John Updike

Debarger, David · July 28, 1978

In this program we sit with John Updike in his study surrounded by mementos, private treasures, family pictures and his twenty books. Reading his own words on his boyhood, we see stills of Updike as a boy growing up in Pennsylvania, Harvard, family, colleagues, and relaxing. He tells marvelous stories of learning the art of pratfalls to become socially acceptable at Harvard, secretly wishing to be a cartoonist, working at the New Yorker, developing the very disciplined work habits which allow him to produce a book a year. We hear him, now married to his second wife, reflect on the vicissitudes of life, fidelity, and marriage. He talks of family, and we see him play basketball with his three stepsons.