John Updike

I loved his work and perhaps like most admirers came to it by way of Rabbit Run. After that it was a decade long waiting game for the next installment while reading what he wrote in the between time. The Olinger stories are beautiful and I will never forget the chuckle I got when Reverend Wilmot (In the Beauty of the Lillies) awoke from a Sunday afternoon nap with the nagging notion that there was no God. I loved his faith and agnosticism.

For John...

WEEP NOT FOR ME


Do not weep for me when I no longer dwell among the wonders of the earth; for my larger self is free, and my soul rejoices on the other side of pain...on the other side of darkness.

Do not weep for me, for I am a ray of sunshine that touches your skin, a tropical breeze upon your face, the hush of joy within your heart and the innocence of babes in mothers arms.

I am the hope in a darkened night. And, in your hour...

Thank you for your works.

In 1967, on a professional release day during my first year of teaching Language Arts at Indian Valley Junior High School in Souderton, PA, I drove to Skillington, PA where Updike had spent his boyhood. I wanted to absorb the nature of his early environment, and I was particularly interested in visiting the local high school where he had been a student. When I spoke with the English Chair there, he shared with me that Updike's works always caused anxiety among the faculty just before they...

I was a sophomore in college (1974) when I wrote to John Updike to tell him how much I loved one of his New Yorker short stories. To my total amazement and thrill, I received the kindest letter from him only a few weeks later: "Dear Miss Taylor, Thank you for your words, and I'm so glad you liked the story. I imagine that the forsythia are beautiful in Chapel Hill this time of year." It meant so much to me that he took the time to write to an unknown college student who was enthralled...

Mr. Updike became my favorite writer 27 years ago when I read the first "Rabbit Book". Since then not a season went by in my life when I wasn't reading (savoring) something else he wrote. No one else could ever describe perceptions, thoughts and emotions as wonderfully and I think that in his own way he opened his readers' eyes to the incredible beauty of everyday life.