Picturing America is a website by The National Endowment for the Humanities which aims to make great American art readily available to children, adolescents and everyone else who wants to take a look. Some personal favorites: Charles Sheeler's American Landscape, Childe Hassam's Allies Day and Martin Puryear's Ladder for Booker T. Washington. John Updike gave a speech at the opening which can be read here. [via Edge of the American West]
posted by Kattullus on Jun 12, 2008 - 5 comments

John Updike writes about bizarre dinosaurs for National Geographic. "How weird might a human body look to them? That thin and featherless skin, that dish-flat face, that flaccid erectitude, those feeble, clawless five digits at the end of each limb, that ghastly utter lack of a tail—ugh. Whatever did this creature do to earn its place in the sun, a well-armored, nicely specialized dino might ask. " Besides the Updike essay there's a image gallery, an interview with John Updike [audio starts automatically], a dino IQ test, an audio critique of the way dinosaurs have been depicted in the latter half of the 20th Century [audio starts automatically], a closer look at the odder features of some of the stranger dinosaurs, an examination of the nigersaurus (images) as well as dinosaur wallpapers and jigsaw puzzles. [via MeFi's Own ed]
posted by Kattullus on Nov 30, 2007 - 26 comments

John Updike (yt) discusses A&P.
posted by vronsky on Nov 15, 2007 - 10 comments

An interview with John Updike on Terrorist, his most recent novel. Some reviews: Kakutani, Donohue (USAToday), and fellow novelist Amitav Gosh (Wapo).
posted by bardic on Jun 9, 2006 - 31 comments

How I Met And Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: Have you ever wondered what a favourite writer really looked like? Is there any relationship between an artist's face and their art? Hemingway looks like his prose; Ezra Pound like his poetry; Picasso is a dead ringer for his paintings but, say, John Updike doesn't resemble his fiction; T.S.Eliot looks like a bank clerk and Matisse was nothing like his works. How superficial can you get? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jan 2, 2004 - 27 comments