John Updike and Me

Much has been written about John Updike since his death yesterday, but I'm prompted to write still more to tell about an interaction I had with him when I was a New Yorker fact checker 15 years ago. As part of the magazine's special issue devoted to the movies in 1994, Updike penned a piece on dancer/actor Gene Kelly. It was my job to watch all the movies he mentioned and make sure that nothing was out of place. 

But something was. In his discussion of the 1949 movie On the Town, about three sailors on 24-hour shore-leave in New York, Updike followed Kelly (plus Frank Sinatra, Jules Munchin, and their gal pals) around the city, driving past, among other notable spots, the literary lions on the front steps of the New York Public Library. With Updike a literary lion more imposing than any statue, who was I to contradict him. But, having watched the movie a dozen times, re-winding and re-winding the scenes where they go around town in a taxi the size of your couch and had another fact checker double-check me, I finally, reluctantly, concluded that Updike had erred. Or else I was about to be made to feel really stupid.

I mustered my courage which, in those days, was pretty much lacking, called him up and said in my most polite, fact checkery voice that I hadn't been able to find the New York Public Library in the movie and that maybe he could point me toward it. 

"Oh, I'm sure you're right," Updike said, the wave of his hand almost visible over the phone. "I haven't watched that movie in years. I was just relying on memory." 

Only later did I find out that on the rare occasion a fact checker did have a quibble with the master, they were never to call him directly but were to go through his editor. 

I had the honor of writing about Updike a couple of years ago when we were featuring his 2007 reading of Terrorist on NPR's Book Tour, but I never spoke with him again. And I'd say it's a sure bet I've never again watched a movie as many times as I sat down with On the Town.

The New Yorker Spotlights Friends Talking in the Night Blog

Following Obama's announcement last night that his daughters, Malia and Sasha, will get to take a puppy with them to the White House, The New Yorker quoted me today in my capacity as White House pet historian. Take a look. And if you have any thoughts about what to name the new first pup, feel free to leave a comment here.

Thank you so much, New Yorker! 

This One's for You

I owe a lot to my late friend Philip Hamburger, who encouraged me to become a journalist and who inspired this blog, which comes directly from the title of his 1998 book of essays by the same name. It's ironic, because had blogging been more prevalent before Phil died in 2004, he might have been the anti-blogger. A New Yorker writer for sixty-five years, he was 89 before he toyed with getting a computer and, in the end, he stuck with his typewriter. Like his contemporary Joseph Mitchell (Up in the Old Hotel), Phil used simple language that belied the depth and nuance of his words. And no matter what the subject, the subtext was his great belief in humanity. I hope for some shred of the same. 

His mode of writing aside, Phil was determinedly current. One did not show up to the dining table--whether at the cozy Upper East Side apartment that he shared with his wife, Anna, or their gnome of a house in Wellfleet, Mass.--without having read the New York Times from back to front. An evening at the Hamburgers' began around the TV for the 6:30 news (they preferred CBS) before dinner, where the conversation moved fast and always far outlasted dessert. 

It was at their table on Cape Cod that Phil gave me a valued piece of advice. "I'd be happy to have lunch with you some time and talk about writing," Phil said, "but I can tell you everything I know right now: ass on chair." It was his version of Nike's "Just do it."

Phil and Anna always stood in the doorway under a cheery yellow lamp, which had the effect, even as they waved good-bye, of beckoning guests to return. I hope my blog captures something of the same currency and warmth that those dinners did. And Phil, I'm taking your advice--with love.