Best Moments from the Updike Tribute

Ho New / Reuters The great writer’s friends, family, and colleagues convened this week at the New York Public Library to pay tribute. The Daily Beast presents the highlights from the speakers.

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.”