In reference to Pete Wells merciless takedown of Guy Fieri's upscale Times Square dive, Brain Pickings brought up John Updike's rules of critical opinion, which state that the author — or, in this case, the restaurateur — should not be blamed "for not achieving what he did not attempt."
John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick has been a book, a film, a sequel and people have twice tried — and failed — to make it into a television series. Now ABC has done just that, but is it wise?
In your informative Thursday media column: Wired's publisher is out, John Updike's death begets a new book, NYP employees are pissed, and good and bad ideas for newspapers:
John Updike was a revered old storyteller to all, but to those in Essex County, Massachusetts—the area north of Boston where he lived for 50 years—he was also a well-known lothario. Just ask his neighbors.
Celebrated author John Updike has died of lung cancer. He was 76 years old. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Rabbit series was also an accomplished essayist and literary critic.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike died today at the age of 76. The cause was lung cancer, according to his publisher. [NYT]
Cranky old John Updike has always used his bully pulpit at The New Yorker to blast popular writers who didn't fit his idea of fiction. As he's gotten older, his hatred of anything he doesn't understand has become commensurately more transparent, earning the ire of Salman Rushdie, Tom Wolfe, and David Foster Wallace.…
Since we're such big fans of Time book critic Lev Grossman, this week's review of John Updike's latest book troubles us that much more. Updike apparently has images of Grossman tearing through The Da Vinci Code somewhere, because we can't think of any other reason to toss Philip Roth aside so quickly and embrace John…
"The true New Yorker secretly believes that anyone living anywhere else must somehow, in a sense, be kidding."
