Selected Letters of John Updike: An Evening with James Schiff

The arc of literary giant John Updike's life emerges in these luminous daily letters to family, friends, editors, and lovers—a remarkable outpouring over six decades, from his earliest consciousness as a writer to his final days.

As James Schiff writes in the introduction to this volume, of the writer who would eventually express himself in written form as copiously and as elegantly as any American writer before him, "Updike needed to write the way the rest of us need to breathe or eat." With his stunning rhetorical gifts—allowing him to thrive in both fiction and nonfiction, in criticism as well as poetry—he was also a consummate letter writer. From his early writing attempts (he began submitting work to magazines as a teenager) to the 150 eye-opening letters home when he left the farm and family to go to Harvard, to the young adult correspondence with The New Yorker and other publications where his work began to appear, and on into the fullness of a long literary life, his correspondence, Schiff notes, "figures not as an adjunct to but rather an integral part of his astonishing literary output."

The intimacy and lucidity of these letters brings to the fore all matter of subjects and situations, notably the ardent feelings for his first love and wife, Mary, and later the heartbreaking but honestly accounted breakup of their marriage; the uncensored passion for other women, including the neighbor and friend of the Updikes who became his second wife; the concern for his children's path to adulthood; and the ongoing conversations with many literary peers, from Joyce Carol Oates to Philip Roth, as well as Knopf and The New Yorker editors, publicists, and others in the lit business.

Filled with comic observations, opinions, and personal news, told in the exquisitely fluid first-person voice of the writer himself, these missives, taken together, make a page-turning "life in letters" like no other.

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free & open to the public. Registration required.

Copies of Selected Letters of John Updike will be available for sale & signing courtesy of Joseph-Beth Cincinnati.

About Jim Schiff

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Jim Schiff received his B.A. from Duke University, his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University, and is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author or editor of six books on contemporary American fiction, including John Updike Revisited and Understanding Reynolds Price. In 2016, he was named by the John H. Updike Literary Trust to edit a volume of the author's letters, which is now being published by Knopf under the title, Selected Letters of John Updike. Schiff’s work has appeared in American Literature, The Southern Review, Tin House, Critique, Studies in American Fiction, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a biography of Updike and is the editor of The John Updike Review. He has also served on various community boards, including the Duke University Trinity Board of Visitors, the University of Cincinnati Foundation, The Seven Hills School, the Community Learning Center Institute (CLCI), WCET-TV, and the Mercantile Library. Over the years, he has had the privilege of introducing and interviewing many writers at the Mercantile Library, including quite a few Niehoff Lecturers.