Author John Updike speaks about writing and his noted Rabbit's run

By Franklin Crawford

The day after John Updike regaled a full house at Statler Hall with verse and prose, the author fielded questions about the writerly life during a colloquium held at Barnes Hall. The Nov. 19 event, titled "The Craft of Fiction: A Conversation with John Updike," drew about 150 people.

John Updike speaks in Barnes Hall, Nov. 19. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

The answer to how Updike, now 71 with some 50 volumes under his name, averages roughly a book a year as well as numerous short stories of high quality, was deceptively simple.

"I tried not to do anything in my life but write," he said, adding that he made a decision never to become a teacher, as so many other writers do, because teaching "was almost a career in itself."

"I had the naïve illusion that there was a profession called writing," said the Harvard University graduate. "I was in love with print, of the idea of being published in however humble a venue. I began with those assumptions, and in my case they proved to work. I'm not sure they would work for everybody or for a young person now."

Updike said he set himself the goal of getting published in The New Yorker magazine, which, after several rejections, he succeeded in doing. He worked on The New Yorker staff from 1955 to 1957 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine ever since.

Of his work habits, Updike said he writes daily for at least three hours, starting in the morning and warming up by answering a letter or two. He said he is usually tapped out by about midafternoon and devotes the remainder of his day less to prose than to prosaic household chores.

Updike said he considered himself a short-story writer by profession at the outset of writing the first of his four famous Rabbit novels, Rabbit, Run, published in 1961. They follow the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from his youth through the social upheavals of the 1960s, to later periods of his life and the 20th century, and finally to Rabbit's death.

"I'd written one unpublished novel at that point and one brief sort of avant-garde experimental novel called The Poorhouse Fair, so I wasn't sure if I had the stamina to get through" a novel, he said. "I never planned to write a sequel. But enough people asked me what happened to Rabbit Angstrom that I thought maybe I owed it to the ideal reader to provide the facts as to what Rabbit did next."

Indeed. Updike's name is forever linked to the popular quartet of Rabbit books. Rabbit Redux was published in 1971, and Updike received a Pulitzer Prize for both of the following Rabbit sequels, Rabbit Is Rich, 1981, and Rabbit at Rest, 1990. Of the fame he drew for these works, Updike said: "I'm a little jealous of the way everybody loves Rabbit Angstrom -- more than they love me. He's really won almost all my literary prizes. ... In some way he's become the more successful younger brother that in real life I was spared."

For more than an hour, Updike responded to questions ranging from what he sought to achieve in his short stories to the submission process at The New Yorker magazine.

Writing is part of the instinct to "give the news," Updike said. "Something has impressed me enough that I want to turn it into a cultural artifact accessible to others," he said. "So there is, at bottom, a kind of telling instinct."

Of The New Yorker's policy for handling "slush" or unsolicited manuscripts, Updike said that unlike many other publications, the staff still "tries to give a reading to everything submitted. They may not read it through. ... Anne Beatty, many years ago, came in through the slush pile."

And about 50 years ago, a young writer by the name of John Updike also caught The New Yorker's attention. The rest is literary history.

Updike's visit was made possible by a grant through the David R. and Patricia D. Atkinson Forum in American Studies at Cornell. The Atkinson Forum is a new program that seeks to bring to campus the best in American arts. Updike's visit was hosted by the Cornell English department's Creative Writing Program. The Atkinson Forum's inaugural event was held last March and featured the legendary Fiske Jubilee Singers.