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To Harold Gray, American cartoonist from a 15-year-old John Updike
Plowville, PA
January 2, 1948

Dear Mr. Gray,

I don’t suppose that I am being original when I admit that Orphan Annie is, and has been for a long time, my favorite comic strip. There are many millions like me. The appeal of your comic strip is an American phenomenon that has affected the public for many years, and will, I hope, continue to do so for many more.

I admire the magnificent plotting of Annie’s adventures. They are just as adventure strips should be—fast moving, slightly macabre (witness Mr. Am), occasionally humorous, and above all, they show a great deal of the viciousness of human nature. I am very fond of the gossip-in-the-street scenes you frequently use. Contrary to comic-strip tradition, the people are not pleasantly benign, but gossiping, sadistic, and stupid, which is just as it really is.

Your villains are completely black and Annie and crew are practically perfect, which is as it should be. To me there is nothing more annoying in a strip than to be in the dark as to who is the hero and who the villain. I like the methods in which you polish off your evil-doers. One of my happiest moments was spent in gloating over some hideous child (I forget his name) who had been annoying Annie [and then] toppled into the wet cement of a dam being constructed. I hate your villains to the point where I could rip them from the paper. No other strip arouses me so. For instance, I thought Mumbles was cute.[1]

Your draughtsmanship is beyond reproach. The drawing is simple and clear, but extremely effective. You could tell just by looking at the faces who is the trouble maker and who isn’t, without any dialogue. The facial features, the big, blunt fingered hands, the way you handle light and shadows are all excellently done. Even the talk balloons are good, the lettering small and clean, the margins wide, and the connection between the speaker and his remark wiggles a little, all of which, to my eye, is as artistic as you can get.

All this well-deserved praise is leading up to something, of course, and the catch is a rather big favor I want you to do for me. I need a picture to alleviate the blankness of one of my bedroom walls, and there is nothing that I would like better than a little memento of the comic strip I have followed closely for over a decade. So—could you possibly send me a little autographed sketch of Annie that you have done yourself? I realize that you probably have some printed cards you send to people like me, but could you maybe do just a quick sketch by yourself? Nothing fancy, just what you have done yourself. If you cannot do this (and I really wouldn’t blame you) will you send me anything you like, perhaps an original comic strip? Whatever I get will be appreciated, framed, and hung.

Sincerely,
John Updike

[1] Mumbles, a recurring villain in Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, made his debut in that comic strip in October 1947.



To Elizabeth Entwistle Daniels Pennington, Updike’s mother-in-law, often called “Danny,” was a graduate of Radcliffe and formerly a teacher of Latin and Greek
Caldwell Building, Ipswich, MA
October 27, 1960

Dear Mrs. P.:

Thanks for your letter, as warm and sprightly as always. I guess you just don’t like my ex-basketball players, and should be relieved to know, therefore, that, having passed them through a poem, a short story, and a novel, as far as I know I am through with them.[1]

Your reaction to Rabbit, while somewhat severe, is not inappropriate; I don’t think he’s especially stupid, but otherwise your adjectives seem fair, and in calling him a “grown-up child,” you have (unwittingly, I’m sure) described us all. I don’t attempt, as a writer, to control the reader’s reactions to my people, all I try to do is present them as truly as I can. I’m glad you liked Lucy and Ruth; myself, I liked them all, especially Kruppenbach the Lutheran minister.

As to your worry about Liz, I must confess that that is one aspect of my problems that hadn’t occurred to me. In general I think, looking back on my own childhood, that we should be allowed to read whatever we care to read; no doubt we get some nasty starts doing it, but better to get them than avoid them. Of course, I can’t picture Liz at 13 the way you can, having raised two daughters. I can’t even picture her reading my books; Marquand somewhere complained that his children never read any of his books. I don’t think that the book, if it is disturbing, would disturb her any more whether (if?) I or somebody else wrote it. After all, it’s not as if I ever had made the high school basketball team, or lived in Mt. Judge.

Anyway, I guess being a writer’s daughter has some disadvantages, just like being a minister’s daughter or a schoolteacher’s son. Although being a writer’s daughter is probably easier than being a writer’s mother-in-law. Even being a writer has its disadvantages—trying to tell the truth is not really a welcome service, but I haven’t figured out any other way to go about my business. You wonder why I “had” to write the book; I had to write it because writing is my vocation, and I chose to write this particular story because it contained in images that were alive for me a problem, or conflict, that seems real and important. I don’t think that the moral of the book is very unexceptional, the moral being that pure self-seeking—pure following of the inner light, for Harry is in a sense a rigorous Protestant—does cause irruptions in the social web and, therefore, pain.

As to the sex, sex is important to Harry, as is it to many other young men of his age, and therefore, it is important in the book. I don’t see why sexual encounters should not be described as fully as any other sort of encounter between people; they contain just as much nuance.
I’m sorry that through the accident of marriage you have been thrown into close familial conjunction with a writer you don’t really like; honestly, I don’t ask you to read me. I send you the books as a token of my esteem and affection; you needn’t open them.

Love,
Johnny Jump*↑

[1] Updike’s various attempts to write about an ex-basketball player include: “Ace in the Hole,” a short story that appeared in the New Yorker of April 9, 1955; “Ex-Basketball Player,” a poem that ran in the magazine of July 6, 1957; and Rabbit, Run, which will be officially published on November 2, 1960. Mrs. Pennington’s undated letter, apparently written on October 23, initially admits to the novel’s appeal, “it is a powerful and moving story and I can’t get it out of my consciousness.” Yet she quickly pivots to her distaste for Rabbit, whom she calls “a grown-up child, utterly self-centered, irresponsible, amoral, and stupid.” The novel, she writes, “is a terrible story, and I wonder why you had to write it.” What bothered her most, however, and kept her awake “was not your miserable Rabbit, but the sudden thought of Liz. What will happen to her when at 12 or 13 she naturally will want to read your books and she comes upon Rabbit, Run? What will it do to her relationship to you, to the boys she knows, to her mother?”
[2] Danny Pennington, aka Mom-Mouse, would sometimes use nicknames or add a word to one’s name, so it makes sense that Updike, in a relatively tense letter, would end with a reminder of their affectionate nature. In addition, Johnny Jump Up is a species of wild pansy.



To Mary Updike, Updike’s wife
Caldwell Building, Ipswich, MA
April 27, 1974

Mary:

The motel is the Larchwood Inn, Wakefield, Rhode Island, Phone 401-783-5454. The conference schedule attached. Also attached a letter to André you can add some words to and mail. Or just mail. Also the Maples story[1]—not one of the great ones, with a kind of anthology instead of a middle, but it has its phrases. What you must realize is that once I begin a story you become a character, not a person; Monet’s haystacks didn’t complain that they weren’t really purple. A person is much better than a character in every respect except that he or she doesn’t fit into a story. [This ribbon has about had it.] What is on my mind to say is that, hearing you talk last night, I think you’ve given me everything I asked for, and maybe I didn’t ask for enough, or know how. You did take a kind of frantic and assetless Pennsylvania boy and make a man [of sorts?] out of him, and for this I am it may be all too grateful. Keep cool and serene and funny as you are.*

Love,
John

* and smoke and drink less—and how dare you tell me you want a husband to instruct u—you hate instruction

[1] Short story about Richard and Joan Maple, “Nakedness,” will be published in the August 1974 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.



To Mark Thomashow, Director of Special Projects/Marketing for Nike One year after seeing a photo in Newsweek of Updike in Nikes, Thomashow discovered another photo, again in Newsweek, of Updike wearing Nikes. In a letter to the author, he wrote: “You appear to have one of the longest lasting pair of NIKE shoes in existence. Have you considered donating them to the Smithsonian?” Thomashow then sent Updike a new pair of shoes, asking him to return the old ones so they can be placed in the Hall of Fame at NIKE, where they have shoes from Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky; Thomashow also wrote: “I am not aware of having any shoes autographed by American authors.”
675 Hale Street, Beverly Farms, MA
May 2, 1989

Dear Mr. Thomashow:

Thanks for your jolly letter and kind present. The two Newsweek photos were obviously taken the same day, minutes apart. Those sneakers, somewhat more worn, are enclosed—I have signed one of them. I part with them reluctantly, because frankly I have never owned a pair of sneakers this comfortable. The newer ones seem more like shoes, stiff with their own devices. I enclose the ones you sent me because they seem too small—true, I had on thick socks, but aren’t you supposed to wear sneakers with thick socks? Maybe 11½, and a style as close to the old sneakers as possible. Those sneakers you sent me with the bubble of air in the soles also were unwearable; they felt like ski boots.

Thanks for your warm interest in my feet.

Sincerely,
John Updike



To Christopher O’Donnell, a nine-year-old child afflicted with psoriasis, whose father John O’Donnell, a reference librarian at the Danbury (CT) Public Library, asked Updike, in a letter of December 11, 2001, to write a note of encouragement to his son
675 Hale Street, Beverly Farms, MA
December 15, 2001

Dear Christopher O’Donnell:

I know that psoriasis can be annoying and embarrassing, but there are many more treatments now than when I was nine years old. And more to come; in ten years, perhaps, an easy cure will be developed. But for now, submit to what cures there are, including moderate sunshine, and be grateful that it doesn’t hurt, and that people with psoriasis are generally pretty healthy otherwise. In Latin it is called morbus fortiorum—the disease of the strong. Be strong, and have Happy Holidays.

Sincerely yours,
John Updike



To Mary Pennington Weatherall, Updike’s ex-wife, formerly known as Mary Updike; they divorced in 1977

Postcard of Vermeer’s A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal
675 Hale Street, Beverly Farms, MA
June 26, 2003

Dear Mary—

Just think, today would be our fiftieth wedding anniversary. I guess it is anyway. Thank you for being such a lovely bride. And for all the rest.

Love,
John



To David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker
675 Hale Street, Beverly Farms, MA
December 15, 2008

Dear David:

Your beautifully generous and warm letter made me begin to cry, first when my wife read it to me at the hospital over the phone, and now when I can read it holding it in my hand.[1] I fell in love with The NYer when I was about eleven, and never fell out, and never got used to the heavenly sensations of being in print there. I know of course that my niche on the canyon walls the magazine has carved through American journalism, literature, and comic art is a mere scratching, but I have taken an inordinate pride in it, and huge pleasure in continuing to scratch away during your editorship. Just recently, I marveled at the spirited slapstick of the introduction into Disquiet, Please! and wondered who had the larger hand in it, you or Henry.[2] As I said before, you are surely the best—and most versatile—writer to occupy your position. The covers lately have been marvelous.

As to me, the Cheever review may be my last, but who knows for sure? The journey, as they say, with lung cancer is pretty much one-way, but with some loops in it, maybe, and remissions under chemo. As with life itself in its broad outlines, there is only submitting to it, and trying to be grateful for what—as much in my life does—warrants gratitude.

With great respect and affection,
John

[1] In his letter of December 8, 2008, Remnick wrote: “If there is anything in this world I can do for you, I will. Anything . . . You have not always been a part of this thing of ours, you are the thing itself—everything we stand for, everything we hope to be. Every writer, artist, and editor here feels that way. And so I know it’s no presumption that everyone here is rooting for your speedy, painless, endurable recovery.”
[2] Disquiet, Please! More Humor Writing from The New Yorker (2008), edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder.