Updike’s roots and evolution
John Updike (1932-2009) wrote more than 50 books, winning the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award four times. Which is to say: He knew what he was doing, and he did it with remarkable energy. But how did Updike, the boy from rural Pennsylvania, become Updike the international literary icon? Part of the answer, no doubt, is captive inside the John Updike Archive at Harvard’s Houghton Library, in the drafts, drawings, letters, reviews, photos, books, and miscellania acquired from his estate in 2009. (The writer himself, in prior decades, dropped off much of the archive himself, box by neatly organized box.) In particular, “the Harvard material helps you understand where he came from, how he developed in the ways that he did,” said Leslie Morris, Houghton’s curator of modern books and manuscripts, who assembled the display. The 1,635 books in the Updike archive are already available to scholars. Manuscripts will be...