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Last Update  

2 July 2009

The Centaurian Website 13th Anniversary was 15 November 2008.  

We are now more than 601,308"hits" later.  

This is a special tree, indeed.  And a slight correction added here.

Carl Kendall, who is a resident of Shillington, PA, John Updike's hometown, kindly sent me this photograph. This tree is the flowering dogwood tree that Updike thought was planted in his honor by Updike's parents the year he was born, 1932. Acually, according to Shillington's David Silcox, a close Updike family friend, Updike's mother informed him  later that it was planted about the time he was one year old.  This is the tree as it bloomed this Spring, standing now very tall along side the Shillington house owned by his parents when he was born--117 Philadelphia Avenue. It is now the site of a local realtor's office.

My sincere thanks to Carl Kendall for his kindness in sending me this photograph. Carl's wife was a classmate of Updike in grammar school there in Shillington. He wrote, "If you wonder why I took this picture, it's because dogwoods aren't known for their longevity and I wanted to have pictures of it before it is no longer. I believe it was in his book of memoirs [Self-Consciousness] that John mentions this tree and said he probably will out-live it. Sadly this hasn't come to pass."

[J. Yerkes, 6-15-09]

[Still no viewing link available as of 29 June 2009]

 A Delayed Notice Not Yet Available by Radio or Online

A Tribute to John Updike

Kennedy Library Forums

Sunday, June 7, 2009 3:00-4:00 PM

Authors Nicholson Baker, Samuel Shem (pen-name of Dr. Stephen Bergman) and Anne Bernays; editor and journalist Charles McGrath; critic and scholar William Pritchard; and family members pay tribute to John Updike, who passed away on January 27, 2009 at the age of 76. Radio/internet host Christopher Lydon is Master of Ceremonies. This program is presented in conjunction with PEN New England.

Go to  http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education+and+Public+Programs/Kennedy+Library+Forums/default.htm?view=historical

We Made The Cut of Three "Very Good Indeed"!  A Compliment from Daniel Green for The Centaurian Website

Go to  -  http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2009/05/i-have-included-as-a-sidebar-at-critical-distance.html

Sincere compliments are always welcome in our lives and this week the comments of Daniel Green were especially welcome.  I do not know Daniel Green at all and would not have noticed this comment on this website were it not for the dependable sleuthing of our Senior Bibliographic Editor, David Lull in Wisconsin.  Here is the notice on Green's website which made me, David Lull, and Larry Randen very pleased.  This website is very old-fashioned and has had some criticism for this in the past, but we persevere and so this comment was indeed welcome.  Each of the three sites was linked for direct referral, which was a generous touch, too.  

_________________

From The Reading Experience - Contemporary Literature and Criticism

May 25, 2009

Author Websites

by Daniel Green

I have included as a sidebar at Critical Distance a list of links to various kinds of webpages and websites devoted to writers who might potentially be subjects of essays for CD. The best of these sites, the William Gaddis Annotations site, the John Updike website, Steve Schenkenberg's William Gass site, are very good indeed, containing reams of information about the author in question as well as, even more importantly, links to extant criticism, both print and online. (The Annotations site even offers the complete text of Steven Moore's book about Gaddis.) If websites like these are to prove useful in the long run (to readers, that is, not just to the authors who might want to publicize their work), they will surely need to act in this way as resources for a more enlightened reading of the author, perhaps as hubs around which further criticism and scholarship can proceed.

On the other hand, too many of the pages on this list are perfunctory and incomplete, in some cases about the only concentrated source of information about the author and his/her work I could find. Some of the most important postwar American writers, Stanley Elkin, Joseph Heller, John Hawkes, Gilbert Sorrentino (also Russell Banks) are particularly ill-represented online. With some of these writers, their relative neglect may be a function of the fact that they died before the rise of literary blogs and online journals and haven't benefited from the attention still-living writers have received from the cybersphere. Perhaps some of them will soon find their online scholar-advocates, as more and more critical discourse moves to the web. No doubt some of the still-living writers on the list themselves bear some of the responsibility for their too-faint web presence, as they don't seem to have put out much effort to establish a presence in the first place.

It does seem to me that students, scholars, and admirers of particular contemporary writers (all writers, for that matter) could perform a very beneficial service by creating websites on the Gaddis or Updike model. For now such sites would have to contend with the obstacle thrown up by the aggregators of scholarly and critical essays--most prominently the Johns Hopkins-sponsored Project MUSE--who have walled off most such essays from most online readers in order to extract subscriptions from university libraries. We can hope that eventually these aggregators will see the futility of refusing easy access to these resources to any and all interested readers and will make them available more widely, but the author-centered websites I am describing could still index pertinent critical essays currently locked-up in print (and still available for free on the shelves of many good libraries), along with those that are accessible online (the numbers of which are only going to grow). Such sites would help make online literary criticism flourish even more fully and more quickly.

Another possibility would be more blogs devoted to single authors, using as a model the Vertigo blog, focused on the work of W.G. Sebald. Such blogs could keep track of critical discussion about a particular author, but could also take in related news more generally as well as provide ongoing critical observations. I wouldn't mind myself creating a blog or two like this, but I already have quite a bit of blog-related activity to maintain. If anyone out there would like to start up a Stanley Elkin or Gilbert Sorrentino blog, I'd certainly help you to publicize it.

http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2009/05/i-have-included-as-a-sidebar-at-critical-distance.html

[J. Yerkes, 5-29-09]

The John Updike Society is officially launched at the May ALA in Boston

May 26, 2009 in Faculty by James Plath

At the 20th annual conference of the American Literature Association in Boston, Updike scholars got together to form The John Updike Society, a not-for-profit organization devoted to “awakening and sustaining reader interest in the literature and life of John Updike, promoting literature written by Updike, and fostering and encouraging critical responses to Updike’s literary works.”

The Society’s first roundtable, “John Updike: Fifty Years of Literary Influence,” featured myself as moderator, with Jack De Bellis (Lehigh University), Lawrence Broer (University of South Florida), Marshall Boswell (Rhodes College), and James Schiff (University of Cincinnati) participating. It was that core group, along with Updike’s Shillington, Pa., contact Dave Silcox, who founded the Society. At the first business meeting on Sunday, May 24, the brand-new organization—which launched with 40 members, many of them voting by proxy—approved bylaws and elected Plath to serve as President/Director. Schiff was elected to be editor of The John Updike Review and a director, while Peter Bailey (St. Lawrence University) was elected Secretary/Director, and De Bellis, Boswell, and David Parker Royal (Texas A&M University-Commerce) were elected directors. In addition to publishing a journal of Updike studies, the Society plans to host conferences in Pennsylvania, Boston, and other places where Updike lived and worked. Pictured (l to r) are Royal, Schiff, De Bellis, Plath, Boswell, and Bailey. Not pictured is Judith Newman (University of Nottingham, U.K.), who was also elected to the board. The Society includes members from five different countries.

Illinois Wesleyan University will host the Society’s website. Updike received an honorary degree from IWU in February 2002, when he was featured speaker at a Founder’s Day Convocation celebrating the opening of The Ames Library.

[J. Yerkes, 5-29-09]

A Selected List of Online Links after January 27 Concerning

John Updike's Life and Death

As of 7 February I have received more than 600 notices of and links to online commentary and tributes for John Updike.  Obviously, I have not had time to read them all or check them all.  What I have included here are the first responses and some sites with writers whose comments seem especially pertinent.  For any important others neglected, I offer regrets.  I will continue to try to add as time allows.  [J. Yerkes, Webmaster]

NB: New entries are entered at the end of this list, roughly in order of publication date.

New York Times John Updike Page and Links - From 28 February 2009 to 1 February

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=John+Updike&type=nyt&x=5&y=11

________________________________________________________________________________

Michiko Kakutani: A Relentless Updike Mapped America’s Mysteries

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28appr.html?8bu&emc=bub2

Sam Tanenhaus Updike Interview: A Conversation with John Updike

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28appr.html?8bu&emc=bub2

"John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76 ,"By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, Published: January 28, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html?ref=opinion

New York Times, Lorrie Moore: Op-Ed Contributor: The Complete Updike (January 29, 2009)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/opinion/29moore.html?scp=9&sq=John%20Updike&st=cse

The Reading (PA) Eagle - Tribute Page: Multiple Stories [John Updike's Hometown Newspaper]

http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=123457

"Will the real Harry Angstrom please stand up?" by Bruce Poster

http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=123669

Reading (PA) Eagle - Short Bio

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=123240

LATimes Updike Photograph Album

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-john_updike-pg,0,2517950.photogallery?1

Irish Times, Eileen Battersby

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-john_updike-pg,0,2517950.photogallery?1

John Updike Life In Pictures BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7854785.stm

NPR John Updike Information and Audios

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99910985&ft=1&f=1003&sc=emaf

LA Times Obit

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-mew-updike-appreciate28-2009jan28,0,6965396.story

CNN Obit

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/01/27/obit.updike/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

Nation of Ktar: Hillel Italie--John Updike, prize-winning writer, dead at age 76

http://www.ktar.com/index.php?nid=388&sid=1033166

Wall Street Journal Obit

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310882480022677.html?mod=rss_US_News

UK Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/27/author-john-updike-dies-at-76/print

TIME Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1874276,00.html

UK London Times Online

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5618443.ece

Newsweek Magazine - Malcolm Jones

http://www.newsweek.com/id/181858

The New Yorker - Writers Remember Updike: Comments

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/remembering-upd/

BBC - Updike In His Own Words

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7854737.stm

UK Telegraph - An Appreciation

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/4363380/John-Updike-an-appreciation.html

Australian Obituary. "Updike at Rest: Writer Dies at 76," The Australian ,29 January 2009

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24977646-5001986,00.html

Australian Literary Commentator: Geordie Williamson,"Prolific author left formidable legacy."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24977645-5001986,00.html 

Ulin, David. "Explorer of Consciousness, Who Wrote Until The End," The Melbourne Age,1 February 2009.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/books/explorer-of-consciousness-who-wrote-until-the-end/2009/01/31/1232818796056.html

Steger, Jason. "Updike'One of the Greatest' American Writers," The Melbourne Age, 29 January 2009.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/updike-one-of-the-greatest-american-writers/2009/01/28/1232818532279.html

Chicago Tribune - Julia Keller: Short Bio

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0128-updike-essayjan28,0,5772047.column

USGA Updike Centennial Dinner Speech 1994

http://www.usga.org/news/2009/january/UpdikeObit.html

Philadelphia Enquirer - Bio

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_left_story/20090128_John_Updike__Pa__son__literary_giant__dies_at_76.html?viewAll=y&c=y

Boston Globe Updike Photo Gallery: Online As of February 1

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/gallery/johnupdike/

Newsweek: The Alchemist of the Mundane, Claire Messud, February 9

http://www.newsweek.com/id/182571

Esquire: The Miracle of John Updike, Tom Junod, January 28

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/opinion/john-updike-appreciation-012809?kw=ist

George W. Hunt, "Updike at Rest," Commentary, America Jesuit Magazine, 16 February 2009

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11423

Michael Dirda, "John Updike, 1932-2009," The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, Issue dated 13 February 2009

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=hwms1vpzszszdkbks46pzw4ml8550tkh

Christopher Hitchens, "Farewell to a Much-Misunderstood Man," Slate Online, Posted Monday, 2 February 2009

http://www.slate.com/id/2210302/

Jeffrey Brown, "A Setting Fitting for a Master," PBS Online, Arts and Entertainment Archive, 30 January 2009

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/01/a-setting-fitting-for-a-master.html

Sam Anderson, "Three Pages A Day," New York Magazine, 2 February 2009

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/53793/

Joseph Bottom, "Updike, After the Hush," Forbes Magazine

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/02/updike-rabbit-terrorist-opinions-contributors_0202_joseph_bottum.html

Daniel Luzar, "John Updike: RIP," Mother Jones, January 2009 The Riff

http://www.motherjones.com/riff_blog/archives/2009/01/12036_john_updike_rip.html

Mick Brown, London Daily Telegraph October 2008 Interview, "John Updike: Descent of Man," London Daily Telegraph, 29 Jan 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3562574/John-Updike-descent-of-man.html

The Academy of Achievemeny (Updike Profile, Biography, Interview, & Photo Gallery)

http://www.achievement.org:80/autodoc/page/upd0bio-1

National Book Critics Circle, Critical Mass, "Reviewing 101: John Updike's rules," Archive 6 June 2006

http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2006/06/reviewing-101-john-updikes-rules.html and

http://bookcritics.org/tags/tag/john+updike

Granta Online, Writers and Critics Remember Updike, 31 January 2009

http://www.granta.com:80/Online-Only/Updike-Remembered

Slate Magazine Online, Slate Bids Updike Adieu: Editors and Writers Remember John Updike, Posted Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009

http://www.slate.com/id/2210094/

Architectural Digest, John Updike: A Collection of Essays from the Pages of AD.  Updike was a frequent "guest speaker" and AD provides a series of four articles recalling towns and homes in which he lived.   Contains slides of Updike with houses to which he refers in his fiction, including his home in Shillington.

http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/features/2009/03/john_updike

Dick Cavett, "Writers Bloc: When Updike and Cheever Came to Visit - Dick Cavett Blog" - NYTimes.com   Contains video clips as well.

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/writers-bloc-when-updike-and-cheever-came-to-visit/

Roger Angell reads John Updike’s short story “Playing with Dynamite,” and talks with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, about editing Updike.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction

Jill Krementz, The Jill Krementz Photo Journal - John Updike 1967-1994.  This set of photographs is unmatched in variety, quality, and in capturing the living energy of John Updike.  Ms. Krementz is clearly a brilliant photographer and John Updike is a loving and lively subject.  Ms. Krementz's husband was the late Kurt Vonnegut.

http://newyorksocialdiary.com/node/193849

John Updike 1932-2009 Photo Essays, TIME Magazine  Cumulative photographs appearing in TIME and other publications online.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1874285_1830383,00.html

Ian McEwan, "On John Updike," The New York Review of Books, 14 March 2009, LVI, No. 4: 4, 6.  This is an especially fine short commentary on Updike's style and McEwan calls him "This most Lutheran of writers."  An apt characterization.  Two interesting Updike pictures by Dominique Nabokov.   http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22391

 Richard Brookhiser, "Rabbits Great Run," The National Review, Vol. LXI, No. 3: 43-44

[Available online only by subscription but note the forthcoming print edition date]

Drawing by Jeff Koterba

[J. Yerkes, 5-22-09]

Updike's Four Rabbit Novels Join "Rabbit Remembered" As Now Available in Audiobooks

John Updike's two Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to him for the last two Rabbit novels, and yet only now is the Rabbit tetralogy appearing in audio form (as indeed is its sequel, the novella "Rabbit Remembered"). A long wait, perhaps, but many of the infelicities of the early days of audio books have thus been avoided. The match between reader Arthur Morey and the life and times of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom couldn't be improved upon; in fact, for this reader and listener, the work has been enhanced. Morey's down-to-earth, matte-finished voice complements the novels' intense materiality and dailiness. He shades it in various degrees to reflect the characters, male and female, old and young, their race, their class and even, most entertainingly, the formulaic hack journalism of the Linotype-setting passages in "Rabbit Redux." Morey delivers the general narration with impeccable understatement, conveying the sense of dissatisfaction, the air of moribundity and of "stifled terror," that pervades the work as a whole. His slow pacing allows the reader to savor the precision of Updike's imagery, as -- to quote a passage describing Rabbit's existence after his wife leaves him -- the "days, pale slices between nights . . . blend, not exactly alike, transparencies so lightly tinted that only stacked all together do they darken to a fatal shade.

See Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post, Wednesday, 15 April 2009, Page C04

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041403150.html

 "Rabbit, Run" -- By John Updike, 12 hours, Audible.com download, $31.50

"Rabbit, Redux" - 16 hours, Books on Tape (www.booksontape.com), 13 CDs, $88; Audible.com download, $35

"Rabbit Is Rich" - 19 1/2 hours, Books on Tape, 17 CDs, $96; Audible.com download, $35

"Rabbit at Rest" - 22 1/4 hours, Books on Tape, 18 CDs, $103; Audible.com download, $35

[J. Yerkes, 4-18-09}

John Updike Died 27 January 2009 in Beverly Farms, MA

Photo: The New York Times

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

j.yerkes@roadrunner.com

[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]

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

by Jack De Bellis and Michael Broomfield

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

Oak Knoll Website Description

Limited Edition, Signed by Updike

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

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 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

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