USA: Writers; John Updike

National Educational Television and Radio Center · June 5, 1966

This episode is a filmed visit, with additional montages of stills, with novelist John Updike. He is filmed at his home, with his family and around the town of Ipswich, Mass., where he lives. Interviewed by producer Jack Sommers, he discusses why he writes: "It seemed like one way to make a living that didn't necessarily inflict pain on other people; you were bringing something into the world instead of really competing for what was already there." He talks of the themes in his writing; such as the town of Olinger, Penn., his concern with growing up in America; the domestic scene as an area for his writing; family themes out of his own experience; the sacredness of the ordinary. He discusses his own novels: the conversion of reality to fiction, the dialogue between his novels, their structure, their concern with moral issues, the influences on him, e.g. Proust. He defines good writing, comments on the commercial aspects of writing, and read selections from two short stories, "My Grandmother's Thimble" and "Packed Dirt," from the collection "Pigeon Feathers." John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Penn. He graduated from Harvard in 1954 and for two years was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novel "The Centaur" received the National Book Award for Fiction in 1964. His other works include the novels "The Poorhouse Fair," "Rabbit Run," and "Of the Farm," several collections of short stories, two volumes of verse, and a book of parodies and essays. USA Writers #3 - John Updike is a production of National Educational Television (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) USA: Writers is part of an assessment of the state of the literary arts in the United States, which concentrates on contemporary prose writers across many genres. The half-hour episodes that comprise the series were originally recorded on videotape.