Updike (78 page)

and family life, 166, 209

and Harringtons, 229

in Ipswich, 151, 181–83, 223, 225

and John’s estate, 416

and John’s illness and death, 483–84

and John’s work, 83, 145, 166, 168, 213, 253n, 291, 292, 293, 307, 382–83

in John’s writing, 81–82, 126, 134, 136, 137, 165–66, 239, 242–43, 248, 251–53, 285, 291, 329, 388, 410

and
Life
story, 284, 285

marriage to John, 79, 89–90, 97, 165–66, 242, 243, 251, 277, 344–45, 383, 442–43

in New York, 119, 136

paintings by, 281

personal traits of, 83, 243, 383

pregnancies of, 105, 134n, 199

and psychotherapy, 243–44, 372

travels, 104–9, 229–30, 263, 265, 267–68, 296, 297, 299, 309, 344, 350–51

Updike, Michael (son):

birth and infancy of, 199, 204

childhood of, 231, 284, 299, 320, 348

and his father’s memorial stone, 484–85

and his father’s will, 416

in his father’s writing, 329, 367, 376, 390, 391

and his grandmother’s death, 431

marriage and family of, 415n, 438–39

and marriage of John and Martha, 381, 409

as teenager, 375–76

Updike, Miranda (daughter):

childhood of, 231, 239, 284, 299

and her father’s illness and death, 483

and her father’s will, 416

in her father’s writing, 329, 367, 376

in Ipswich, 320, 325

marriage and family of, 415n

as teenager, 312, 376

and wedding of John and Martha, 381

Updike, Wesley (grandson), 438

Updike, Wesley Russell (father):

aging, 348–49

birth and background of, 42–43

death of, 43, 259, 262, 349, 350

and Harvard, 75–76

heart trouble of, 219, 220–22, 349

influence on John, 43–44, 50, 54, 180, 226, 262, 277, 329, 336, 350, 443n

jobs held by, 22, 23, 43

and John’s car, 117

in John’s writing, 22, 25, 39, 40, 41–42, 44–45, 51, 117, 226, 262, 347–49, 354

in Linda’s writing, 22

marriage to Linda, 21–22

and move to Plowville, 33, 35n

personal traits of, 43, 49, 67

retirement of, 225

as teacher, 23, 54, 80, 110, 226

travels, 306

Updike-Hoyer family, 21, 23–25

in John’s writing, 17, 24–25, 98, 163

move to Plowville, 21, 31, 32–36, 261

U.S. Postal Service, 19n

USSR and Soviet bloc, Updike’s tour of, 251, 257, 259, 262–65, 344

Vanity Fair,
49, 445

Venezuela, travel to, 308, 313–14

Venne, Joan, 48, 99

Vermeer, Jan, 46, 307, 441

Vidal, Gore, 103, 273, 361n

Vietnam War, 89, 255, 257, 275–78, 302, 321, 333, 334, 423, 476

Virgil, 94

Vogue,
443

Vonnegut, Kurt, 374, 387

W,
440

Walden Pond, 477

Waley, Arthur, 139n

Wallace, David Foster, 458–59

The Washington Post,
377, 400, 435

Watergate, 255

Weatherall, Bob, 415

Welty, Eudora, 387

What Makes Rabbit Run?
(BBC), 9, 407–10

Whitaker, Rogers, 362

White, E. B., 30, 33, 34, 111, 117, 121, 140, 146

White, Homer, 183

White, Katharine, 101–2, 169, 380

obituary of, 111

personal traits of, 111–12

retirement of, 144

and Updike’s career, 73, 102, 109–10, 117, 171–72, 173

as Updike’s editor, 111–14, 138, 143, 145, 163, 165, 166, 379

visit to Oxford, 113, 117

White House, invitation to, 269–70

Wilder, Thornton, 87, 269, 301

William Dean Howells Medal, 434

Williams, Ted, 40, 136, 143, 159, 207–8, 214, 440

Williams, Wirt, 294

Wilson, Edmund, 18, 153, 362, 363

Memoirs of Hecate County,
87

The Witches of Eastwick
(film), 412–13

Wodehouse, P. G., 36, 473

Wolf, Nancy, 5, 14, 60, 79–80

Wolfe, Tom, 265–66, 462–65, 466

The Bonfire of the Vanities,
462

A Man in Full,
462–63

“Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” 464, 465

Wood, James, 459–60

Wordsworth, William, 298

WPA, 23

Yagoda, Ben,
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made,
104, 120, 122

Yardley, Jonathan, 400

Zhou Enlai, 255

Photographic Insert

A cherished only child, Updike “soaked up strength and love.”

With his mother, Linda, and his father, Wesley, circa 1940.

With his mother in Reading, Pennsylvania, circa 1947.

The sandstone farmhouse in Plowville: “The firmest house in my fiction.”

With his Shillington High School classmate Joan George Zug on the night of their senior prom—they went as friends.

No longer a raw youth: Updike as a Harvard man.

Elizabeth Updike, born April 1, 1955.

On a visit to Plowville, Liz on her father’s lap, David in his grandmother’s arms.

David Updike, born January 19, 1957, held precariously aloft by his father.

Updike’s Talk of the Town colleague Tony Bailey, with his wife, Margot, in 1957. Bailey and Updike met in 1955 and remained friends for life.

William Maxwell, the
New Yorker
editor who kept Updike in a state of “writerly bliss” for more than twenty years.

With Judith Jones, his Knopf editor for nearly fifty years, at a reading in Manhattan in October 1989.

The young author at work, photographed by his brother-in-law, circa 1964.