![]() He says writing fiction set in a certain location takes assimilation and acculturation. So he found a bit of charcoal from a bonfire and a piece of driftwood, and wrote the first stanza on that. ![]() One time, looking at a seagull, he felt a poem coming on but didn't have anything to write with. He spent time on the beaches of Ipswich, Mass., especially at dusk. He doesn't say, but he has written 17 novels, 11 books of short stories, six books of poetry, five children's books, four collections of essays, a book of art criticism, and a memoir. He went to Harvard College, worked for the New Yorker magazine for a few years, has been married twice, and is a father. He attributes his early start in writing to his mother, a would-be writer. Updike plops nuggets of personal details among the poems. ![]() Starting with poetry, he reads about seagulls, his daughter's graduation, dour clammers in hip boots, New England history, its obdurate climate, houses, marshes, rock outcroppings, summer people, and church records in "spidery brown ink." (This is, after all, the author who scandalized the nation in the late 1960s with his novel, "Couples," which delved into suburban adultery.) Out of his 40 years of poetry and fiction, Updike chose passages with a New England flavor, after his wife told him to steer clear of the steamier stuff. Updike is one of several local writer-celebrities wooed to help raise money for the chairs. "You can measure the health of a community by the health of its library," he says.Īnd while the library here in a northern suburb of Boston has just undergone a major renovation, it seems that the money ran out right after the tables were purchased. He spent a lot of time in the one in Reading, Penn., where he spent his childhood. Updike announces deadpan that he doesn't do readings often: "I believe that writers should be read and not seen."īut he has a soft spot for libraries. In a shabby middle-school auditorium, John Updike, America's preeminent man of letters, is reading aloud so that local library patrons can have chairs.īlade-slim and wearing a blue jacket, Updike has a face of jutting angles that sometimes beams a gleeful smile.
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