Updike Decided to Teach For Brief Change of Pace

John Updike is a promising and successful young novelist with five books behind him and a sixth to be published this winter. He is also a teacher at the Harvard Summer School. And so we decided to interview him.

The day got off to a bad start when we asked if the coming novel would be his first. Mr. Updike thought this one over a moment, and then corrected the error. A pause followed. "Interviews, you know, are utterly ridiculous," he suggested. "The whole business is a waste of time."

Put somewhat on the defensive by this, we theorized that a bit of publicity might perhaps help the sale of his new book. "I hate publicity," Mr. Updike noted. "I write the books I want to write and send them down. "If the book's good, it's good. It doesn't matter whether it sells or not."

Getting desperate, we fell back onto a Summer News favorite: "How did you happen to teach at the Summer School this year?"

We tried a new tack. Remembering that Mr. Updike had graduated from Harvard the same year as Ted Kennedy (1954). We asked if the two had known each other "No," he answered. "I knew nobody."

Updike, who until this July had devoted all his post-college time to either drawing or writing, said he had wanted a change of pace.

"This is the first teaching I've done, and it'll probably be the last. It's been fun, but my father and grandfather were both teachers; and my big ambition in life has always been not to teach."

After a moment's reflection, Mr. Updike offered, "My trouble with interviewers is that I always get interested in them and then say the most unfortunate things, which keep popping up in print. I have nothing, nothing to say." Encouraged by the first of these statements, we denied the second. "Is it time for lunch-yet?" Mr. Updike countered.

We looked at our watches. It was not yet noon. "Well, you have at least five more minutes of questions," he said. "Isn't there something more you'd like to ask?"

We did find out that Mr. Updike was born in Shillington, Pa., where he received his secondary education, and that after Harvard he studied art in England on a Knox fellowship. We learned that he is married (to a Radcliffe alumnae) and has four children. But then it really was noon, and we scurried off to catch up on modern novels.