John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updikewas an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 March 1932
CountryUnited States of America
appeal primitive secretly television
I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is-its irresistible charm-a fire.
generally
My interest generally is the hidden Americans; the ones who live far away from the headlines.
america reagan
Reagan has turned America into a tax haven.
overhead smash
In tennis, there is the forehand, the backhand, the overhead smash and the drop volley, all with a different grip.
family locate
Thinking it over, I can't locate another artist in the Updike family.
activity becomes cares creative doer
Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.
basketball boys playing pole telephone
Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it.
worse
There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.
aware blind celebrity deaf eats either extra fame goes input listened mask performer soon watched
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being ''somebody,'' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.
agents literary seemed york
In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering.
fully poem
I find in my own writing that only fiction - and rarely, a poem - fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel.
generation hope last living maybe shop writer
My generation was maybe the last in which you could set up shop as a writer and hope to make a living at it.
deal escapist fact fantastic lives novel people time writer
The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration of the fantastic and the adventurous is really an escapist plot; that aesthetically, the ordinary, the banal, is what you must deal with.
general habitable maintained private public spaces virtually york
New York is a city with virtually no habitable public space - only private spaces expensively maintained within the general disaster.