Looking Back at Legend John Updike

By C. MacDonald

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike, one of the world's most prolific and successful authors, wrote at least one book a year for many years. I interviewed the late, delightful writing phenom when he came to California to see his play, "Buchanan Dying," being performed in San Diego.

Updike, who died eight years ago this month, was very humble and told me how he "was in a constant struggle to stay just ahead of total silence. That's why I need to produce a book a year. I have a fear of being forgotten, so I have to keep my work before the public."

Some of the famed fiction writer's novels show a man's marriage as his fate and how a husband's life is structured by the wife. He was extremely successful with this theme.

"Writing is much harder for me now than it once was," he explained. "I used to have ideas but had to work on their execution; now I have the execution but have to work on the ideas."

Unlike other authors, who like criticism from friends or agents while writing, he said he prefers "to hatch the book myself from beginning to end."

"It gets a little lonely after a year, when you're surrounded by penciled manuscripts. But you can't afford to put it down or you'll get stale. You have to keep writing or you lose the music of a coherent thing," said the man, whose books are "somewhat autobiographical."

"I'm really not sure of myself as a novelist. That's why I write poems, draw cartoons and create an occasional play."

He definitely prefers books--"which have a more enduring quality"--to plays. "After all," he chuckled, "most theater occurs at a time when the working man gets drowsy."

Judging from Updike's enthusiasm, while discussing his work, it's easy to see he really enjoys his job greatly.

Besides novels, poems and plays, Updike also wrote short stories and book reviews for The New Yorker, starting in the 1950s. Yet, success did not come easy.

"I wanted to write for The New Yorker since I was 16--that was the height of my ultimate ambition," he said shrugging his shoulders. "During my high school years, I lived on a Pennsylvania farm, and started sending stories to The New Yorker.

"l'll always remember running down to the mailbox, expecting an acceptance letter from the magazine. But all I found was one rejection slip after another," he said, still pained by the experience.

"Once I returned to my mother and complained, 'Where is my public?' I didn't give up and then, finally one day, a story was accepted! Was I ever up."

He kept writing short stories, poems and eventually books, while being spurred on with more acceptances and fewer rejections.

"I knew there was no excuse for not getting better. Everyone else gets better--engineers, carpenters--so why not writers?"

"Although I felt I was getting better as the years went by, success didn't make me as happy as that first acceptance letter."

Updike, who said he sold his writing without a literary agent, stated the longer he writes, the harder it is not to get stale. "I'm always trying to vary my routine, so I keep the poet in me going. I keep an element of tossing and turning in my job. The result is a real sense of satisfaction when a work is finally completed. I write for myself."

"There's something that keeps me up about the quality of the written word. I feel rather lucky to get published. I like the short hours (he writes three hours every morning) and it's a tame job, compared to a riveter's."

Updike said he is content producing books because it involves "a low overheard. All that's at stake is paper and my time."

(Other insights: Updike said he was inspired to write by his mother, who tried be an author. "When I was a child, I was fascinated by her, sitting at her desk with the typewriter, eraser and box of paper." He went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa with an English degree from Harvard. His book, Rabbit's Rich, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and Rabbit at Rest earned the Pulitzer in 1990. He also won two National Book Awards and many more awards.)