JOHN UPDIKE b. March 18, 1932

JOHN HOYER UPDIKE

March 18, 1932-January 27, 2009

JOHN UPDIKE AT HOME

50 Labor-in-Vain Road

Ipswich, Massachusetts

January 11, 1972

Double Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist (and short-story writer and poet and critic) John Updike would have been eighty today. In honor of the occasion, Random House is releasing new paperback editions of forty-six of his books, and e-book editions as well.

More Updike here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

JOHN UPDIKE, b. March 18, 1932

JOHN UPDIKE

March 18, 1932-January 27, 2009

JOHN UPDIKE

Winner, PULITZER PRIZE for Fiction

1982 (RABBIT IS RICH) &

1991 (RABBIT AT REST)

AT HOME

1972

Updike's second favorite portrait from this session; his favorite (printed on the front page of the June 21, 2010, New York Times) can be seen here.

JOHN UPDIKE d. January 27, 2009

JOHN UPDIKE

March 18, 1932-January 27, 2009

JOHN UPDIKE AT HOME

IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS

JANUARY 11, 1972

CONTEMPLATING HIS OWN MORTALITY?

ALREADY?

In this interview-cum-photography session, it was startling to hear Updike declare that he was now too old to learn a foreign language. Of course, he did not look the slightest bit decrepit (not counting his broken foot). Did he want contradiction? Reassurance? Or should one assume that he was simply stating a fact, with all the sad implications for one's own future?

Updike was, it turned out, the proverbial thirty-nine years old at the time.

Now comes a story from Nicholas Delbanco, a former student of Updike's. Updike was, Delbanco says, "always disparaging his own energy, his own enthusiasm, his own ability." He does note that "I never knew how far his tongue was in his cheek, but he was declaring himself finished in his late 20s, which was when I first met him."

In his seventies, Updike began a series of yearly birthday poems against the day, and indeed, he did die relatively young, at seventy-six. The birthday poems and others, including ones capturing his observations while hospitalized, were collected in ENDPOINT.

One of the most poignant is "Hospital," in which Updike cries out against the loneliness:

My wife of thirty years is on the phone. 
I get a busy signal, and I know 
she's in her grief and needs to organize 
consulting friends. But me, I need her voice; 
her body is the only locus where 
my desolation bumps against its end.

JOHN UPDIKE STRIKES OUT; CHANGES SPORTSWRITING

HOW JOHN UPDIKE 

CAME TO 

WRITE ABOUT 

BASEBALL 

JOHN UPDIKE AT FENWAY PARK 

WITH THE WORLD SERIES TROPHY 

Charles McGrath has an article in the New York Times on John Updike's tribute to Ted Williams, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," which McGrath calls "probably the most celebrated baseball essay ever."   He adds, "It’s not too much to say that 'Hub Fans' changed sportswriting."  (He cites Roger Angell as someone who learned from Updike.)  

And how did Updike come to be present for Ted Williams's last home run?  He was playing a rather different game involving his wife, Mary, and an unknown woman possibly to be named later? 

More Updike here 

MORE UPDIKE: JOHN UPDIKE ARCHIVES, HARVARD, & THE NEW YORK TIMES

UDPIKE ARCHIVES 

TO HARVARD 

"In Archive, Rabbit Revised" 

New York Times, June 21, 2010 

John Updike to Gwendolyn Stewart, May 25, 1972, on the photographs from the January 11, 1972, session: 

"They're all really great, very alive. It's hard to choose. But I took two, one head, the 'straighter' head [above, and on the front page of the June 21, 2010, New York Times], though the other is well-night [sic] irresistible, and the one of Mary and me where there is a glint of hope that we may reconcile our differences." 

Still more UPDIKE here 

UPDIKE IN THE NEWS: A LOOK BACK AT JOHN & MARY

A LOOK BACK 

AT 

MARY & JOHN 

UPDIKE 

THE UPDIKES AT HOME 

AT 50 LABOR-IN-VAIN ROAD 

IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS, 1972 

John Updike to Gwendolyn Stewart, May 25, 1972, on the photographs from the January 11, 1972, session: "They're all really great, very alive. It's hard to choose. But I took two, one head, the 'straighter' head, though the other is well-night [sic] irresistible, and the one of Mary and me where there is a glint of hope that we may reconcile our differences. Thanks so much." 

(John Updike and Mary Pennington married in 1953, separated in 1974, and divorced in 1976; they had four children.) 

JOHN UPDIKE IN THE NEWS 

with a splash 

in the New York Times today 

JOHN UPDIKE b. March 18, 1932

JOHN UPDIKE

March 18, 1932-January 27, 2009

UPDIKE AT HOME

ON LABOR-IN-VAIN ROAD

IPSWICH, MASSACHUSETTS

When "I broke my foot so I grew a beard"

More to be found here