John Updike

John Updike Blog

How did John Updike’s life influence him in his writings?

John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and spent his first years in nearby Shillington, a small town where his father was a high school teacher. An only child, Updike and his parents shared a house with his grandparents for much of his childhood. At age 13 his family moved from Shillington to Plowville. In an interview John tells about the move and how it affected his life. Also he tells about how commuting back and forth to school with his father influenced him in some of his writings. “I continued to go to the same school with my father. I became a commuter. He and I became joint commuters and in a way I saw a lot more of my father than most boys, American boys do, so that was good. He and I went back and forth together and had adventures. I have written about this in a number of places but a novel called The Centaur is my main monument to those days with my father, struggling for the dollar and cars to keep breaking down and the snow storms to keep coming under your wheels. But, it was beautiful because I saw what it was like to be an American man. I saw that it's a struggle, not easy to be an American man (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/upd0int-1).”

 Another thing that John said influenced him in his mother. “My mother had dreams of being a writer, and I used to see her type in the front room. The front room is also where I would go when I was sick, so I would sit there and watch her. Clearly she was making a heroic effort, and the things would go off in brown envelopes to New York or Philadelphia even, which had the [Saturday Evening] Post in those years, and they would come back. And so, the notion of it being something that was worth trying and could, indeed, be done with a little postage and effort stuck in my head. But my real art interest -- my real love -- was for visual art, and that was what I was better at. It was considered at first. My mother saw that I got drawing lessons and painting lessons. I took what art the high school offered. I went to Harvard still thinking of myself as some kind of potential cartoonist, and I got on the Harvard Lampoon as a cartoonist actually, not as a writer, but the writing maybe was more my cup of tea. There were some very gifted cartoonists over at the Lampoon. You wouldn't expect to find too many at Harvard, but actually they were quite good -- about three of them. And, I saw that maybe there was a ceiling to my cartooning ability, but I didn't sense the same ceiling for the writing because I had hardly given it a try. By the time I got out of Harvard I think I was determined or pretty much resolved to becoming a writer if I could(http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/upd0int-2).”

John’s marriage and divorce is said to have been a big influence for his story “Separating”. There are many similarities between Richard Maple's and John Updike's first marriage. The Maples reside outside of Boston and have four children whose ages and genders match those of Updike's own children with his first wife - the eldest daughter, the older son, younger son and then youngest girl. Details of the Maple children's lives are also like those of Updike's own children. Elizabeth Updike, for example, studied abroad in England. These are just a few of the many similarities found throughout the story that are similar to John Updike’s life. I believe he used his writings to express his emotions about what he was going through.