THE JOHN UPDIKE SOCIETY

On July 14, 2025, Virginia Pye posted an interview she did with writer Anne Bernays for Cambridge Day: “We had fun.” Bernays is a longtime resident of the Boston area and the author of 10 novels, two books of nonfiction with her … Continue reading →

John Updike Society president James Plath spent two weeks as a fall 2023 Quarry Farm Fellow working on an essay detailing how Twain modeled being a celebrity writer for both Hemingway and Updike. Plath conducted that research, but also felt … Continue reading →

Sometimes the most interesting takes on an author come from great thinkers outside the field of literature. Such is the case with an article by Kali DuBois that was published in Medium: “What If Gore Vidal and John Updike Had … Continue reading →

John Updike Society board member Biljana Dojčinović was recently interviewed by Charles Carlini of Casa Carlini publishing, who wished to confront the difficult questions underlying why Updike seems less read these days. “Did the sheer brilliance of his style mask … Continue reading →

Members of The John Updike Society are looking forward to the release of the Selected Letters of John Updike, edited by James Schiff and scheduled for October publication by Knopf, Updike’s main publisher since 1959. Members who attend the Roth-Updike Conference will … Continue reading →

A 1966 interview, “John Updike: ‘One way to make a living that didn’t necessarily inflict pain on other people,’” is available to watch now on YouTube. Some of the questions overlap the Life magazine interview, so odds are it’s connected somehow. … Continue reading →

We just discovered a blog entry by music journalist, musician, and street photographer Ted Burke: “John Updike’s Underpraised Genius” (posted May 10, 2024), in which Burke argued that “what the departed Updike leaves behind is one of the most impressive … Continue reading →

British novelist and short story writer William Boyd wrote a piece for The Spectator on a curious consequence of literary fame—mass booksignings—that began with an anecdote about John Updike: “The late John Updike once wrote an amusing article about signing books. … Continue reading →

It’s July 4 in the U.S., and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is once again in the news—or rather, a think piece. Warning: Though Harry leaned right, The Nation, in which this piece by Jeet Heer appears, leans left. One statistic, though, … Continue reading →