ARTS FIRST Honors Updike '54

By Roberta Gordon

Special to the Gazette

How did John Updike wind up as a member of the Class of 1954 at Harvard? His mother told him of an anthology that contained biographies of authors at the back, noting that more of them attended Harvard than any other school. "I said, 'OK, Mom,' " Updike recounted.

One of America's preeminent men of letters, John Updike '54 was honored Friday, May 1, at a luncheon hosted at the Charles Hotel. Updike was in town to pick up the Harvard Arts Medal during ARTS FIRST weekend.

Actor John Lithgow '67 and Myra Mayman, director the Harvard-Radcliffe Office for the Arts, served as hosts for 30 invited guests, who toasted the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rabbit, Run and many other books of fiction, poetry, and criticism.

Many of the guests at the luncheon took the opportunity to thank Updike for his generosity as a writer. "There is no set course to becoming an artist," said one. "The value of learning from performers is that young people can see the process and learn what a day in the life of an artist is like. John Updike has been doing that for years, sharing with young people."

A senior literature concentrator, who had just had her last day of classes, said, "Thank you, John Updike -- where books begin."

Updike responded by giving thanks to Harvard for the beginning of his career: "The Crimson, the Lampoon, the Advocate were all places for would-be writers. All the beautiful, artistic events, the wonderful piano playing, that were laid on as just marginal, were central. For me, Harvard has always been an ARTS FIRST sort of place."

Following the luncheon, Updike spoke to students in the Lowell House library, under the auspices of the Office for the Arts' Learning from Performers program. The writer who, an hour before, had said that "interviews are not a good use of my protoplasm," patiently answered students' questions on his life and work.

Harvard was the right place for him, Updike said. "There was an Eliot-ic cool before 1960. Eliot, Stevens, and Marianne Moore were almost like rock stars, in that pre-rock era." By graduation, he was ready to move on. "Harvard teaches you where to start to educate yourself," he said.

He moved to England to study art, because it was a good place to avoid the draft, he said, and then to New York, but "there is an 'unhealth' to being a writer in New York."

Updike left for Ipswich, a small town north of Boston. The first 10 years, all his works were short. He didn't set out to be a novelist, he said, but Rabbit, Run is what brought him all the prizes. And Updike discovered there is pleasure to a novel: you return to that world day after day. At 66, he has decided to put his energy to writing novels, which he said "have the best chance of capturing life as lived."

Why do writers write? a student asked him. "The written world becomes a world where you are happy to dwell," he answers.