Saturday, June 10, 2017

Writers [on Writing]: John Updike


Updike refers to a favourite novel and protagonist of mine here in the whisky priest from Greene's classic The Power and the Glory

I've read plenty of impressive commentary by Updike, but only one novel: The Witches of Eastwick. I was in high school when I read it and I'm not sure whether I was mature enough at the time to appreciate it. I'm saying this because only a couple of years ago, I read Updike's short story, 'A and P' and loved it. I wonder what my younger self would have thought?



Like the whisky priest in The Power and the Glory–no matter how bad it gets, he can still put God in men's mouths. We can still put truth in men's heads.
               John Updike, Questions of Character: There's No Ego as Wounded as a Wounded Alter Ego