John Updike, who died in January at age 76, was “a writer of many worlds,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick. He was Updike the staff writer, Updike the golfer, Updike the humorist, Updike the father. On Thursday night, Updike’s colleagues at the New Yorker and Alfred A. Knopf joined his friends, family, and fans at the New York Public Library for a memorial tribute. Over the course of an hour, a parade of speakers from his disparate worlds evoked Updike at his most playful and profound.
“The Updike [golf] swing,” said Chip McGrath, “was not quite as beautiful as the Updike sentence, though in some ways, it was just as thoughtful and considered.”
Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor in chief of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
“John was an extraordinary writer—prolific, meticulous, deceptive, generous to a fault. I’ve had the good fortune of working in publishing most of my life, and I’ve published a great many authors. John stands as a giant among them. For generations of readers, his writing will endure.”
“His place in the world of letters was always assured. But after all was said and done, John wanted to be remembered simply as a writer.”
David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker
Remnick remembers receiving a manuscript from Updike, with a letter enclosed that read: “I’ll entrust this to the good ol’ US Mail. If they can deliver anthrax to the Senate, they can get this to you.”
“Note the Updikean mix of nostalgic patriotism and slightly menacing good cheer,” Remnick said of the letter.
“Anyone associated with the magazine has to admit that John was the New Yorker. He was the magazine. He enlarged it, he graced it, he gave it intellectual ambition, and a particularly shimmery American tone. He gave it a horizon, just out of sight.”
Judith Jones, senior editor and vice president at Knopf and Updike’s book editor for more than 50 years
“John was superstitious, and never liked to reveal his plots until his manuscript was a fait accompli. Sometimes I’d get what was in store because, being a frugal man, he often recycled manuscript pages, and wrote a letter on the other side. So I would get a clue that it was going to be maybe a coup in Africa, or a romp in Brazil, or a pilgrimage to an ashram in the Southwest.”
Ann Goldstein, editor of Updike’s book reviews at the New Yorker for more than 20 years
“After a piece was essentially finished—checked, edited, and put into its final layout—I’d ask if he’d like to have one more proof sent, for a last look. He’d say, ‘Well, I think maybe I’ve done all I can.’ I’d say, ‘It’s no trouble to send it,’ and he’s say, ‘All right, it can’t ever hurt.’ And almost inevitably, he’d call the next morning with two or three small improvements.”
After Goldstein sent him suggestions on a draft, Updike sent her a note: “Toward the end of galley 12, I wearily brushed your suggested revisions aside, unable to rise to the occasion, and finding my own phrasing more succinct and natural.”
And in 1989, Updike wrote another letter, in response to a draft: “I noticed that someone went through and deleted ‘Miss’ on, I’m sure, feminist or something grounds. It just seems a little discourteous, to an elderly fellow like me, to call her ‘Diller’ like some androgynous housekeeper or gruff governess.”
Roger Angell, Updike’s fiction editor at the New Yorker, on his famous 1960 piece “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”
“‘Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu’ might have set the tone for my own baseball stuff, which had not yet begun or even been thought of, and perhaps encouraged the New Yorker to publish a few more sports pieces than it had so far. Thank you, John.”
Chip McGrath, former editor of the New York Times Book Review and a former editor at the New Yorker, on Updike’s golf writing
“He wrote better than anyone ever has about what it feels like to play this confounding game—so frustrating and rewarding both.”
“The Updike swing, it has to be said, was not quite as beautiful as the Updike sentence, though in some ways, it was just as thoughtful and considered… What he most liked about golf was that it took him out of his self, and temporarily gave him another one.”
Adam Gopnik, a colleague and friend of Updike’s at the New Yorker
“Humor had always been, and always would remain, his default mode.”
“I once had the opportunity to walk through the Museum of Modern Art with Updike, and I always had the feeling—which he did not deny, but did not affirm—that there was something about the practice of visual art making that spoke to his own condition as a writer more deeply than, perhaps, even a writer did.”
ZZ Packer, novelist and short-story writer, on meeting him on the set of the Today show
“John Updike got made up and came into the green room, and his face was entirely smeared with this peach kind of pancake makeup. And I thought, should I tell John Updike, the most amazing living writer, that he looks like an autumn squash? And I decided not to do that. I simply introduced myself and said: ‘I’m ZZ.’ And he shook my hand and said: ‘I’m orange.’”
Lorrie Moore, author of several short-story collections, including Birds of America
“I have never worked with John Updike, except twice, and that was when we got ourselves to put forward for inclusion in the American Academy of Arts and Letters two people we thought had been overlooked. And he did this with the righteousness of someone correcting an injustice, but also with the glee of someone who was sneaking rum into a convent.”
David Updike, John Updike’s son and a teacher of English at Roxbury Community College in Boston, on Updike at the end of his life
“Through his unkind illness, he remained, in his wife’s words, ‘dignified and noble.’ He continued to be what his own father had called a gentleman. And he continued to shave, each day, my sisters noted, even when it was perilous to do so. And as he so often did, he left for us a glimmer, a gift of himself, heart and mind conjoined.”
“Among the last books he was reading was Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama. He read it in bed, in a sunny room, overlooking the ocean, and I believe, for him, it was especially poignant, trying to catch up on history he was about to miss, a ship that was about to leave the port without him.”