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
appears history occasions past seeks time visionary
Doctorow here appears not so much a re-constructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.
past pigs critics
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
real past hay-fever
I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don't get hay fever in New England either.
past shining darkness
What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?
field impact instant second sine
In his field - where edge, zip and instant impact are sine qua non - Kidd is second to none.
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.
almost asked photograph sell supposed work written
In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.
In any interview, you do say more or less than you mean.
coin fairly financial good love modest reward sort task vocation
It's sort of good to see your vocation as a daily task and have fairly modest expectations for financial or reward in other coin - glory, love, whatever.
good hard tee
It's so hard to make a good tee shot after a birdie.
novelist
A Christian novelist tries to describe the world as it is.
trying
If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.
aware
I never really made a choice to live in America, so I should be aware of the social strata outside of the ones that I may live in.
human trying
I'm trying to get the terrorist out of the bugaboo category and into the category of a fellow human being.