Updike
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Couples Couples. New York: Random House Trade Paperback, 2012.
CP Collected Poems, 1953–1993. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
DC Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
EL Elizabeth Lawrence
EP Endpoint and Other Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
ES The Early Stories: 1953–1975. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
GD Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Harper Updike correspondence in the Harper and Brothers archive.
HG Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.
Hiller Cathy Hiller. “Updike at Forty.” Unpublished profile of JU written in April 1972.
HM Howard Moss
Houghton John Updike Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
HS Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Illinois William Maxwell papers, University of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
JCO Joyce Carol Oates
JJ Judith Jones
JL Just Looking: Essays on Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
JU John Updike
KL Robert Christopher (“Kit”) Lasch
KSW Katharine Sergeant White
Lasch Kit Lasch’s letters to his parents, Christopher Lasch Papers, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
LGH Linda Grace Hoyer Updike
LL Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, “Rabbit Remembered.” New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
LP Letters to Plowville, JU to LGH and WU, John Updike Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
MA Michael Arlen
MEUU Mary Ella Updike
MFA Memories of the Ford Administration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Michigan Delbanco Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan.
MM More Matter: Essays and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
MS A Month of Sundays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
MT My Father’s Tears and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
MW Mary Weatherall
ND Nicholas Delbanco
NYPL New Yorker records. New York Public Library.
OF Of the Farm. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
OJ Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.
Orion Updike correspondence in the archives of Victor Gollancz Ltd. Gollancz is now owned by the Orion Publishing Group.
OS Olinger Stories. New York: Vintage Books, 1964.
P Problems and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
PF The Poorhouse Fair. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.
PF77 The Poorhouse Fair. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
PP Picked-Up Pieces. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Crest, 1976.
RA Roger Angell
Ransom Knopf Archive, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas.
Rochester Christopher Lasch Papers, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester.
RRedux Rabbit Redux. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.
RRest Rabbit at Rest. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
RRich Rabbit Is Rich. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.
RRun Rabbit, Run. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.
RV Roger’s Version. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.
SC Self-Consciousness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
SR Stewart (“Sandy”) Richardson
Syracuse Joyce Carol Oates Papers, Syracuse University Library.
TB Anthony Bailey
TET Toward the End of Time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Td Time magazine dispatches related to the April 26, 1968, Updike cover story. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
TM Trust Me and Other Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
Tulsa André Deutsch Collection, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa.
Ursinus Linda Grace Hoyer Papers, Myrin Library, Ursinus College.
VG Victor Gollancz
WE The Witches of Eastwick. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1985.
WM William Maxwell
WMRR What Makes Rabbit Run? David Cheshire, producer. BBC TV, January 26, 1982.
WU Wesley Updike
Introduction
ix “public, marketable self”: SC, 238.
x “he had a bona fide twinkle in his eye”: Jane Smiley, from a tribute posted on Granta.com, January 31, 2009.
x “I read and talked into the microphone”: SC, 237.
xi “[A]s Norman Mailer pointed out”: MM, 824.
xii “John could be funny”: Author interview, MA, April 1, 2009.
xii he “somehow withdrew a little”: Roger Angell, “The Fadeaway,” The New Yorker, February 9, 2009, 38.
xii “a pretty average person”: WMRR.
xii declared “unreservedly” that Updike was a genius: Nicholson Baker, U and I: A True Story (New York: Random House, 1991), 126.
xii “He was not a genius”: Lionel Trilling, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 262–63.
xii “Here lies a small-town boy”: WMRR.
xiii he dreamed of becoming a “universal artist”: LP, February 16, 1953.
xiii “the refuse of my profession”: MM, 852.
I. A Tour of Berks County
1 “my home turf”: JU interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg at the New York Public Library, June 15, 2006.
2 “I really think being interviewed”: CJU, xi.
2 “I know all about him”: E-mail, William Ecenbarger to author, April 5, 2009.
2 “He told me when he left for Harvard”: William Ecenbarger, “Updike Is Home,” Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, June 12, 1983, 19.
3 “Chonny will be here tomorrow”: E-mail, Ecenbarger to author, April 5, 2009.
3 “He often gets that way”: Ecenbarger, “Updike Is Home,” 19.
3 “Let’s go,” he said: Ibid.
3 “I’ll drive so you can take notes”: Ibid.
5 he helpfully spelled out the word: Author interview, William Ecenbarger, May 29, 2009.
5 “where we used to neck”: Ibid.
5 “my only girlfriend”: SC, 37.
5 “pilgrim’s progress”: CJU, 26.
6 “I become exhilarated in Shillington”: SC, 220.
6 “We walk through volumes”: ES, 92.
6 “Freud somewhere claims”: OJ, 134.
7 Fiction is a “dirty business”: SC, 231.
7 “a deliberate indulgence”: Ibid., 40.
7 “scraps” that have been “used”: Ibid.
7 “Nimble and bald”: AP, 129.
7 “Artie for a joke”: SC, 19.
7 “a town that was also” . . . “scribbling for my life”: Ibid., 40 and 54.
7 “simultaneous sense of loss”: OJ, 134.
8 “for providing a / sufficiency of human types”: EP, 26.
8 “the drab normalities”: HS, 855.
8 “Most of the best fiction”: SC, 252.
8 “realize . . . the shape”: JU, application for the 1959 Guggenheim Fellowship competition, mailed to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation on November 10, 1958.
8 “We must write where we stand”: PP, 48.
8 “relentless domestic realism”: SC, 150.
8 “normal intra-familial courtesy”: Ibid.
8 “[T]he nearer and dearer they are”: Ibid., 231.
9 “decided at an early age”: WMRR.
9 “My duty as a writer”: Ibid.
9 “as 10-point Janson” EP, 10.
9 “teasing little connections”: CJU, 27.
9 “I disavow any essential connection”: Ibid.
9 “Creative excitement”: OJ, 135.
9 “I don’t really feel it’s me”: WMRR.
10 “Imitation is praise,” he wrote: SC, 231.
11 “A wake-u
p call?”: EP, 21.
11 “We read fiction”: David Streitfeld, “Updike at Bay,” The Washington Post, December 16, 1998.
11 “only the imagery we have personally gathered”: MM, 293.
12 “I was never able”: Ibid., 37.
12 “heart-tearing” cough: SC, 174.
13 “It was courtesy of Nora”: Ibid, 174.
13 “hoping she would accidentally”: Ibid., 39.
14 “I did not let Nora’s satiny skin”: Ibid., 38.
14 “This is the way it was, is”: CJU, 28.
14 “Composition, in crystallizing memory”: OS, vi.
15 “Once I’ve coined a [character’s] name”: CJU, 27.
15 “imitate reality with increasing closeness”: JU, Guggenheim application.
16 “an ideally permissive writer’s mother”: CJU, 26.
16 “only truth is useful”: SC, 231.
16 “He portrayed me as he saw me”: Ecenbarger, “Updike Is Home,” 20.
16 “I don’t think I’m as witty”: Steve Neal, Rolling on the River: The Best of Steve Neal (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 194–95.
16 “She paused and said”: Author interview, Ron Chernow, August 19, 2009.
17 “would-be writer”: CJU, 83.
17 “I had only a little gift”: Ecenbarger, “Updike Is Home,” 20.
17 “It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me”: Td.
18 “straight fiction”: MEUU to LGH, March 21, 1931, Ursinus.
18 “one of the disadvantages”: Remarks made at Ursinus College, November 1991.
18 “frequently revised and never published”: OJ, 871.
18 “There was a novel”: Ibid., 834.
19 “I had not hitherto realized”: SC, 105.
19 “plodding out to the mailbox”: MM, 763.
19 “I never see a blue mailbox”: OJ, 120.
19 “the slave shack of the unpublished”: MM, 765.
19 “My mother knew non-publication’s shame”: EP, 12.
20 “I took off from her failure”: Ibid., 11.
20 “I always did think he could fly”: Td.
20 “I was made to feel that I could do things”: Neal, Rolling on the River, 194.
20 “the great leap of imagination”: OJ, 68.
20 “trying to reach beyond” . . . “hiding from the town”: Ibid., 834; SC, 27.
21 “synonymous” with his being: SC, 30.
21 “I began my life”: Linda Grace Hoyer, Enchantment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971), 6. (Hereafter cited as LGH, Enchantment.)
22 a “revelation” that left her with “no choice”: Ibid., 61–62.
22 “I had this foresight”: Quoted in Hiller.
22 According to her son: JU to JCO, May 17, 1996, Syracuse.
22 “Possibly the household that nurtured me”: SC, 256.
22 “pretensions to quality”: Ibid., 221.
23 “a belle of sorts”: Ibid., 27.
23 She found herself unable: Td.
23 “running scared financially”: BookTV.
23 Updike was struck: AP, 130.
23 “I grew up”: CJU, 167.
24 “locked into a star”: AP, 121.
24 “The fifth point of a star”: CP, 70.
24 a “lovely talker”: CJU, 167.
24 “I was raised among quite witty people”: “John Updike Comments on His Work and the Role of the Novelist Today” (New York: National Education Television, September 1966), produced by Jack Sommers for his “USA Writers” series.
25 “always serving, serving others”: OJ, 64.
25 “My mother is pushing the mower”: AP, 119.
25 “dear Chonny” . . . “However pinched”: SC, 151 and 29.
25 “soaked up strength and love”: Ibid., 25.
26 “squeamish”: Ibid., 151.
26 he “strained for glimpses”: Ibid., 172.
26 nervous tension that made his stomach ache: Ibid., 151.
26 the “cosmic party” going on without him: Ibid., 217.
26 “The paralysis of stuttering”: Ibid., 87.
26 “red spots, ripening into silvery scabs”: Ibid., 42.
27 “fits of anger”: Ibid., 151.
27 “smoldering remarks”: CP, 69.
27 “As I remember the Shillington house”: SC, 84.
27 Her “stinging discipline”: MM, 799.
27 “I still carry intact within me”: SC, 104.
27 “The tribe of Bum-Bums”: “View from the Catacombs,” Time, April 26, 1968, 73. (Hereafter cited as “View from the Catacombs.”)
27 “Have I ever loved a human being”: SC, 256.
27 “What I really wanted to be”: MM, 642.
28 “one of my favorite places”: Ibid., 672.
28 “chunky little volumes”: Ibid., 673.
28 Even at the age of five: Hiller.
28 the creative imagination “wants to please”: OJ, 233.
28 “Even as a very small child”: A, 131.
28 “Only in Pennsylvania”: PP, 73.
28 “My geography went like this”: AP, 128.
29 “Cars traveling through see nothing here”: OS, viii.
29 “transcribe middleness with all its grits”: AP, 146.
29 “I was a small-town child”: Ibid., 125.
29 “hopelessly mired in farmerishness”: SC, 166.
29 “consumer culture, Forties style”: MM, 804.
30 “a flapper’s boyish”: SC, 169.
30 “stirring, puzzling” first glimpse: JL, 7.
30 “the best of possible magazines”: CJU, 24.
30 “I loved that magazine so much”: PP, 52–53.
30 “[P]eople assume”: JU to SR, April 14, 1958, Ransom.
31 “The mystery that . . . puzzled me”: AP, 143.
31 his “beloved” hometown: SC, 110.
31 “Time . . . spent anywhere in Shillington”: Ibid., 8.
31 “My deepest sense of self has to do with Shillington”: Ibid., 220.
31 “If there was a meaning to existence”: Ibid., 30.
31 “Shillington was my here”: Ibid., 6.
31 “The Playground’s dust”: CP, 100.
31 “I don’t know why you always spite me”: A, 265.
32 “We have one home, the first”: CP, 15.
32 “the crucial detachment of my life”: OS, ix.
32 “saw his entire life”: A, 146.
32 “In Shillington we had never had a car”: AP, 147.
32 “Somewhat self-consciously and cruelly”: Ibid.
32 “dislocation to the country,” which “unsettled”: DC, 34.
33 “a rural creature”: PP, 421.
33 “pretty much an outsider”: Td.
33 “If I had known then”: LP, October 31, 1950.
33 “man of the streets”: PP, 74.
33 “I was returning to the Garden of Eden”: WMRR.
33 “where she wore her hair up in a bandana”: MM, 802.
33 a total of $4,743.12: LGH diary entry dated January 23, 1948, Ursinus.
33 “After reading White’s essays”: PP, 421.
34 “we should live as close to nature”: OJ, 69.
34 “eighty rundown acres”: PP, 421.
34 “Shillington in my mother’s vision”: SC, 37.
34 “She was of Shillington”: Td.
34 “authority-worshipping Germanness”: SC, 134.
34 “The firmest house in my fiction”: OJ, 48.
34 “My reaction to this state of deprivation”: BookTV.
35 “In this day and age”: ES, 21.
35 “My love for the town”: SC, 38.
35 “Take what you want”: Ibid., 209.
35 She began going to church: DC, 35.
35 “You don’t get something for nothing”: SC, 77.
35 “a retreat from life itself”: LGH, Enchantment, 6.
35 “felt like not quite my idea”: SC, 41.
36 “extra
amounts of solitude”: HS, 840.
36 “A real reader”: OJ, 837.
36 “a temple of books”: MM, 855.
36 “A kind of heaven opened up for me there”: OJ, 838.
36 “a place you felt safe inside”: MT, 194.
36 The Bride of Lammermoor: BookTV.
36 “its opacity pleasingly crisp”: DC, 659.
36 he finally finished Ulysses: LP, December 21, 1966.
37 he tried to write a mystery novel: DC, 666.
37 One of the poems in the anthology: JU to KSW, October 4, 1954, NYPL.
37 At age sixteen he had his first poem accepted: MM, 812–13.
37 “a kind of cartooning with words”: CP, xxiii.
37 “O, is it true”: Quoted in “View from the Catacombs,” 73.
38 “I knew what this scene was”: C, 293.
38 “developed out of sheer boredom”: CJU, 167.
38 “[I]t is as if one were suddenly flayed”: DC, 40.
39 He was impressed by the idea: OJ, 239.
39 “painful theological doubts”: SC, 223.
39 “1. If God does not exist”: Ibid., 230.
39 “Having accepted that old Shillington blessing”: Ibid., 231.
40 In the summer of 1946: DC, 667.
41 “Towers of ambition rose”: ES, 134.
41 “the saga of my mother and father”: OJ, 835.
41 “[O]nce, returning to Plowville”: CJU, 26.
41 Updike thought of The Centaur: Ibid., 106.
41 “make a record” of his father: Ibid., 49.
41 “It had been my mother’s idea”: C, 52.
41 “The poor kid. . . .”: Ibid., 81.
42 As Updike pointed out: PP, 33.
42 “an ambivalence that seemed to make him”: CJU, 51.
43 “[T]he stain of unsuccess”: SC, 183.
43 “caught in some awful undercurrent”: Ibid., 173.
43 “inveterate, infuriating, ever-hopeful”: Ibid., 177.
43 “stoic yet quixotic, despairing yet protective”: P, 233.
43 never quite “clued in”: CJU, 51.
43 “Life,” Updike concluded: SC, 33.
43 “really did communicate to me”: WMRR.
43 Wesley’s paltry salary: Td.
44 “the agony of the working teacher”: CJU, 214.
44 “slights and abasements”: SC, 33.
44 “admiration, exasperation, and pity”: A, 235.
44 “the kids goaded him”: C, 100.
44 “I hate nature”: Ibid., 291.
44 She exerts a “magnetic pull”: Ibid., 211.
44 “little intricate world”: Ibid., 289.
44 “that sad silly man”: Ibid., 63.
44 the “romance” of mother and son: Ibid.