The Updike Archives at Harvard University

Retiring Guy's 1st Updike experience

(Which he's returned to 4 times, twice in audio)

Link to June 21 New York Times article, "John Updike’s Archive: A Great Writer at Work".

Excerpt: The archive was vitally important to him,” Mrs. Updike said in a telephone interview, especially in his last days. “He saw it not just as a collection of his working materials, but as also a record of the time he lived in.” Today the material crowds an aisle and a half of metal shelving in the basement of Houghton Library, Harvard University’s rare book and manuscript repository that sits atop stone stairs in Harvard Yard, a short walk from Hollis Hall, the redbrick dormitory where Updike lived as a freshman 60 years ago.

“Updike’s archive may be the last great paper trail,” Adam Begley, a critic and literary journalist now at work on a biography of Updike, said in an e-mail message. “Anyone interested in how a great writer works will find here as full an explanation as we’re likely to get.”

But Mr. Begley and others will have to wait two years, the time archivists estimate they will need to catalog the contents of almost 170 boxes.