Updike in Cincinnati: A Literary Performance (review)

Updike in Cincinnati: A Literary Performance does not represent a typically conceived academic argument. Rather, it compiles a series of literary and scholarly genres, along with an illuminating and contextualizing preface, to form a multidimensional collection united with humanizing details, often absent in academic scholarship (as far as textuality is concerned), superbly captured by its subtitle. The volume comprises records of four events over two days during the 2001 Cincinnati Short Story Festival at which John Updike read his short fiction, answered audience inquiries concerning many aspects of his career, listened to scholars present conference papers on his work, and participated in an in-depth interview conducted by Professor James Schiff, editor of this volume and author of Updike's Version: Rewriting "The Scarlet Letter" (1992) and John Updike Revisited (1998) among numerous other articles on the author. Despite its lack of a direct, argumentative point, the collection concerns itself with three strains of inquiry: Updike as a writer, the much undervalued, unexplored category of the literary performance, and the fading genre of the short story.

One implicit concern of the collection is to rally attention to the short story as an art form. Throughout the book, readers are provided with three short stories written at different point in Updike's extensive career. The first two presented—"Snowing in Greenwich Village" (1959) and "Free" (2001)—display Updike working with similar themes, both stories, he says, about a "husband, a wife, and another woman" with the caveat that what seems "sexually exciting" in the first story, set in the fifties, might seem dull compared to the content of the second, written in the same year of Updike's participation in the Cincinnati Short Story Festival (4). The third story—"The Bulgarian Poetess" (1965)—is the first of the nineteen Henry Bech stories, representing the origins of a character that would express Updike's themes for decades. At the conclusion of the short story readings, audience members ask questions and Updike answers with astounding clarity and insightfulness. Although many of the inquiries do not necessary concentrate on the art of the short story, they delve into many aspects of Updike's prolific career, detailing everything from his attitudes about the social importance and obligations of a writer, to Updike's experiences editing the story collections of other authors, to his concerns about the book review replacing the book and his creative urge to produce writing. On the other hand, the questions that do concern the short story provide valuable insights into Updike's view of the declining genre. Among other observations too numerous to elucidate here, he calls the short story the articulation of a "single idea, a single moment ... carried forward," unlike the novel, which focuses on a "field of ideas" and a broad social subject, as a more autobiographical endeavor, as an artistic endeavor that arrests its creator in a continuous breath of inspiration (80-84).

The interview with Updike conducted by collection editor James Schiff more specifically attempts to "cover some new territory by focusing on the short story" in terms of Updike's attitude toward the genre and his journey as a writer through several decades and dozens of literary projects (72). Indeed, Schiff proposes that his entire motivation behind arranging both the four events Updike takes part in and the compilation of this book detailing them is to shift some academic attention toward the short story. The second event, the presentation of two conference papers—"Updike Experimenting: The Music School" by William H. Pritchard and "John Updike, Don DeLillo, and the Baseball Story as Myth" by Donald J. Greiner—highlights scholastic approaches to Updike's short story collections in hopes, as Schiff says of his decision to organize the panel, of more adequately recognizing and discussing Updike's short fiction (34).

One need not be intimately familiar with Updike studies or his body of work to benefit from this collection. The interviews, stories, and essays collected here serve as a healthy introduction to scholars interested in Updike, and...