think you have seen this picture before, you have! The book's publisher, Wm. B. Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, MI, asked me if I knew a good picture of Mr. Updike which they could consider for the cover. I replied it just so happened I did. And so it was and so it is. I think it is quite handsome as a book cover. The picture is copyrighted by Archive Photos in New York.

The book may be acquired online from any of the several booksellers which serve web readers. The most recent major review appeared in the April edtion of the journal Christianity and Literature. Here is a selection precis:

"James Yerkes has edited a splendid volume on John Updike and religion. . . . The collection's subtitle refers to part of Blaise Pascal's Pensee 507 that serves as the epigraph for Rabbit, Run. . . . It is, as the authors of this volume realize, the motions of grace that provided us with our bearing and our hope, but we experience such grace ambiguously, sheathed within our hardness of heart and external circumstances. There is no other way."

The book John Updike and Religion named "an elegant collection of coordinated essays" by The Journal of the American Academy of Religion

In the December 2001 (69, No. 4: 959-961) issue of The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, a professional scholarly publication, this book of essays was reviewed by Professor Joseph L. Price, Department of Religious Studies, Whittier College (CA). Happily, it was a favorable review which noted it was "an elegant collection of coordinated essays edited effectively" and it comments that "Consistently, the essays . . . analyze how Updike persistently examines the fusion and confusion of individuals' desires for spiritual satisfaction and sensual gratification." Price suggests

"In this way Updike continues the tradition of accomplished twentieth century novelists of accomplished novelists and poets who identified themselves as Christians--including Graham Greene, Francois Mauriac, Flannery O'Connor, Brian Moore, and W. H. Auden. Like them, he has been bold in his willingness to tell the struggle of truth from a decidedly Christian perspective. But unlike the Catholic authors from Europe who so clearly addressed the matters of faith in midcentury, Updike not only takes a distinctly American perspective (joining O'Connor in that category) but also distinguishes himself by writing from a decidedly Protestant point of view. Few major U.S. writers since Hawthorne, to whom Updike turns on repeated occasions for inspiration and direction, have imbued their fictive worlds with such a strong Protestant tone"

As editor of that book I have always been acutely sensitive about putting notices and commendations about it on this webpage. It is an advantage others do not have, but neither I nor the essayists receive any royalties for our work on this book and I try very hard to give extensive coverage to all recent books which render commentary on Mr. Updike's work. In our case, we did the book because we felt there was a literary and theological need to give attention to Updike's work that had not been provided by current literary criticism.

For those interested, the full review is available on this page by visiting

Chiron's Forum: Selected Essays and Criticism .

For a listing of other reviews of the book, click here are go to Section IV Chiron's Forum: Selected Essays and Criticism

The book's Table of Contents is attached, for those interested.

The Table of Contents

JOHN UPDIKE AND RELIGION:

THE SENSE OF THE SACRED AND THE MOTIONS OF GRACE

CONTRIBUTORS AND ESSAYS

PREFACE

"Earthworm" (A Poem)

"Remarks upon Receiving the Campion Medal"

John Updike

1. Updike and the Religious Dimension

As Good as It Gets

The Religious Consciousness in John Updike's Literary Vision

James Yerkes

The Obligation to Live

Duty and Desire in John Updike's Self-Consciousness

Avis Hewitt

The Pocket Nothing Else Will Fill

Updike's Domestic God

James A. Schiff

When Earth Speaks of Heaven

The Future of Race and Faith in Updike's Brazil

Dilvo I. Ristoff

Updike 2020

Fantasy, Mythology, and Faith in Toward the End of Time

David Malone

2. Updike and the Christian Religion

An Umbrella Blowing Inside Out

Paradoxical Theology and American Culture in John Updike's Novels

Kyle Pasewark

What is Goodness?

The Influence of Updike's Lutheran Roots

Darrell Jodock

Writing as a Reader of Karl Barth

What Kind of a Writer is John Updike Not?

Stephen H. Webb

The World and the Void

Creatio ex Nihilo and Homoeroticism in Updike's Rabbit Is Rich

Marshall Boswell

Learning to Die

Work as Religious Discipline in John Updike's Fiction

Wesley A. Kort

3. Updike and American Religion

Fact or Fiction

Updike and the American Renaissance

Charles Berryman

Giving the Devil His Due

Leeching and Edification of Spirit in The Scarlet Letter and The Witches of Eastwick

James A. Plath

Guru Industries, Ltd.

Red Letter Religion in Updike's S.

Judie Newman

Chaos and Structure

Religion and the Idea of Civil Order in Updike's Memories of the Ford Administration

George S. Diamond

The World as Host

John Updike and the Cultural Affirmation of Faith

Donald J. Greiner

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

INFORMATION ON THIS WEBSITE'S DEVELOPING ARCHIVES After more than ten years now I am wondering what to do with all the text items which have appeared on this site. For example, I had a huge section page section under "Latest and Forthcoming Publications." I have "saves" from that section all the way back to 1996. So, I pulled the 1996-1999 texts of that section and keep them on my computer as archives. I am now taking the year 2000 texts of the section off-line to my archives. I will note the the texts are available for those dates for those who may wish to review them. I am also keeping archives of other site sections and will arrange them by yearly dates as well. This is what I have determined to do as of now. What future there may be for the archives beyond this will have to be determined as time goes along. I have been pretty staggered at the among material which has passed through the website the past four years. I have written a great deal and others have also contributed much commentary and information. For now my archives can be accessed by writing me for information which they may contain. I will keep up with such requests as best as I can. [J. Yerkes, 3-12-02]

THE NEW COPYRIGHT NOTE ON THIS PAGE Recently I was surfing the web and decided to search for John Updike materials. I found some interesting links which I hope to add to my opening page here later, but, lo, I also found one of my page sections, background and all, copied onto a link with a commercial moving banner advertisement at the top, for companies like Amazon.com! It was an Omnipotent.com page and I wrote to them to ask them to please remove it. I now have notice at the head and end of all page sections indicating such use is a violation of my copyright. I suppose I should not be surprised, but I was really offended. This page cost I finance out of my own pocket and I do it willingly and with pleasure. I have numerous times refused invitations to put advertising links on the page because, anti-establishment purist that I am, I want it to remain a literary non-commercial venture. So if you wondered why those notes appeared suddenly today, that is the reason. [J.Yerkes, 4-36-99]

COLLEGIAL SUPPORT FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES I want to thank Bill Goldstein, Associate Editor in the electronic division of the TIMES, for adding a link to this CENTAURIAN page at the conclusion of his excellent John Updike website. By all means check out the material available free and download-able free from The New York Times on the Web. The first link is the one I prefer, though the reviews of Updike's books go only through 1997. Click below for that page:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/06/lifetimes/updike.html

The second link here is organized differently but has more recent reviews and also first chapter texts from Updike's more recent publications. Click below for that page:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/19/specials/updike.html

Click Here to Go Back to Content Links

Click Here to Go Back to Updike Home Page

The materials on this webpage and its section links are copyrighted for literary non-commercial uses. No other uses of its contents are permitted.