Postlapsarian Paradise Falling or Rising? (Image from Poets Online ) I suppose that's a ball being tossed by John Updike, but I like to think of it as an 'apple' of his postlapsarian paradise and ask myself whether it's rising or falling. In the foreward to John Updike: a Bibliography of Primary and...

On July 6th, 2005, The Observer officially launched the Media Mob under editor Tom Scocca with a post that attempted—and failed—to introduce an awkward portmanteau word we thought would capture large media companies' incursions into the then-still novel medium of blogs. We called it (shudder) bl...

In your informative Thursday media column: Wired's publisher is out, John Updike's death begets a new book, NYP employees are pissed, and good and bad ideas for newspapers: Chris Mitchell, the publisher of Wired, has moved over to become the publisher of Conde Nast Traveler. I don't know, Mitchell; ...

The Institute For The Future Of The Book sums up my ill feelings about John Updike: His death is, in a sense, another nail in the coffin of a kind of literary vanguard. I can understand why this blog’s readership might relish, openly or in private, the extinction of these writers, particularly...

One-time late night talk host Dick Cavett writes about welcoming John Cheever and John Updike as guests on his show in 1981. I remembered this incident recently in comments at Ann Althouse's blog. I couldn't find it on Youtube at the time of Updike's recent death. Cavett and the Times have posted it...

John Updike was a revered old storyteller to all, but to those in Essex County, Massachusetts—the area north of Boston where he lived for 50 years—he was also a well-known lothario. Just ask his neighbors. Author Roger Warner traveled to Updike's funeral a couple of weeks ago and spoke t...

A final collection of John Updike's poetry and his first collection of new short fiction since 2000 are both due to be published later this year, his publishers have announced. Updike died aged 76 on 27 January 2009, leaving behind more than 50 books written over a career spanning half a century. Hi...

At the dawn of our then-budding romance HP asked me for some help with his website. “Dawg, I am on top of PHP and coding,” he wanted to clarify, “but this WordPress template shit doesn’t make no sense to this ESL-educated mo-fo.” And so, he wanted to pay me money to ins...

At the dawn of our then-budding romance HP asked me for some help with his website. “Dawg, I am on top of PHP and coding,” he wanted to clarify, “but this WordPress template shit doesn’t make no sense to this ESL-educated mo-fo.” And so, he wanted to pay me money to ins...

I’ve never been a big fan of John Updike, but anytime we lose a big literary figure like him it is probably worth taking another look.  The Guardian offer their view on the essential works of Updike. Conversational Reading has been publishing a series of interviews about publishing during a r...