At 75 years of age and with his 58th hardback just released, the output of John Updike shows no sign of abating. Stanley Campbell of Rare Book Review meets those faced with the challenge of cataloguing the uncataloguable. Learn More about an exclusive AbeBooks discount on a subscription to Rare Book Review.
John Updike is accomplished, successful and well respected in many fields: novels, poetry, children’s fiction, criticism, reviews, short stories, theatre and historical dramatisations. His output is impressive and prolific – he aims for ‘only’ three pages a day. All of which makes the idea of cataloguing his work that much more daunting.
‘With the likely exception of Oates, no other serious 20th century American writer who has produced more comes to mind,’ says Michael Broomfield, co-author with Jack De Bellis of John Updike: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials, 1948-2007. ‘In fact because Updike’s output has been so vast the main virtue of this bibliography is that it gathers and organises so much information in its 1,000 or so pages.’
A Question of Numbers
John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on 18 March 1932. In the last 53 years he has made the title ‘voice of middle America’ his own, not just through his novels – Rabbit, Run, The Witches of Eastwick and The Poorhouse Fair among the most celebrated (the former a Pulitzer Prize winner) – but also through poetry, criticism and reviews in the New Yorker. He has tackled satire in Bech: A Book, a development from his years at Harvard’s Lampoon magazine, father-son relationships in The Centaur and more maternal lives in Of the Farm – his own mother was the inspiration. Throughout much of his work a puritanical view of religion pervades.
Michael Broomfield gives an idea of the task that befell them as bibliographers. ‘By our definition, which includes small press separate printings of poems or stories, Updike has over 200 “A” titles,’ he explains. Due Considerations, out this October, is his 58th hardcover book to be published by Knopf since it published The Poorhouse Fair in 1959. Nearly all of his trade books were published in Britain, Canada, and Australia as well as here and in both paper and hardback. Between 1969 and 1990, Knopf issued limited editions of 18 Updike titles. Many of his small press publications exist in multiple issues. English-language or dual-language collections with no American or British equivalents have been published in Japan, Denmark, China, and Finland. In major categories, we have identified first and reprint appearances for about 250 stories, 585 poems, 475 reviews and nearly 700 articles or essays.’
Given the sheer volume of the author’s work, the effort required for this bibliography could only be smoothed by some personal admiration for the subject.
‘I was a graduate student at UCLA in about 1960, and we were always looking for books to be the successor to Catcher in the Rye on our Freshman course,’ Jack says, ‘and it seemed that Rabbit, Run might be the natural choice so I began teaching it. Later when I got married I was able to buy our wedding cake with the money I received from reviewing The Same Door and The Centaur, so my early interest in Updike as a student was already beginning to reap rewards.
Solid Business
The bibliography itself is an impressive work. Of its 1,000 pages, the descriptive bibliography of ‘A’ and ‘B’ items covers about 240 pages; images of many of those items occupy another 70 pages; lists of the appearances of Updike’s hundreds of stories, poems, essays, reviews, and other writings cover 200 pages; examples of the blurbs he provided for others’ books occupy 40 more.
It is the broadsides and ‘ephemera’, however, and not the mainstream novels which prove the most collectable – or at least the most rare.
‘I’d say that Updike offers little challenge to anyone but high spot collectors,’ Michael says. ‘Pretty much all of Updike’s trade books are easy to find, and only Rabbit, Run and the two that preceded it are hard to find in fine jackets. To add a selection of his other books would not be expensive or difficult. Such a collector might want The Carpentered Hen because it’s Updike’s first book and would want the first printing of Rabbit, Run, which to those who don’t care for Updike is the one book on which his reputation most rests. For some years, Rabbit, Run was the only Updike title to carry a steep price; recently Carpentered Hen prices have also gone up sharply; but nice copies of both can be bought.’
‘There are still Holy Grails out there for even in-depth collectors like us,’ adds Jack. ‘The Dance of the Solids, for example, which was originally published as a poem in Scientific American magazine, was published after as a greeting card with the poem of WH Auden attached. Since they were only greetings cards they were mostly disposed of. They are now in the $2,500-$5,000 range. Query was also offered as a greeting card and doesn’t yet appear in my collection.
‘There are rare broadsides too. The Angels is a difficult one to find in broadside. I did an exhibition of broadsides back in 1995 and Updike came to deliver a talk. He looked at my broadsides and noticed that Styles of Bloom had a typo in it – the word ‘Reese’ was misspelt as ‘Weese’ and so he took it down from its frame, made the correction then put it back on the wall. I would guess this is one of a kind, but perhaps he amends every one he sees. I think there were 275 copies originally and they sold for $300, so my version must be worth more.’
One of the most collectable – that is to say, most highly sought after – pieces is a 1968 commemorative pageant called Three Texts from Early Ipswich, published by his hometown of Ipswich in 950 standard copies; 50 signed and numbered copies; 26 lettered and signed. ‘It was republished in a magazine called Audience, but the originals are very hard to come by,’ Jack says. It would likely cost £800 in very good condition, including wrappers. ‘A Good Place, also about Ipswich, is also hard to find, and would attract a similar price.’
The Tiled Hen
The triumph of the Updike bibliography is that it was put together by hard work and devout collectors’ instincts. The authors were aided by publishers only to an extent. ‘Early on, a Knopf representative told me that all publishing data was proprietary and confidential, notwithstanding that publishers release most of it themselves,’ Michael reveals. ‘Later a Knopf employee told me – very unofficially – that most of Knopf’s records for the relevant periods are decaying unsorted in a warehouse in some distant state.’
Some items, however, don’t require a publisher’s help. ‘We confirmed one Updike “ghost”,’ Michael says. ‘It was a broadside of Upon Shaving Off One’s Beard that was announced for publication in the Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion series, but never printed or published.’
Jack De Bellis can go one better in the ephemera stakes. ‘When Updike’s house was sold in Shillington his chicken coop was torn down and some person there knew I liked Updike a lot so they gave me a tile from the top of the coop.’
Just one more strand for the in depth Updike collector…
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