Religion and Theology in Updike's (1932-2009) novels

At a talk on religion in his work Thursday evening (Nov. 18) at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, Updike told the audience of 300 that his Christian faith had “solidified in ways less important to me than when I was 30, when the existential predicament was realer to me than now. … I worked a lot of it through and arrived at a sort of safe harbor in my life.”

While much of his earlier work contains traces of Updike’s furious immersion in Christian theology, he said he looked more to the congregation of his hometown Massachusetts church as the rock of his faith today.

“When I haven’t been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there,” he said, standing at a podium in front of the altar, against a backdrop of Byzantine-style mosaics and dressed in a gray suit befitting one of America’s elder statesmen of letters. “It’s not just the words, the sacraments. It’s the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity.”

As a young man studying at Oxford in the mid-1950s, Updike said he devoured new translations of Soren Kierkegaard at Blackwell’s bookstore, discovering him “so positive and fierce and strikingly intelligent, like finding an older brother I didn’t know I had.” He pointed to his classic character Harry Angstrom, of the Rabbit tetralogy, as an example of the Danish philosopher’s influence. The Swiss neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth informed another character in the first book of the series, the Lutheran minister Fritz Kruppenbach, who faces off with an Episcopal priest in a scene Updike chose to read. Upon going to Kruppenbach’s house to discuss Rabbit’s desertion of his family, Rev. Eccles is treated to a diatribe against meddling in others’ affairs. Kruppenbach sounds like a stand-in for Barth himself.  Read it all 

Shashi Deshpande's new book: In the Country of Deceit

My new book is about adult love: Shashi Deshpande
New Delhi, IANS:
''All my books are about relationships - particularly the new one, which is about love between an adult man and an adult woman. Most of my novels emphasise love because I am fascinated by the idea of love...''

Love and relationships stir the storyteller in her, says award winning 70-year-old author Shashi Deshpande while revealing that she still writes with a thick-nibbed fountain pen on smooth paper.

"All my books are about relationships - particularly this one which is about love between an adult man and an adult woman," Deshpande, whose new book, "In the Country of Deceit", has just hit the stands, said in an interview here.

The Bangalore-based author, who is the daughter of celebrated Kannada dramatist Shriranga, has six novels and four children's books to her credit. The Sahitya Akademi Award was conferred on her for her book, "The Long Silence", in 1988.


Excerpts from the interview: read

Vikas Swarup author of Slumdog Millionaire: 'I'm the Luckiest Novelist in the World'

Author and how the book started taking shape in, well, Golders Green
When they made a film of Vikas Swarup's bestseller, they gave it an extreme makeover. But can I get the author to say anything critical about Danny Boyle's hit adaptation of his debut novel, about a penniless orphan who wins India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Not a chance. Swarup, you see, is a diplomat. And not just any diplomat: his sumptuous business card, embossed with three golden lions, tells me he is minister and deputy high commissioner of India, based in Pretoria.

They changed the title from Q&A to Slumdog Millionaire. ("That made a lot of sense," says Swarup.) They changed the ending. ("Danny thought the hero should be arrested on suspicion of cheating on the penultimate question, not after he wins as I had it. That was a successful idea.") They made friends into brothers, axed Bollywood stars and Mumbai hoodlums and left thrilling subplots on the cutting-room floor. Crucially, they changed the lead character's name from Ram Mohammad Thomas to Jamal Malik, thereby losing Swarup's notion that his hero would be an Indian everyman, one who sounded as though he was Hindu, Muslim and Christian. Instead, they made Jamal a Muslim whose mother is killed by a Hindu mob. ("It's more dramatically focused as a result, perhaps more politically correct.")

"I was forewarned of the changes by Simon Beaufoy, the screenwriter," Swarup says. And he's still happy. "The film is beautiful. The plot is riveting. The child actors are breathtaking."

Swarup has one niggle. He worries how that scene of Hindu mobs murdering Muslims will play when the film opens in India next week. "People in India are sensitive about how they're portrayed, so there will be criticisms. But a Bollywood director recently told me Slumdog Millionaire's failing was that it wasn't extreme enough to be truly Indian. India has a genius for recycling its contradictions." Swarup rewards my skeptical frown with an endearing smile.

But why would Swarup complain? From the window table of our restaurant in London's Victoria, bus after bus rolls by advertising Slumdog Millionaire. He points them out. His debut novel, already translated into 37 languages and garnering awards around the world, is back in the bestseller lists. And Swarup is basking in the glow of the four Golden Globes that the film won this week. Not to mention the 11 Bafta nominations. Paulina, our waitress, notices his novel on the table and tells me she loved the film. "It was about real struggles against adversity," she says. "It really spoke to me."

Fair enough, Paulina, but what you don't know is that the Slumdog Millionaire from Mumbai's meanest streets was born in London's rather more genteel Golders Green. He came to life on Swarup's laptop while the diplomat was finishing his British tour of duty at the Indian high commission in 2003. read more

Winnie the Pooh sequel to be published more than 80 years after the original

An authorised sequel to AA Milne's children's classic The House at Pooh Corner is to be published later this year, more than 80 years after the original.

By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
10 Jan 2009

'We hope that the many millions of Pooh enthusiasts and readers around the world will embrace and cherish these new stories'
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood will reflect Milne's idea that "whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be playing", author David Benedictus said.
Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh have been fixed firmly in the imagination of British children since Milne and illustrator EH Shephard created the characters in the 1920s.
But up until now they have been left in the "enchanted place", as Milne called the wood.
He dropped hints in the 1928 book, which followed Winnie the Pooh (1924), that Christopher Robin was growing up.
Enthusiasts will be intrigued to discover how Benedictus copes with creating an older Christopher, but the author said the contents of the book were a closely guarded secret.
He worked on audio CD adaptations of Winnie the Pooh stories, before turning his hand to the sequel.
The new book will follow a similar format to Milne's Winnie the Pooh books, according to Egmont Publishing, which struck a deal with the A A Milne and E H Shepard Estates.

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